DevExpress SpreadsheetControl 经验小记
这一段用spreadsheetcontrol，好多问题，记性越来越差，记录一下（14.1.4.0版本）
1、A1 B1两个单元格合并，触发MouseClick 和CellBeginEdit事件，会因点击的是A1位置还是B1位置，e.columnindex 会有所不同
2、最后修改A1单元格，然后点击界面按钮保存时，因为单元格焦点没有转移，A1单元格的Editor没有自动关闭，所以无法获取到刚输入的值，可以在保存按钮里添加
spreadsheetControl1.CloseCellEditor(DevExpress.XtraSpreadsheet.CellEditorEnterValueMode.ActiveCell);
强制关闭Editor。
3、保护特定单元格
using DevExpress.S
spreadsheetControl1.BeginUpdate();
Worksheet worksheet = spreadsheetControl1.ActiveW
// Give specific user permission to edit a range in a protected worksheet
ProtectedRange protectedRange = worksheet.ProtectedRanges.Add("My Range", worksheet["C3:E8"]);
EditRangePermission permission = new EditRangePermission();
permission.UserName = Environment.UserN
permission.DomainName = Environment.UserDomainN
permission.Deny =
protectedRange.SecurityDescriptor = protectedRange.CreateSecurityDescriptor(new EditRangePermission[] { permission });
protectedRange.SetPassword("123");
// Protect a worksheet
if (!worksheet.IsProtected)
worksheet.Protect("password", WorksheetProtectionPermissions.Default);
spreadsheetControl1.EndUpdate();
这样有个问题，每次双击受保护的单元格时会有个弹出提示，很影响使用感受
还是使用CellBeginEdit事件来实现不可编辑，依据条件设置e.Cancel，但无法阻止粘贴
---------------------------------
终于想出来阻止粘贴的办法
单元格赋值时，通过调用SetValue函数或直接Value= ，这两种操作都不会触发spreadsheetcontrol的CellValueChanged事件，所以可以在此事件中设置条件，判断此单元格的值是否能够被修改（修改途径只包含界面操作，比如直接编辑--CellBeginEdit事件控制，粘贴）
4、滚动条事件 worksheet
void ScrollTo(Range scrolledAreaTopLeftCell);
void ScrollTo(int rowIndex, int columnIndex);
void ScrollToRow(int rowIndex);
void ScrollToRow(string rowHeading);
void ScrollToColumn(int columnIndex);
void ScrollToColumn(string columnHeading);
5、有的时候设置了某cell.Formula="=A1";
但不起作用，单元格直接显示 =A1
不清楚为什么，但跟excel格式有关，可能与导入的excel文件是否有宏代码冲突
6.格式粘贴Range
Worksheet worksheet = spreadsheetControl1.ActiveW
worksheet.Columns["A"].WidthInCharacters = 32;
worksheet.Columns["B"].WidthInCharacters = 20;
//Style style = workbook.Styles[BuiltInStyleId.Input];
// Specify the content and formatting for a source cell.
worksheet.Cells["A1"].Value = "Source Cell";
Cell sourceCell = worksheet.Cells["B1"];
sourceCell.Formula = "= PI()";
sourceCell.NumberFormat = "0.0000";
//sourceCell.Style =
sourceCell.Font.Color = Color.B
sourceCell.Font.Bold =
sourceCell.Borders.SetOutsideBorders(Color.Black, BorderLineStyle.Thin);
// Copy all information from the source cell to the "B3" cell.
worksheet.Cells["A3"].Value = "Copy All";
worksheet.Cells["B3"].CopyFrom(sourceCell);
// Copy only the source cell content (e.g., text, numbers, formula calculated values) to the "B4" cell.
worksheet.Cells["A4"].Value = "Copy Values";
worksheet.Cells["B4"].CopyFrom(sourceCell, PasteSpecial.Values);
// Copy the source cell content (e.g., text, numbers, formula calculated values)
// and number formats to the "B5" cell.
worksheet.Cells["A5"].Value = "Copy Values and Number Formats";
worksheet.Cells["B5"].CopyFrom(sourceCell, PasteSpecial.Values | PasteSpecial.NumberFormats);
// Copy only the formatting information from the source cell to the "B6" cell.
worksheet.Cells["A6"].Value = "Copy Formats";
worksheet.Cells["B6"].CopyFrom(sourceCell, PasteSpecial.Formats);
// Copy all information from the source cell to the "B7" cell except for border settings.
worksheet.Cells["A7"].Value = "Copy All Except Borders";
worksheet.Cells["B7"].CopyFrom(sourceCell, PasteSpecial.All & ~PasteSpecial.Borders);
// Copy information only about borders from the source cell to the "B8" cell.
worksheet.Cells["A8"].Value = "Copy Borders";
worksheet.Cells["B8"].CopyFrom(sourceCell, PasteSpecial.Borders);
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加入CSDN，享受更精准的内容推荐，与500万程序员共同成长！From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A spreadsheet is an interactive
for organization, analysis and storage of
form. Spreadsheets are developed as computerized simulations of paper accounting . The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of
that automatically calculate and display a value based on the contents of other cells. A spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document.
Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets, and can display data either as text and numerals, or in graphical form.
Besides performing basic
and , modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common
operations. Such calculations as
can be applied to tabular data with a pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions that operate on
Spreadsheets have replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world. Although they were first developed for accounting or
tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared.
LANPAR, available in 1969, was the first electronic spreadsheet on mainframe and time sharing computers. LANPAR was an acronym: LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random.
was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the
into a popular and widely used system.
was the leading spreadsheet when
was the dominant operating system.
now has the largest market share on the
platforms. A spreadsheet program is a sta since the advent of , office suites now also exist in web app form. , such as , , Yahoo Sheets and , are a relatively new category.
spreadsheet
A spreadsheet consists of a table of cells arranged into rows and columns and referred to by the X and Y locations. X locations, the columns, are normally represented by letters, "A", "B", "C", etc., while rows are normally represented by numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc. A single cell can be referred to by addressing its row and column, "C10" for instance. This electronic concept of cell references was first introduced in LANPAR (Language for Programming Arrays at Random) (co-invented by Rene Pardo and Remy Landau) and a variant used in VisiCalc, and known as "A1 notation". Additionally, spreadsheets have the concept of a range, a group of cells, normally contiguous. For instance, one can refer to the first ten cells in the first column with the range "A1:A10". LANPAR innovated forward referencing/natural order calculation which didn't re-appear until Lotus 123 and Microsoft's MultiPlan Version 2.
In modern spreadsheet applications, several spreadsheets, often known as worksheets or simply sheets, are gathered together to form a workbook. A workbook is physically represented by a file, containing all the data for the book, the sheets and the cells with the sheets. Worksheets are normally represented by tabs that flip between pages, each one containing one of the sheets, although
changes this model significantly. Cells in a multi-sheet book add the sheet name to their reference, for instance, "Sheet 1!C10". Some systems extend this syntax to allow cell references to different workbooks.
Users interact with sheets primarily through the cells. A given cell can hold data by simply entering it in, or a formula, which is normally created by preceding the text with an equals sign. Data might include the string of text hello world, the number 5 or the date 16-Dec-91. A formula would begin with the equals sign, =5*3, but this would normally be invisible because the display shows the result of the calculation, 15 in this case, not the formula itself. This may lead to confusion in some cases.
The key feature of spreadsheets is the ability for a formula to refer to the contents of other cells, which may in turn be the result of a formula. To make such a formula, one simply replaces a number with a cell reference. For instance, the formula =5*C10 would produce the result of multiplying the value in cell C10 by the number 5. If C10 holds the value 3 the result will be 15. But C10 might also hold its own formula referring to other cells, and so on.
The ability to chain formulas together is what gives a spreadsheet its power. Many problems can be broken down into a series of individual mathematical steps, and these can be assigned to individual formulas in cells. Some of these formulas can apply to ranges as well, like the SUM function that adds up all the numbers within a range.
Spreadsheets share many principles and traits of , but spreadsheets and databases are not the same thing. A spreadsheet is essentially just one table, whereas a database is a collection of many tables with
semantic relationships between them. While it is true that a workbook that contains three sheets is indeed a file containing multiple tables that can interact with each other, it lacks the
of a database. Spreadsheets and databases are interoperable—sheets can be
into databases to become tables within them, and database queries can be exported into spreadsheets for further analysis.
A spreadsheet program is one of the main components of an , which usually also contains a , a , and a
management system. Programs within a suite use similar commands for similar functions. Usually sharing data between the components is easier than with a non-integrated collection of functionally equivalent programs. This was particularly an advantage at a time when many personal computer systems used text-mode displays and commands, instead of a .
The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item (text or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across the top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed "analysis paper") ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper.
"spreadsheet" is indistinguishable from a batch compiler with added input data, producing an output report, i.e., a
or conventional, non-interactive, batch computer program. However, this concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by . The subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of the Firm through a Budget Computer Program) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on
programmed in ). These batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows (of input variables), rather than individual cells.
In 1962 this concept of the spreadsheet, called BCL for Business Computer Language, was implemented on an
and in 1963 was
by R. Brian Walsh at , . This program was written in . Primitive
was available on those machines. In 1968 BCL was ported by Walsh to the /67 timesharing machine at . It was used to assist in the teaching of
to business students. Students were able to take information prepared by the
and manipulate it to represent it and show ratios etc. In 1964, a book entitled Business Computer Language was written by Kimball, Stoffells and Walsh and both the book and program were copyrighted in 1966 and years later that copyright was renewed
Applied Data Resources had a FORTRAN preprocessor called Empires.
