Ability Spreadsheet is the perfect tool for managing all your numerical data, whether business accounts, home finances, complicated calculations or homework problems. To help you make sense of your figures, Ability has incorporated all the essential features users would expect from their spreadsheet, as well as a range of advanced features – some of them unique to Ability Spreadsheet – to make working with numerical data as easy and clear as it gets:
- industry-standard "look and feel"
- multi-sheet workbooks connected by cross-sheet formulas to help you organise and connect your data
- each workbook can contain up to 255 worksheets of 256 columns by 65,536 rows
- labour-saving tools such as AutoSum, AutoStats, AutoSpell, and AutoList
- over 240 predefined functions, grouped into useful categories: mathematical, financial, trigonometric, logical, statistical, date and time, text, and document information
- Microsoft Excel compatibility
- Recent Folders and Recent Files sidecar menus to make finding files and folders quick and easy
- a PDF Creator to create PDF copies of your spreadsheets – these can then be emailed
- a comprehensive range of charts, with 41 styles grouped into 11 categories: Column, Bar, Line, Pie, XYScatter, Area, Financial Stocks, Strata, Radar, Bubble and Vector
- headers and footers
- row and column freezing to preserve the display of titles (on-screen and at print time)
- user-definable page breaks
- Print-to-fit auto-scaling
- spreadsheet templates to enable you to use your specially designed spreadsheets again and again
- advanced cell formatting, including merging and splitting of cells, cell comment boxes, double-line cell borders, and custom format styles
- tool tips to display cell formulas
- hyperlinks to call up web pages
- Macros - use VBScript, OLE automation and programmable forms
- browsing and editing of database files, including Microsoft Access files, from the spreadsheet by using unique database functions
- live sharing of data between database and spreadsheet through unique Edit Source option: allows database data to be modified from spreadsheet and spreadsheet data to be modified from database without your having to locate and open the remote file
- querying of database fields inserted into spreadsheet: apply sorts, selections, column orders and queries created in database, or create your own directly in spreadsheet
- insert text-effects using WriteFX (as in Ability Write)
- cells can be formatted for fonts, borders and colours directly from the toolbars
- multiple non-sequential cell selection, allowing quick and flexible formatting of selected areas of the spreadsheet
- SQL querying to extract data from many standard databases
These are some of the main features of Ability Spreadsheet. There are plenty more to help you with all your numerical tasks.
Microsoft Excel compatibility is generally enhanced in version 4 and the facility to import and export MS Excel charts is implemented through the release of a new Chart module.
All the general productivity improvements are available in Ability Spreadsheet; new interface styles and intelligent menus, user selection of default 'Save' file format, sidecar menus for 'Save As' and 'Send As' formats, Autocorrect and Autotext, timed Autosave, improved PDF support, enhanced 'PhotoAlbum' Image handling, and simple photo 'touch-ups' with the new Image Toolbar.
Ability Spreadsheet v4 with new "Office 2003" style toolbars and menus:
Compare it to... Microsoft Excel 2003.
New 'spreadsheet' creation tools include conditional cell formatting, with reusable styles, and data entry validation, with input messages which appear when the user clicks into a cell and error messages to explain whether an entry is restricted or permitted. Support for hiding of rows or columns is now provided, along with Data filtering which allows efficient row selection based upon statistical querying of previous column entries. Rows and columns can also now be formatted to 'Auto Fit' all data entered.
Conditional Format dialog, showing use of Styles.
Data Validation dialog, controls input messages and error messages.
Input messages help to explain the use of individual cells.
AutoFilter provides automated selection or hiding of rows based on entries in the column
The Insert Function dialog has been extended to provide support for entry of function parameters for the 246 functions now available and support has been included for 3D cell references. There is more control of the on-screen default view and for printing options, which can now be applied to the Entire Workbook or Active Sheets.
Print dialog now provides choice of Selection, Active Sheets or Entire workbook.
A Print Options button on the Print dialog allows direct control of the printed view.
