.KEYWORD quicksheet
.FLYINGHEAD PRODUCT REVIEW
.TITLE Quicksheet: a real Palm computer spreadsheet program
.OTHER
.SUMMARY For you avid readers of PalmPower who track Fredlet’s every move — and you know who you are — this month she’s awarding komodo dragons in her monthly review. For February, our hard-nosed contributing editor looks at Quicksheet, a fully-functional spreadsheet for your Palm organizer. How does Quicksheet stack up? Will it make bean counters everywhere topple over in fits of pleasure? Read this article to find out. And if you happen to have a favorite spreadsheet fiend you know and love, be prepared to do some serious catching. That guy’s gonna tip right over.
.AUTHOR S. Fred Green a.k.a. Fredlet
I have a confession to make: I’m a media junkie.
I still have just about every album and movie I’ve ever purchased — some of them on several different types of media. Now that there are DVDs, I’m going to have to replace certain movies that I have watched to death on videotape. As Tommy Lee Jones said in Men In Black, "Aww man, I’m gonna have to buy the White Album again." Keeping track of all these various and sundry items is kind of a big task.
I used to have them all in a spreadsheet on my desktop computer, but lugging my computer around was a little hard to do — and the extension cord just wasn’t long enough.
Now, with Quicksheet from Cutting Edge, I’ve stopped worrying about that extension cord. Quicksheet, shown in Figure A, is a surprisingly full-featured spreadsheet program that runs on the Palm organizer. The spreadsheet is best suited for small to medium sized files, but you’d be surprised at what you can fit onto the Palm organizer (the maximum is 996 rows by 254 columns). Though Cutting Edge recommends spreadsheets around 500 cells or less, and for my purposes, that works really well.
.FIG A Cutting Edge has managed to get an entire spreadsheet program to run in your Palm organizer.
.H1 A spreadsheet on a Palm device?
What can you use a spreadsheet for? Well, just about anything that needs to organize data. For example, before other obvious applications for checkbooks were released, I had my checking account records set up in a spreadsheet with fields that calculated what my balance was, the amount that should be reflected on my statement, fields for name, date, number, category, etc. I also kept track of my addresses in a spreadsheet and my trusty media list (which still exists through the many upgrades and platforms of database applications that I have had over the years).
I’ve seen people use a spreadsheet program as a sort of a visual database to keep track of inventory, mortgage payments, stock information and prices — and one person, who was just plain old masochistic, wrote letters in a spreadsheet. (the letters looked funny in the end, but they were fine).
.H1 Getting into Quicksheet
Quicksheet is a pretty versatile little application for the Palm computer and your options are fairly extensive for things you can create.
If you have even glanced at a spreadsheet before, then Quicksheet won’t be too much of a challenge. Complex functions are a different matter, however. I really would advise reading about all the other features that are available before taking the big plunge and setting up a big, fancy, new spreadsheet.
You can export and import back and forth into Excel (versions 5.0, 95 and 97). HotSync works quite well. For Windows users, the developers included an Excel add-in, shown in Figure A, that allows you to create and change categories for the spreadsheet and even edit the file. They even promised me a Mac export-capable version sometime soon.
.FIGPAIR B Quicksheet adds it’s own menu into Excel.
Minimum requirements for using Quicksheet are a 3Com Palm III, PalmPilot Professional, or IBM WorkPad with minimum of 150K available memory. Also don’t forget the spreadsheets themselves will take up space as well. Lots of available space is needed for larger files. In the Tips and Tricks section of the manual, Cutting Edge mentions that the TRG’s memory cards work well and allow you to work on larger spreadsheets. They also mention that HackMaster’s EcoHack will also work in speeding things up, though the hack is by no means necessary for using Quicksheet. Work with HackMaster at your own risk, kiddies.
.H1 Using Quicksheet
Using Quicksheet is great. Selecting regions is a breeze, as is applying the formatting. Let’s face it: the only person I know who reads the whole manual before playing with an application is my father — and that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. [My Dad outright refuses to read manuals, but for some reason seems to enjoy reading phone books. Dads. — DG]
Intuitive interfaces and easily discoverable features are necessary things in this age of "Hey, instant gratification takes too long!"
You can have up to 15 sheets in a workbook that can be related to each other, but I found it’s best to have one sheet per workbook. Not only can you link the spreadsheets, but you can also attach styles to specific cells before you fill them in with your information. Algebraic formulas using references to numerically formatted cells recalculate when the dependant cells are changed. Copy and pasting preserves the formatting and relations of the cells selected. For chronic goobers such as myself, they have cell locking which prevents me from changing the contents of a cell during those times when I experience moments of clinical brain death. This is also useful for creating forms with specific fields that can be filled in to compute a final value, such as a currency translator when you go to Paris and have to find out how many francs per dollar. (I’m going to Paris in April and that’s probably the next spreadsheet I’ll be building.)
The Palm OS Find button is supported for titles of the spreadsheets and within the application, they have built-in a find function for finding data within the spreadsheet itself. Beaming spreadsheets back and forth between Palm III’s (with Quicksheet installed on both units, of course.) yields a fully functioning file. This could be especially useful for stockbrokers or doctors keeping track of stock information or patient charts.
No Palm III devices around within beaming range? No problem. With MultiMail you can send an attachment with a spreadsheet over email from your Palm computer to another Palm computer user.
OK, isn’t that enough? In most other applications that would have been a great set of features, but in this case, the engineers at Cutting Edge also allow you to use function within the spreadsheets as well. For those of you who really know how to wrangle a worksheet, there’s about 4 pages of functions that you can use. I think my brain exploded when I read that section.
Kudos also for the great manual that Cutting Edge Software includes in .PFF (i.e., Acrobat) format for using the application. At $49.95, Quicksheet will put you into the serious computing category with your Palm organizer.
I have to say, I’m impressed, but the coveted 5 komodo dragon award remains its elusive self. However, I am a Mac user and the lack of support for most Mac people has always been a pet peeve of mine. So, until I get the kind of connectivity and support for the Mac side, I will withold that last large reptilian limb. 4 and 3/4 komodo dragons and a hearty pat on the back.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
Quicksheet is available from Cutting Edge Software Inc. at http://www.cesinc.com/index.html.
You can register for the free upgrade notification at http://www.cesinc.com/register.asp and Cutting Edge will notify you when it becomes available.
ActualSoft MultiMail is available at http://www.actualsoft.com/.
Visit TRG at http://www.trgnet.com.
HackMaster is available from http://www.daggerware.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6c9ea