In the late 1960s Xerox used BCL to develop a more sophisticated version for their timesharing system.
A key invention in the development of electronic spreadsheets was made by Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau, who filed in 1970
on a spreadsheet automatic natural order calculation . While the patent was initially rejected by the patent office as being a purely mathematical invention, following 12 years of appeals, Pardo and Landau won a landmark court case at the Predecessor Court of the Federal Circuit (CCPA), overturning the Patent Office in ;— establishing that "something does not cease to become patentable merely because the point of novelty is in an algorithm." However, in 1995 the
ruled the patent unenforceable.
The actual software was called LANPAR3 — LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. This was conceived and entirely developed in the summer of 1969, following Pardo and Landau's recent graduation from Harvard University. Co-inventor Rene Pardo recalls that he felt that one manager at Bell Canada should not have to depend on programmers to program and modify budgeting forms, and he thought of letting users type out forms in any order and having an electronic computer calculate results in the right order ("Forward Referencing/Natural Order Calculation"). Pardo and Landau developed and implemented the software in 1969.
LANPAR was used by Bell Canada, AT&T and the 18 operating telephone companies nationwide for their local and national budgeting operations. LANPAR was also used by General Motors. Its uniqueness was Pardo's co-invention incorporating forward referencing/natural order calculation (one of the first "non-procedural" computer languages) as opposed to left-to-right, top to bottom sequence for calculating the results in each cell that was used by VisiCalc, , and the first version of Multiplan. Without forward referencing/natural order calculation, the user had to manually recalculate the spreadsheet as many times as necessary until the values in all the cells had stopped changing. Forward referencing/natural order calculation by a compiler was the cornerstone functionality required for any spreadsheet to be practical and successful.
The LANPAR system was implemented on GE400 and Honeywell 6000 online timesharing systems, enabling users to program remotely via computer terminals and modems. Data could be entered dynamically either by paper tape, specific file access, on line, or even external data bases. Sophisticated mathematical expressions, including logical comparisons and "if/then" statements, could be used in any cell, and cells could be presented in any order.
In 1968, three former employees from the
computer company headquartered in
set out to start their own . A. Leroy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell, and Russell E. Edwards found themselves doing a large number of calculations when making tables for the business plans that they were presenting to venture capitalists. They decided to save themselves a lot of effort and wrote a computer program that produced their tables for them. This program, originally conceived as a simple utility for their personal use, would turn out to be the first software product offered by the company that would become known as . "AutoPlan" ran on GE’ afterward, a version that ran on
was introduced under the name AutoTab. ( offered a similar product, CSSTAB, which had a moderate timesharing user base by the early 1970s. A major application was opinion research tabulation.)
AutoPlan/AutoTab was not a
spreadsheet program, it was a simple scripting language for spreadsheets. The user defined the names and labels for the rows and columns, then the formulas that defined each row or column. In 1975, Autotab-II was advertised as extending the original to a maximum of "1,500 rows and columns, combined in any proportion the user requires..."
The IBM Financial Planning and Control System was developed in 1976, by
Canada. It was implemented by IBM in at least 30 countries. It ran on an
and was among the first applications for
planning developed with
that completely hid the programming language from the end-user. Through IBM's , it was among the first programs to auto-update each copy of the
as new versions were released. Users could specify simple mathematical relationships between rows and between columns. Compared to any contemporary alternatives, it could support very large spreadsheets. It loaded actual
drawn from the legacy batch system into each user's spreadsheet on a monthly basis. It was designed to optimize the power of APL through , increasing program efficiency by as much as 50 fold over traditional programming approaches.
An example of an early "industrial weight" spreadsheet was APLDOT, developed in 1976 at the
on an IBM 360/91, running at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD. The application was used successfully for many years in developing such applications as financial and costing models for the US Congress and for . APLDOT was dubbed a "spreadsheet" because financial analysts and strategic planners used it to solve the same problems they addressed with paper spreadsheet pads.
VisiCalc running on an Apple II
Because of
and 's implementation of
in 1979 and the
in 1981, the spreadsheet concept became widely known in the late 1970s and early 1980s. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined all essential features of modern spreadsheet applications (except for forward referencing/natural order recalculation), such as
interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, formula building by selecting referenced cells. Unaware of LANPAR at the time
magazine called VisiCalc the first electronic spreadsheet.
Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a . When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite a number of sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer, using the blackboard as the model to view results of underlying formulas. His idea became VisiCalc, the first
that turned the
from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool.
VisiCalc went on to become the first "", an application that was so compelling, people would buy a particular computer just to use it. VisiCalc was in no small part responsible for the 's success. The program was later
to a number of other early computers, notably
machines, the
and various
platforms. Nevertheless, VisiCalc remains best known as an Apple II program.
