Daily Dose of Excel

via Randomize

I downloaded PlanMaker from SoftMaker to check it out. I think this was originally written for Linux and was recently ported to Windows. It’s not a bad little program, but what it’s lacking will certainly make it an also-ran to Excel. It seems to tout compatibility with Excel as its main feature, but they definitely have work to do there.

Interesting Stuff

• There’s an option under the View menu called Syntax Highlighting. It appears to color numbers, text, formulas, booleans, and probably other stuff, differently. The menu item toggles this on and off and it ignores any other formatting you have, but you don’t lose it. I thought it was pretty cool.

• It has as-you-type spell checking, which I like, but I wasn’t thrilled with the implementation. If you mistype a word, a suggestion box comes up. You can easily type the correct word in the box and continue, but fast typers who make a lot of mistakes (like me) will find this annoying. It should be more like Word’s.
• The Fraction number format has a spin button that lets you set the denominator. It would be nice if it had a lowest common denominator options, but it’s still better than Excel in this regard.
• You can rotate cell text 180 degrees, which I don’t think you can do in Excel. In PM, you only have four options, 90, 180, 270, 0.
• It supports negative dates and times.
• When I type “2-3″ in a cell, it doesn’t convert it to “3-Feb”, which is nice.
• It costs US$50 - you can’t beat that with a stick.

Compatability

• PM doesn’t support Data Validation. That’s not such a big deal, but if you save an Excel file in PM, the Validation is gone, even when you reopen in Excel.

• Ditto for External Data.
• PM only has 16,000 rows.

Similarities

• Conditional formatting is limited to three conditions. Also, there’s no number format in CF.

• Sorting is limited to three columns.

Problems I Had

• The help file is in German. German is a nice language, but I can’t read it. I really wanted to see what they say about features like Syntax Highlighting, but I wasn’t willing to AltaVista help pages until I found the one I wanted.

• I was all geeky to check out their macro language, but it told me I can’t open the editor. I don’t know if this is a trial version limitation, or what. I really hate trying software that’s disabled in some way. I read in a review of PlanMaker that only the German version supports this currently, but they are working on the English version. I couldn’t confirm that from their website.

It’s the Little Things

• The cursor is a Northwest arrow, instead of a fat cross. I don’t have any particular problem with that, it’s just a little weird getting used to.

• There’s no right-click option on the fill handle.
• The few dialogs that I inspected did not have a help button. They wouldn’t have done me any good without my Berlitz book handy, but I thought it was odd that they were missing.
• The charting dialog box has a textbox for the chart’s source, but it’s not a RefEdit. You basically have to type the range reference in there.
• There aren’t chart sheets that I could see. It seems that you could create a chart and make it big enough to cover a sheet, so I don’t think anything’s lost there. In fact, this is probably the right way to do it. Think of all the lines of VBA that could be saved if every sheet was a worksheet and you didn’t have to test it.
• I put the increase decimal button on the commandbar. If I shift-click it, it doesn’t decrease the decimals. I’m crazy about toolbar real estate, so that’s a must have.

I don’t know what SoftMaker’s plans are. Maybe they just want to get a little piece of the spreadsheet market. If they want to compete with Excel, they definitely need to make some changes. Full compatibility is the first thing they need. Then they need to do some things better, like more Conditional Formatting conditions and the ability to conditionally format the number format.

I’m not bagging on these folks; it’s a nicer spreadsheet program than I could ever write. Maybe they should hire me to advise them on these little details. I would probably lose my MVP award.