What's new in the integrated spreadsheet - June 2024

Office Maker Business and Finance PRO feature an integrated, feature-rich spreadsheet that can perform calculations on data from the data file. As a result, your spreadsheets are automatically updated in line with your company's activities.

The spreadsheet contains the following new features in the June 2024 version of Office Maker software:

Speed

Saving and opening spreadsheets is now up to seven times faster, which is particularly appreciated with large, complex sheets.

Refreshing the display of an entire sheet, filling cells with data extracted from the database and the "drag and fill" function (copying a calculation formula into adjacent cells) are also faster.

After the update, sheet calculation status is converted to "Manual calculation" mode to further optimize response times. In this way, you can prepare your sheet's calculation formulas and only activate automatic calculations once the sheet is ready.

If the spreadsheet contains more than 10,000 calculation functions referring to data in the database, an alert is displayed to indicate a possible deterioration in calculation times. The spreadsheet is not designed as a tool for printing long reports (for this, use the report editor), but rather as a means of creating dashboards and graphs, or pivot tables linked to dynamic tables without formulas.

User interface changes

A new File tab is available at the top left of the tab bar. This tab offers the Import, Export and Print commands. Various import and export formats and options are available: Excel, CSV, PDF and 4D View Pro.

The Import and Export buttons below the worksheet have been removed.

When importing an Excel file, enter its password if it has been protected. Similarly, when exporting to Excel, set a password to prevent it from being opened by unauthorized persons.

Page Layout Tab

A large number of options are available in the Page Layout tab.

The spreadsheet program offers different themes for formatting a spreadsheet via the Page Layout tab. A theme contains the colors and fonts to be used by default.

Fill Button

The Fill button in the left-hand sidebar is used to easily retrieve data from the data file. It displays a dialog in which you select the fields from which data is to be extracted. The Fill function has now been extended to 100,000 lines, as opposed to 10,000 previously. While the spreadsheet performs calculations or the user displays the dialog for filling the sheet with data from the database, the sheet display remains frozen. The Fill function now offers the possibility of using a named cell in its database record search function. This named cell could then contain a search criterion that can be modified to alter the contents of the table. Example in Business: A spreadsheet is automatically populated with a dynamic table containing the columns Company_Name and City. On another page, cell B1 (named "Search_Town") contains the value "Zürich". The dynamic table is automatically filled with all addresses in Zürich. If you replace "Zürich" with "Basel" in cell B1, the dynamic table is updated with addresses in Basel after clicking on the Refresh button near the Fill button (Alt-Click refreshes all pages). Filters available when clicking on a table column header can now be combined across multiple columns. Tables containing data from the database are automatically updated when the worksheet is opened. With the Fill function it is now possible to insert the company name, zip code, town, canton and country of the debtor or creditor concerned in Business.

Pivot Tables

Pivot tables are now updated automatically, also when a dynamic table is updated.

Various new settings are available, such as the ability to define sorting by right-clicking on a cell in the pivot table.

Other Improvements

Copy/Paste now works between worksheets.

When entering a calculation formula, you can now easily save the reference of a cell on another page of the worksheet by switching pages via the tabs while entering the formula.

In the Formulas tab, a new Formula Editor facilitates the entry of complex formulas by allowing their layout (line breaks, indentation).

A spreadsheet can be password-protected to prevent certain actions, such as cell formatting, sorting, resizing rows and columns, changing the number of rows or columns, etc. To protect the sheet, right-click on the sheet tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet area.

Various improvements have been made to bring the spreadsheet's behavior closer to that of Excel.

Fixed issues

The Esc and Cmd-P/Ctrl-P keyboard shortcuts work as expected.

Using the Undo or Redo buttons on the Home tab when editing a cell containing a formula used to clear the formula but not the value. From now on, the value is also erased.