SuperCalc was a spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980, and originally bundled (along with WordStar) as part of the CP/M software package included with the Osborne 1 portable computer. It quickly became the de facto standard spreadsheet for CP/M and was ported to MS-DOS in 1982.
The acceptance of the
following its introduction in August, 1981, began slowly, because most of the programs available for it were translations from other computer models. Things changed dramatically with the introduction of
in November, 1982, and release for sale in January, 1983. Since it was written especially for the IBM PC, it had good performance and became the killer app for this PC. Lotus 1-2-3 drove sales of the PC due to the improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc on the Apple II.
Lotus 1-2-3, along with its competitor
, soon displaced VisiCalc. Lotus 1-2-3 was released on January 26, 1983, started outselling then-most-popular
the very same year, and for a number of years was the leading spreadsheet for .
released the first version of
for the Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and then ported it to Windows, with the first version being numbered 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) and released in November 1987. The Windows 3.x platforms of the early 1990s made it possible for Excel to take market share from Lotus. By the time Lotus responded with usable Windows products, Microsoft had begun to assemble their
suite. By 1995, Excel was the market leader, edging out Lotus 1-2-3, and in 2013, IBM discontinued Lotus 1-2-3 altogether.
With the advent of advanced
technologies such as
circa 2005, a new generation of
has emerged. Equipped with a
user experience, the best web based online spreadsheets have many of the features seen in desktop spreadsheet applications. Some of them such as , , , , or
also have strong multi-user collaboration features or offer
updates from remote sources such as
and currency .
spreadsheet program that is part of the
Free Software Desktop Project.
and the closely related
(using the
license) are free and open-source spreadsheets.
Notable current spreadsheet software:
(formerly KCalc)
is 's spreadsheet software, part of .
Discontinued spreadsheet software:
by / (1983/84)
 – A traditional terminal mode spreadsheet for UNIX/UNIX-like systems
for Macintosh
(Macintosh)
Target Planner Calc for CP/M and TRS-DOS
Trapeze for Macintosh
for Macintosh
A number of companies have attempted to break into the spreadsheet market with programs based on very different paradigms. Lotus introduced what is likely the most successful example, , which saw some commercial success, notably in the financial world where its powerful
capabilities remain well respected to this day.
attempted to dramatically simplify formula construction, but was generally not successful.
The main concepts are those of a grid of , called a sheet, with either raw data, called values, or formulas in the cells. Formulas say how to mechanically compute new values from existing values. Values are generally numbers, but can also be pure text, dates, months, etc. Extensions of these concepts include logical spreadsheets. Various tools for programming sheets, visualizing data, remotely connecting sheets, displaying cells' dependencies, etc. are commonly provided.
A "cell" can be thought of as a box for holding . A single cell is usually referenced by its column and row (A2 would represent the cell containing the value 10 in the example table below). Usually rows, representing the , are referenced in
starting from 1, while columns representing the
use 26-adic
using the letters A-Z as numerals. Its physical size can usually be tailored to its content by dragging its height or width at box intersections (or for entire columns or rows by dragging the column- or row-headers).
My Spreadsheet
multiplied
An array of cells is called a sheet or worksheet. It is analogous to an array of
in a conventional
(although certain unchanging values, once entered, could be considered, by the same analogy, ). In most implementations, many worksheets may be located within a single spreadsheet. A worksheet is simply a subset of the spreadsheet divided for the sake of clarity. Functionally, the spreadsheet operates as a whole and all cells operate as
within the spreadsheet (each variable having 'read' access only except its own containing cell).
A cell may contain a
or a , or it may simply be left empty. By convention, formulas usually begin with = sign.
A value can be entered from the computer keyboard by directly typing into the cell itself. Alternatively, a value can be based on a formula (see below), which might perform a calculation, display the current date or time, or retrieve external data such as a stock quote or a database value.
The Spreadsheet Value Rule
Computer scientist
used the term value rule to summarize a spreadsheet's operation: a cell's value relies solely on the formula the user has typed into the cell. The formula may rely on the value of other cells, but those cells are likewise restricted to user-entered data or formulas. There are no 'side effects' to calculating a formula: the only output is to display the calculated result inside its occupying cell. There is no natural mechanism for permanently modifying the contents of a cell unless the user manually modifies the cell's contents. In the context of programming languages, this yields a limited form of first-order .
A standard of spreadsheets since the 1980s, this optional feature eliminates the need to manually request the spreadsheet program to recalculate values (nowadays typically the default option unless specifically 'switched off' for large spreadsheets, usually to improve performance). Some earlier spreadsheets required a manual request to recalculate, since recalculation of large or complex spreadsheets often reduced data entry speed. Many modern spreadsheets still retain this option.
