Frequently asked questions about Live Spreadsheets

The following points answer commonly asked questions about Live Spreadsheets. For any other questions, please drop us a line at info@instacoll.com

What Is Live Spreadsheets?

Live Spreadsheets is Spreadsheets for the Internet Generation – a powerful web-enabled spreadsheet application that provides for every part of the spreadsheet lifecycle that can be used on the desktop or on the browser and whether you are online or offline .

What Does It Do?

Live Spreadsheets integrates flexible authoring, intelligent asset management, secure delivery and analytics tools in a single on demand application. Live Spreadsheets allows you to quickly create powerful spreadsheets, store, organize, tag and search your spreadsheets, collaborate with your colleagues, securely share your spreadsheets online or offline and measure the results, all in one integrated environment.

When Will Live Spreadsheets Be Available?

Live Spreadsheets is available to everyone right now. You can sign up for a free account today.

How Much Does Live Spreadsheets Cost?

Live Spreadsheets has two price points starting at free. The free plan allows you to create 20 spreadsheets and use up to 100 MB of space on our server (whichever is lower) - you can share the spreadsheets that you create with any number of people - all of whom can view and edit it without having to pay anything. If you reach the document count or storage limit specified above, you cannot create any new spreadsheets - you have the option of either deleting documents to keep you under the specified limit or upgrading to a paid plan. To keep things simple, we offer a single paid plan of $6.99 per month that allows you to create unlimited spreadsheets subject to using a maximum of 500 MB of space on our server. For more details, please see the pricing page.

Where can I access Live Spreadsheets?

Point your browser to our website – www.live-documents.com and click on “login”. If you are not a registered user, you can sign up for a free account any time.

Does Live Spreadsheets compete with Microsoft Excel?

Yes.

I already have Microsoft Excel. Why should I use Live Spreadsheets?

With Live Spreadsheets, you can:

• Access your spreadsheets on the web using any common browser
• View and edit your spreadsheets from anywhere at any time in your browser in a rich user interface that provides the functionality and responsiveness that you expect in your familiar desktop applications.
• Easily share your spreadsheets with your colleagues and contacts
• Make spreadsheets from anywhere without having to worry about Excel version compatibility
• Track changes made to your spreadsheet at a cell level - no need to upload or download entire spreadsheets each time anyone makes a change.

Does Live Spreadsheets have all the features of Microsoft Powerpoint?

While we are not focused on blindly replicating all the features of Excel , Live Spreadsheets has most, if not, all of the capabilities of Microsoft Excel. Live Spreadsheets takes spreadsheets to the next level - embracing the capabilities of the Internet without giving up the comfort of the desktop.

Where are my spreadsheets kept?

Live Spreadsheets keeps your resources secure and available with the help of Amazon's S3 Internet Storage .

What if I want greater security and privacy for my documents?

We offer a server version that allows you to host our application inside your enterprise premises. Contact us at sales@instacoll.com for details about this version.

How do I share a spreadsheet with others?

Click on the “Share” button and add the email address of the person with whom you would like to share the spreadsheet. You also have the option to make documents “public” in which case any body can view the document – all you have to do is share the link that appears in the browser toolbar.

Can multiple people work on a spreadsheet at the same time?

Absolutely, any number of people can work on a spreadsheet simultaneously – you can see updates coming into your document in real-time without having to do anything manually like save or refresh.

When multiple people are editing a document together, how are conflicts avoided?

Live Spreadsheets tracks and updates content at a cell level, so the possibility of conflicts is quite small. In the event that multiple people make changes to the same slide at the same time, it operates on a “last-save wins” mechanism and the person whose changes were made last appears in the spreadsheet. However, you can revert such changes at any point of time by right-clicking on a cell and choose “Revisions” where you can see all the changes made to a cell – from this screen, you can revert to any previous version that you wish.

What operating systems does Live Spreadsheets support?

The browser version of Live Spreadsheets will run in any browser on any platform that supports Adobe's Flash Player 10 plugin . This means Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, and Opera on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

What kinds of document formats does Live Spreadsheets support?

• MICROSOFT EXCEL
• Excel 97-2003 spreadsheet (.xls)
• Excel 97-2003 show (.pps)
• Excel 2007 (.xlsx)
• OPEN OFFICE CALC
• Open Office Calc spreadsheet (.ods)

In addition, you can export spreadsheets to a number of formats:

• PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT
• PDF (.pdf)
• MICROSOFT EXCEL
• Excel 97-2003 spreadsheet (.xls)
• Excel 97-2003 show (.pps)
• Excel template (.pot)
• OPEN OFFICE CALC
• Open Office Impress spreadsheet (.ods)

Please note that the export feature is available only to the author or a document and to users who have the "clone" permission enabled- this check is in place to ensure that people with whom you share your document respect the permissions and privacy policy that you have specified for a document.

Are there any upload limits?

Each spreadsheet you upload (import) into Live Spreadsheets should be less than 10 MB. This limit will be raised further in future. There is a limit of twenty spreadsheets that you can import and the total storage for your documents (all formats) is 100 MB for the free plan.

Can I create a spreadsheet from scratch in Live Spreadsheets?

Yes, you can create a new spreadsheet from scratch. Click on the "Create New Document" button on the dashboard or from the documents list at any point of time and get started.

Can an existing spreadsheet be edited? Can slides be inserted, duplicated or deleted in an existing spreadsheet?

Live Spreadsheets offers the full range of editing capabilities. All of your spreadsheets can be edited. New slides can be inserted, existing slides can be edited and duplicated. Text boxes can be moved around, shapes and symbols can be resized and rotated.

Can everyone access my Live Spreadsheets documents?

The spreadsheets you create (or import into) Live Spreadsheets are all by default private. They will be accessible only to you and are protected by your Live Spreadsheets ID / password authentication. You can optionally share your spreadsheet to other users by entering their e-mail addresses in the "Share" tab in the document listing at any point of time. You can specify what each person can do with the spreadsheet.

Can I delete my spreadsheets?

Yes, you can. You can delete a spreadsheet from the document list by enabling the delete checkbox and clicking on delete. Please note that once you delete your spreadsheet, the desktop versions of the document are rendered inaccessible as well.

Can I share a spreadsheet with my friends/colleagues? Can they edit my spreadsheet?

Yes, you can share your spreadsheet with others. And they can edit spreadsheet as well (provide you have given them edit permission).

What formatting text options does Live Spreadsheets offer?

Live Spreadsheets offers many text formatting options. You can bold, italisize, change font type, increase/decrease letter size, indent etc.

Can I embed images from my desktop into a spreadsheet?

No - while it is trivial to support such a feature, we feel that images have no place within a spreadsheet as the primary function of spreadsheets is data tabulation and analysis.

Can I embed charts in my Live Spreadsheets?

Yes.

Is Live Spreadsheets available in other languages?

Currently, it's available in English only. We plan to add more languages in the future.