Basic Usage
Here we describe commonly used functionality in DataSpread and how to use them. Not all features may be supported by the latest release.
For basic spreadsheet concepts and operations, please reference the Google Sheets User Guide. DataSpread provides most of the functionality of Google Sheets and has a similar interface.
Books are the spreadsheet analogy of files. Each book may be made up of multiple sheets. This section describes how books are created, imported, and loaded, and how sheets are managed. Currently release v0.5 does not allow for sheet operations.
In the v0.5 release, we released a new book management interface. Users are greeted with a Startup Box upon launching dataspread, which sits in the center of the screen.
All functionalities for the Startup Box can also be accessed via the top left menu dropdown bar.
This is not yet supported. In order to create a new file, the user you need to upload a blank sheet.
By clicking the Import button, either from the Startup Box or menu bar, a dialogue box would appear as shown in the figure. Functionalities are shown as following:
- Click to select upload file
- Status of the upload
- Start upload or close to exit Once the upload is complete, the file will open automatically.
In order to load a pre-existing book, click on the Open File button from the Startup Box or menu bar, a dialogue box would appear as shown in the figure. By clicking down the dropdown menu, a list of files that are uploaded to the server would be seen.
By typing in relevant keywords, it will search within the list of files.
The book or workbook you operate on will be auto-saved once modified. The operations allowed are Load, Rename, Delete and Import(XLS, XLSX). All of the operations can be found under the file menu.
Select the "new" option, and a new book with an auto-generated book name will be created. 2 blank sheets are created in the new book. This book will not be saved if the user does not perform any action on the book.
To rename the book, select the "Rename" option, input the table name, and then click "save".
Upon selecting the "Open" option, the user can open or delete a book by selecting the appropriate button at the bottom of the window.
DataSpread allows the import of XLS/XLSX files as books.
The operations allowed are Save, Rename, Delete, Reorder, and Import (CSV). All of the sheet operations except "Import" can be found at the bottom left corner of the book.
The sheet is auto-saved frequently. You can also save the sheet manually.
Click on the green "add" button located on the bottom left of the screen, and a new sheet will be created in the sheet bar.
To switch sheets, click the second icon in the bottom left that looks like a list and click on the sheet you want to view from the sheet bar.
Right-click on the sheet from the sheet bar that you want to rename, click on "Rename", type the new name, and press enter. You can also double click on the sheet from the sheet bar to rename the sheet. We don't allow the same sheet name to be repeated within a single book.
Right click on the sheet from the sheet bar, and choose "Delete" to delete the sheet.
Right click on the sheet that you want to reorder, and you can choose to move left or right accordingly.
DataSpread provides most of the commonly used data operations in major spreadsheet systems. We will refer to Microsoft Excel to help describe some functionality.
The top bar is similar to Excel; it provides most of the basic formatting and editing options.
Similar to Excel formulae, click on the cell and type in the formula with an equal sign ("=") at the beginning.
Right click on the cell, and move the cursor to "insert" or "delete“ for more detailed options.
The operations allowed are Insert, Delete, Cut, Copy, and Paste. For insert and delete, formula shifting is automatically handled.
To perform operations on an entire row or column, right click on the row or column header and choose the actions in the menu.
DataSpread provides simple user management. You can register an account, log in and log out using your own password. By default, you will be logged in as a guest. The user management buttons are located at top-right of the screen.
Click on the register button and select your username and password, then click submit. If the registration is successful, you will be logged into your account directly. Otherwise, you will receive some error message regarding your registration and you will have to repeat the process.
Click on the button that shows admin or your last used username, and a new dialog window will open. Enter your username and password and click login. If the login is successful, you will be logged into your account directly. Otherwise, you will receive some error message.
Click on the button that shows Logout and it will directly log you out and change the logged in user to be a guest.