Recalculation generally requires that there are no
in a spreadsheet. A
is a graph that has a vertex for each object to be updated, and an edge connecting two objects whenever one of them needs to be updated earlier than the other. Dependency graphs without circular dependencies form , representations of partial orderings (in this case, across a spreadsheet) that can be relied upon to give a definite result.
This feature refers to updating a cell's contents periodically with a value from an external source—such as a cell in a "remote" spreadsheet. For shared, Web-based spreadsheets, it applies to "immediately" updating cells another user has updated. All dependent cells must be updated also.
Once entered, selected cells (or the entire spreadsheet) can optionally be "locked" to prevent accidental overwriting. Typically this would apply to cells containing formulas but might be applicable to cells containing "constants" such as a kilogram/pounds conversion factor (2. to eight decimal places). Even though individual cells are marked as locked, the spreadsheet data are not protected until the feature is activated in the file preferences.
A cell or range can optionally be defined to specify how the value is displayed. The default display format is usually set by its initial content if not specifically previously set, so that for example "31/12/2007" or "31 Dec 2007" would default to the cell format of date. Similarly adding a % sign after a numeric value would tag the cell as a
cell format. The cell contents are not changed by this format, only the displayed value.
Some cell formats such as "numeric" or "" can also specify the number of .
This can allow invalid operations (such as doing multiplication on a cell containing a date), resulting in illogical results without an appropriate warning.
Depending on the capability of the spreadsheet application, each cell (like its counterpart the "style" in a ) can be separately formatted using the
of either the content (point size, color, bold or italic) or the cell (border thickness, background shading, color). To aid the readability of a spreadsheet, cell formatting may be condition for example, a negative number may be displayed in red.
A cell's formatting does not typically affect its content and depending on how cells are referenced or copied to other worksheets or applications, the formatting may not be carried with the content.
Use of named column variables x & y in . Formula for y=x2 resembles , and Name Manager shows the definitions of x & y.
In most implementations, a cell, or group of cells in a column or row, can be "named" enabling the user to refer to those cells by a name rather than by a grid reference. Names must be unique within the spreadsheet, but when using multiple sheets in a spreadsheet file, an identically named cell range on each sheet can be used if it is distinguished by adding the sheet name. One reason for this usage is for creating or running macros that repeat a command across many sheets. Another reason is that formulas with named variables are readily checked against the algebra they are intended to implement (they resemble Fortran expressions). Use of named variables and named functions also makes the spreadsheet structure more transparent.
In place of a named cell, an alternative approach is to use a cell (or grid) reference. Most cell references indicate another cell in the same spreadsheet, but a cell reference can also refer to a cell in a different sheet within the same spreadsheet, or (depending on the implementation) to a cell in another spreadsheet entirely, or to a value from a remote application.
A typical cell reference in "A1" style consists of one or two case-insensitive letters to identify the column (if there are up to 256 columns: A–Z and AA–IV) followed by a row number (e.g., in the range 1–65536). Either part can be relative (it changes when the formula it is in is moved or copied), or absolute (indicated with $ in front of the part concerned of the cell reference). The alternative "R1C1" reference style consists of the letter R, the row number, the letter C, a relative row or column numbers are indicated by enclosing the number in square brackets. Most current spreadsheets use the A1 style, some providing the R1C1 style as a compatibility option.
When the computer calculates a formula in one cell to update the displayed value of that cell, cell reference(s) in that cell, naming some other cell(s), cause the computer to fetch the value of the named cell(s).
A cell on the same "sheet" is usually addressed as:
A cell on a different sheet of the same spreadsheet is usually addressed as:
=SHEET2!A1
( the first cell in sheet 2 of same spreadsheet).
Some spreadsheet implementations in
allow a cell references to another spreadsheet (not the current open and active file) on the same computer or a local network. It may also refer to a cell in another open and active spreadsheet on the same computer or network that is defined as shareable. These references contain the complete filename, such as:
='C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My spreadsheets\[main sheet]Sheet1!A1
In a spreadsheet, references to cells automatically update when new rows or columns are inserted or deleted. Care must be taken, however, when adding a row immediately before a set of column totals to ensure that the totals reflect the additional rows values—which they often do not.
occurs when the formula in one cell refers—directly, or indirectly through a chain of cell references—to another cell that refers back to the first cell. Many common errors cause circular references. However, some valid techniques use circular references. These techniques, after many spreadsheet recalculations, (usually) converge on the correct values for those cells.
Likewise, instead of using a named range of cells, a range reference can be used. Reference to a range of cells is typically of the form (A1:A6), which specifies all the cells in the range A1 through to A6. A formula such as "=SUM(A1:A6)" would add all the cells specified and put the result in the cell containing the formula itself.
