Is the Best Free-Form Cell-Based Visual Board & Grid .... Excel ?!

Posted by washere
Aug 13, 2020 at 03:46 PM

Some separate points, in brief:

1,000 isn’t that much, 32 columns x32 rows gives just over that.

However most apps can’t even do that.

Third, Excel is the best for that anyway, why? Because the cells can be resized to smallest, to fit more. Or any other defined size.

Excel also has tabbed worksheets, many apps don’t. So 4 tabs can be thought of as 4 Caro walls. Good for system performance & memory Management too.

The problem of navigating large boards applies to any app, not just Excel. In fact most apps won’t be able to handle large numbers, unless they’re also heavy spreadsheets like Calc, Numbers etc. Or at least not as good as these.

How a cell resizes, has many potentials. Can be expanded or show popup hover detail. Or other ways too. Again few or none of these possible with most apps. Takes a bit of know-how or research though.

I’ve been mentioning sub-grids a few times. This is where one can customize parts of a large sheet. Then anything is possible. Huge area. I’ve been collecting tips etc on customizing this big aspect of Excel.

Another area I’ve mentioned was browsing sub-grids. Again many ways. This is what is possible after moving to a sub-grid in a large sheet. Then ways of browsing & inspecting rows and columns, in various ways from scrolling to more.

Views on an area (browsed to) can change. Like a mini-map in an advanced text editor/ide. Again can use shortcuts scripts, macros etc.

Basically, one can have an overall large view within a sheet like a map (eg Google map). Then zooming in and out on grids, like they’re separate cities. Think of separate chunks of notes on a wall. Different clusters. Then browsing & editing data, like a whole section in a website-map (chart of a big website).

The thing is, unlike any other limited app, almost anything can be hammered out and is possible. Nothing comes close.