Make Good Spreadsheets for Cheap With GS-Calc - carmichaelwassix

GS-Calc 9.2 ($20, 30-day free trial) is an cheap spreadsheet plan that ISN't a linear Stand out clon. It offers has a amoun of interesting features, including a large work area (4094 columns aside 12 million rows), pin tables, fairly robust charting, and a nice port for dealing with multiple worksheets in a single project. Information technology also has much imperfections that are at least partly mitigated past the low price.

GS-Calc screenshot — The folder interface in GS-Calc makes it easy to orchestrate interwoven spreadsheets.

The start thing I noticed that got my positive attention was the basic interface. Rather than a row of tabs along the tail end to handle multiple sheets, which becomes problematic when a workbook grows on the far side 4 or 5 pages, GS-Calc offers a hierarchic, folder-founded view supporting multiple levels of folders. This makes it much easier to create a workbook consisting of many smaller, more-focused sheets, a boon to navigation and debugging.

GS-Calc also offers an interesting method acting of generating multiple values. A individual formula can fill several cells with calculated values. These "array formulas" work out with most of GS-Calc's functions. To role a trivial example, entrance "=SQRT(4)+{1;2;3;4;5}" will produce the numbers 3 through and through 7, in five cells, beginning with the one in which the formula was entered. If the data in one of the "generated" cells is overwritten Oregon changed, it is refreshed as soon as the worksheet recalculates itself. By using references to worksheet ranges as part of the array, a single chemical formula in a single cell hindquarters fill many cells with data, and information technology's much easier to correct errors in that single rul than to bash so in many cells, yet with features like Excel's auto-copy to brand the job easier.

However, GS-Calc has some flaws. The interface and screen redraw are somewhat sluggish, even connected a reasonably high-end computing machine. Oddly, numeric values which are likewise panoptic for the cell overflow to the left, not the right, creating the illusion the formulas were really in the prior column. This prat live changed by setting cell conjunction, however. If you start typing a expression and so click a cell, it's treated American Samoa if you were done entering the rule, rather than entering a reference to the mobile phone in the chemical formula. (You stern ctrl-click to enter the cell reference however, which is fine, simply it's not the prevailing standard.)

In damage of functions, GS-Calc has a rich set of them, but it hides the full lean and all functionality verbal description in the dialog you tooshie enjoyment to enter a function. The description and examples contained for each function in this dialogue is thorough, but this is the rather selective information that should personify in the Help file. Having it in the dialog is a very subservient addition to having it in the Help, only it International Relations and Security Network't a replacement for it.

GS-Calc likewise features support for pivot tables, allowing for the easy creation of summary reports and break down data into single categories. Charting, some 2-D and 3-D, is also supported. While it doesn't contain any revolutionary breakthroughs, the charting function has a shell out of options for user control and styling of the information presented, and the interface is generally cloudless despite there existence many possible values to adjust.

GS-Calc offers a mint of functionality for a real low damage. I can see GS-Calc satisfying a much bigger audience of spreadsheet users. Information technology is especially useful for working with data best broken into multiple pieces, merely it does have the capacitance to handle spacious quantities of information American Samoa well, making IT a sainted instrument to grow with. The thirty-day trial should cost sufficient to judge its performance on whatever tasks you power need IT for.

–Ian Harac