In the earliest spreadsheets, cells were a simple two-dimensional grid. Over time, the model has expanded to include a third dimension, and in some cases a series of named grids, called sheets. The most advanced examples allow inversion and rotation operations which can slice and project the data set in various ways.
Animation of a simple spreadsheet that multiplies values in the left column by 2, then sums the calculated values from the right column to the bottom-most cell. In this example, only the values in the A column are entered (10, 20, 30), and the remainder of cells are formulas. Formulas in the B column multiply values from the A column using relative references, and the formula in B4 uses the SUM() function to find the
of values in the B1:B3 range.
A formula identifies the
needed to place the result in the cell it is contained within. A cell containing a formula therefore has tw the formula itself and the resulting value. The formula is normally only shown when the cell is selected by "clicking" the mouse ov otherwise it contains the result of the calculation.
A formula assigns values to a cell or range of cells, and typically has the format:
=expression
consists of:
, such as 2, 9.14 or 6.67E-11;
to other cells, such as, e.g., A1 for a single cell or B1:B3
, such as +, -, *, /,
, such as &=, &, and,
, such as SUM(), TAN(), and many others.
When a cell contains a formula, it often contains references to other cells. Such a cell reference is a type of variable. Its value is the value of the referenced cell or some derivation of it. If that cell in turn references other cells, the value depends on the values of those. References can be relative (e.g., A1, or B1:B3), absolute (e.g., $A$1, or $B$1:$B$3) or mixed row– or column-wise absolute/relative (e.g., $A1 is column-wise absolute and A$1 is row-wise absolute).
The available options for valid formulas depends on the particular spreadsheet implementation but, in general, most arithmetic operations and quite complex nested conditional operations can be performed by most of today's commercial spreadsheets. Modern implementations also offer functions to access custom-build functions, remote data, and applications.
A formula may contain a condition (or nested conditions)—with or without an actual calculation—and is sometimes used purely to identify and highlight errors. In the example below, it is assumed the sum of a column of percentages (A1 through A6) is tested for validity and an explicit message put into the adjacent right-hand cell.
=IF(SUM(A1:A6) & 100, "More than 100%", SUM(A1:A6))
Further examples:
=IF(AND(A1&&"",B1&&""),A1/B1,"") means that if both cells A1 and B1 are not && empty "", then divide A1 by B1 and display, other do not display anything.
=IF(AND(A1&&"",B1&&""),IF(B1&&0,A1/B1,"Division by zero"),"") means that if cells A1 and B1 are not empty, and B1 is not zero, then divide A1 by B1, if B1 is zero, then display "Division by zero", and do not display anything if either A1 and B1 are empty.
=IF(OR(A1&&"",B1&&""),"Either A1 or B1 show text","") means to display the text if either cells A1 or B1 are not empty.
The best way to build up conditional statements is step by step composing followed by trial and error testing and refining code.
A spreadsheet does not, in fact, have to contain any formulas at all, in which case it could be considered merely a collection of data arranged in rows and columns (a ) like a calendar, timetable or simple list. Because of its ease of use, formatting and
capabilities, many spreadsheets are used solely for this purpose.
Use of user-defined function sq(x) in .
Spreadsheets usually contain a number of supplied , such as arithmetic operations (for example, summations, averages and so forth), trigonometric functions, statistical functions, and so forth. In addition there is often a provision for user-defined functions. In Microsoft Excel these functions are defined using
in the supplied Visual Basic editor, and such functions are automatically accessible on the worksheet. In addition, programs can be written that pull information from the worksheet, perform some calculations, and report the results back to the worksheet. In the figure, the name sq is user-assigned, and function sq is introduced using the
editor supplied with Excel. Name Manager displays the spreadsheet definitions of named variables x & y.
Subroutine in
writes values calculated using x into y.
Functions themselves cannot write into the worksheet, but simply return their evaluation. However, in Microsoft Excel,
can write values or text found within the subroutine directly to the spreadsheet. The figure shows the Visual Basic code for a subroutine that reads each member of the named column variable x, calculates its square, and writes this value into the corresponding element of named column variable y. The y column contains no formula because its values are calculated in the subroutine, not on the spreadsheet, and simply are written in.
Whenever a reference is made to a cell or group of cells that are not located within the current physical spreadsheet file, it is considered as accessing a "remote" spreadsheet. The contents of the referenced cell may be accessed either on first reference with a manual update or more recently in the case of web based spreadsheets, as a near real time value with a specified automatic refresh interval.
Graph made using Microsoft Excel
Many spreadsheet applications permit ,
to be generated from specified groups of cells that are dynamically re-built as cell contents change. The generated graphic component can either be embedded within the current sheet or added as a separate object.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, first
appeared. Unlike models in a conventional spreadsheet, they utilized models built on objects called variables, not on data in cells of a report. These multi-dimensional spreadsheets enabled viewing data and
in various self-documenting ways, including simultaneous multiple synchronized views. For example, users of Javelin could move through the connections between variables on a diagram while seeing the logical roots and branches of each variable. This is an example of what is perhaps its primary contribution of the earlier Javelin—the concept of traceability of a user's logic or model structure through its twelve views. A complex model can be dissected and understood by others who had no role in its creation.
