Zoho Boosts Spreadsheet: A Million Cells Are Yours To Fill

By Geoff Spick (@Goffee71) Sep 8, 2010

Zoho (news, site) bulks up its Web-based spreadsheet app, allowing users to import up to 10Mb files and work on a wider range of browsers.

Working In the Clouds

Zoho offers almost every conceivable type of office app, utility and service in its range of Web-based products for the modern, or distributed enterprise 2.0. Having got these apps out there, it is now expanding its offerings to match or beat its bigger-name rivals in the field.

So, Sheet, Zoho's spreadsheet app, now boasts up to 256 columns and 65,536 rows per sheet. To handle this larger amount of information, loading times have been improved and operational performance such as scrolling speed and calculations have been improved, so you can work with documents at desktop speeds.

Desktop Features Head to the Web

If you thought that the features in a web-based spreadsheet would be a thin veneer of what you might get on the desktop, you will find Zoho offers a lot more. Along with Excel macro support, it has added a Ctrl+F triggered Find function to help users locate text inside those bigger spreadsheets. New Undo/Redo enhancements allow multiple users to work across sheets and are maintained on a per-user basis.

Users can now set styles and formats at the column, row and sheet levels while better detection of column headings while sorting eliminates easy-to-make mistakes.

For the Wider World

Browser support has been widened to include Chrome 4 and Safari 4 support. Plus, international users can work directly inputting Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters into a cell without needing to double click, speeding up their work rate and improving interactivity.

As with all Zoho Docs apps, multiple users can work on sheets and collaborate. SharePoint users can work via Zoho's SharePoint plug in and users can copy and paste from Excel or store back to SharePoint. With Microsoft and Google pushing their web apps, Zoho is happily pacing its bigger rivals and making