In these programs, a , or any variable, was an object in itself, not a collection of cells that happen to appear in a row or column. Variables could have many attributes, including complete awareness of their connections to all other variables, data references, and text and image notes. Calculations were performed on these objects, as opposed to a range of cells, so adding two time series automatically aligns them in calendar time, or in a user-defined time frame. Data were independent of worksheets—variables, and therefore data, could not be destroyed by deleting a row, column or entire worksheet. For instance, January's costs are subtracted from January's revenues, regardless of where or whether either appears in a worksheet. This permits actions later used in , except that flexible manipulation of report tables was but one of many capabilities supported by variables. Moreover, if costs were entered by week and revenues by month, the program could allocate or interpolate as appropriate. This object design enabled variables and whole models to reference each other with user-defined variable names, and to perform multidimensional analysis and massive, but easily editable consolidations.
Trapeze, a spreadsheet on the Mac, went further and explicitly supported not just table columns, but also matrix operators.
Spreadsheets that have a formula language based upon
expressions, rather than
expressions are known as . Such spreadsheets can be used to reason
about their cell values.
Just as the early programming languages were designed to generate spreadsheet printouts, programming techniques themselves have evolved to process tables (also known as spreadsheets or ) of data more efficiently in the computer itself.
Spreadsheets are a popular
tool. EUD denotes activities or techniques in which people who are not professional developers create automated behavior and complex data objects without significant knowledge of a programming language. Many people find it easier to perform calculations in spreadsheets than by writing the equivalent sequential program. This is due to several traits of spreadsheets.
relationships to define program relationships. Humans have highly developed
about spaces, and of dependencies between items. Sequential programming usually requires typing line after line of text, which must be read slowly and carefully to be understood and changed.
They are forgiving, allowing partial results and functions to work. One or more parts of a program can work correctly, even if other parts are unfinished or broken. This makes writing and debugging programs easier, and faster. Sequential programming usually needs every program line and character to be correct for a program to run. One error usually stops the whole program and prevents any result.
Modern spreadsheets allow for . The program can be annotated with colors, typefaces, lines, etc. to provide visual cues about the meaning of elements in the program.
Extensions that allow users to create new functions can provide the capabilities of a .
Extensions that allow users to build and apply models from the domain of .
Spreadsheets are versatile. With their
and graphics capabilities, even
is possible.
Spreadsheets can store
and spreadsheet formulas can express all queries of . There exists a query translator, which automatically generates the spreadsheet implementation from the SQL code.
A "spreadsheet program" is designed to perform general computation tasks using spatial relationships rather than time as the primary organizing principle.
It is often convenient to think of a spreadsheet as a mathematical , where the
are spreadsheet cells, and the edges are references to other cells specified in formulas. This is often called the dependency graph of the spreadsheet. References between cells can take advantage of spatial concepts such as relative position and absolute position, as well as named locations, to make the spreadsheet formulas easier to understand and manage.
Spreadsheets usually attempt to automatically update cells when the cells they depend on change. The earliest spreadsheets used simple tactics like evaluating cells in a particular order, but modern spreadsheets calculate following a minimal recomputation order from the dependency graph. Later spreadsheets also include a limited ability to propagate values in reverse, altering source values so that a particular answer is reached in a certain cell. Since spreadsheet cells formulas are not generally invertible, though, this technique is of somewhat limited value.
Many of the concepts common to sequential programming models have analogues in the spreadsheet world. For example, the sequential model of the
is usually represented as a table of cells, with similar formulas (normally differing only in which cells they reference).
Spreadsheets have evolved to use
programming languages like
as a tool for extensibility beyond what the spreadsheet language makes easy.
While spreadsheets represented a major step forward in quantitative modeling, they have deficiencies. Their shortcomings include the perceived unfriendliness of alpha-numeric cell addresses.
Research by ClusterSeven has shown huge discrepancies in the way financial institutions and corporate entities understand, manage and police their often vast estates of spreadsheets and unstructured financial data (including
(CSV) files and Microsoft Access databases). One study in early 2011 of nearly 1,500 people in the UK found that 57% of spreadsheet users have never received formal training on the spreadsheet package they use. 72% said that no internal department checks their spreadsheets for accuracy. Only 13% said that Internal Audit reviews their spreadsheets, while a mere 1% receive checks from their risk department.
Spreadsheets have significant reliability problems. Research studies estimate that roughly 94% of spreadsheets deployed in the field contain errors, and 5.2% of cells in unaudited spreadsheets contain errors.
Despite the high error risks often associated with spreadsheet authorship and use, specific steps can be taken to significantly enhance control and reliability by structurally reducing the likelihood of error occurrence at their source.
The practical expressiveness of spreadsheets can be limited unless their modern features are used. Several factors contribute to this limitation. Implementing a complex model on a cell-at-a-time basis requires tedious attention to detail. Authors have difficulty remembering the meanings of hundreds or thousands of cell addresses that appear in formulas.
These drawbacks are mitigated by the use of named variables for cell designations, and employing variables in formulas rather than cell locations and cell-by-cell manipulations. Graphs can be used to show instantly how results are changed by changes in parameter values. In fact, the spreadsheet can be made invisible except for a transparent user interface that requests pertinent input from the user, displays results requested by the user, creates reports, and has built-in error traps to prompt correct input.
Similarly, formulas expressed in terms of cell addresses are hard to keep straight and hard to audit. Research shows that spreadsheet auditors who check numerical results and cell formulas find no more errors than auditors who only check numerical results. That is another reason to use named variables and formulas employing named variables.
The alteration of a dimension demands major surgery. When rows (or columns) are added to or deleted from a table, one has to adjust the size of many downstream tables that depend on the table being changed. In the process, it is often necessary to move other cells around to make room for the new columns or rows, and to adjust graph data sources. In large spreadsheets, this can be extremely time consuming.
Adding or removing a dimension is so difficult, one generally has to start over. The spreadsheet as a paradigm really forces one to decide on dimensionality right of the beginning of one's spreadsheet creation, even though it is often most natural to make these choices after one's spreadsheet model has matured. The desire to add and remove dimensions also arises in parametric and sensitivity analyses.
Collaboration in authoring spreadsheet formulas can be difficult when such collaboration occurs at the level of cells and cell addresses.
Other problems associated with spreadsheets include:
Some sources advocate the use of specialized software instead of spreadsheets for some applications (budgeting, statistics)
Many spreadsheet software products, such as
(versions prior to 2007) and
(versions prior to 2008), have a capacity limit of 65,536 rows by 256 columns (216 and 28 respectively). This can present a problem for people using very large datasets, and may result in data loss.
Lack of auditing and . This makes it difficult to determine who changed what and when. This can cause problems with regulatory compliance. Lack of revision control greatly increases the risk of errors due the inability to track, isolate and test changes made to a document.[]
Lack of . Spreadsheets lack controls on who can see and modify particular data. This, combined with the lack of auditing above, can make it easy for someone to commit .
Because they are loosely structured, it is easy for someone to introduce an , either accidentally or intentionally, by entering information in the wrong place or expressing dependencies among cells (such as in a formula) incorrectly.
The results of a formula (example "=A1*B1") applies only to a single cell (that is, the cell the formula is actually located in—in this case perhaps C1), even though it can "extract" data from many other cells, and even real time dates and actual times. This means that to cause a similar calculation on an array of cells, an almost identical formula (but residing in its own "output" cell) must be repeated for each row of the "input" array. This differs from a "formula" in a conventional computer program, which typically makes one calculation that it applies to all the input in turn. With current spreadsheets, this forced repetition of near identical formulas can have detrimental consequences from a
standpoint and is often the cause of many spreadsheet errors. Some spreadsheets have array formulas to address this issue.
Trying to manage the sheer volume of spreadsheets that may exist in an organization without proper security, audit trails, unintentional introduction of errors, and other items listed above can become overwhelming.
While there are built-in and third-party tools for desktop spreadsheet applications that address some of these shortcomings, awareness and use of these is generally low. A good example of this is that 55% of
professionals "don't know" how their spre only 6% invest in a third-party solution
Spreadsheet risk is the risk associated with deriving a materially incorrect value from a spreadsheet application that will be utilised in making a related (usually numerically-based) decision. Examples include the valuation of an , the determination of , the calculation of medicinal doses or the size of load-bearing beam for structural engineering. The
may arise from inputting erroneous or fraudulent data values, from mistakes (or incorrect changes) within the logic of the spreadsheet or the omission of relevant updates (e.g., out of date ). Some single-instance errors have exceeded US$1 billion. Because spreadsheet risk is principally linked to the actions (or inaction) of individuals it is defined as a sub-category of .
In the report into the , a lack of control over spreadsheets used for critical financial functions was cited as a factor in the trading losses of more than six billion dollars which were reported as a result of
Despite this, research carried out by ClusterSeven revealed that around half (48%) of
and senior managers at firms reporting annual revenues over ?50m said there were either no usage controls at all or poorly applied manual processes over the use of spreadsheets at the firms.
In 2013 , a graduate student of economics at the
found major coding flaws in the spreadsheet used by the economists
in a very influential 2010 journal article. The Reinhart and Rogoff article was widely used as justification to drive
European austerity programs.
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