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Users of Mesa 2 should read through this to get an idea of the new features available in Mesa 3. 

Summary

New User Interface Mesa 3.0 has been enhanced to make the User Interface compliant with Mac OS X standards and therefore more intuitive and easier to use. All icons have been completely redesigned. 

New features Mesa 3.0 includes:

  • Customizable Toolbar
  • Graphics in Reports
  • SplitScreen formula bar
  • Automatic Range updating in Reports, Queries, Extracts and Labels
  • New Inspector panel
  • Improved Formula Builder

Dates will now copy out of Mesa as strings, not numbers (settable in Preferences)   

Compatible with Mesa 2

Mesa 3.0 is fully backwards compatible with Mesa 2. All your Mesa 2 worksheets (including reports, graphs, queries etc.) will load and work identically. All the features of Mesa 2 are still there in Mesa 3.0. However, if you are used to Mesa 2 you should invest a little time in exploring Mesa 3.0 to locate the menu options that you need.   

Revised User Interface

The worksheet, menus and Inspectors have been completely overhauled to make them Mac OS X compliant.

New Inspector panels

All icons have been completely redesigned to present a crisper and more pleasing effect

MAC OS X-Style help has been added

As you read through the new features below, you will see screenshots of the new-look Mesa. Here's a full screen shot to give you an idea.

New-look Workbook

The Workbook window now includes an Icon Bar containing short-cut routes to the most frequently used panels. As in Mesa 2, the Save and Print icons can be replaced with any other icon you want using the customizable toolbar.

 

The Toolbar

The new Toolbar lets you keep short-cut icons for anything you'd find useful. Bring up the Toolbar with Window->Customize toolbar or by selecting the Customize icon on the worksheet.

The Toolbar is fully customizable so that you can set up the shortcuts that you need.You can choose among Icon only, Text only or choose both options.

The Inspectors 

There are Mesa Inspectors for the following: 

Inspector You create and change
Sheet Dimensions, general behavior
Borders Lines around cells
Cell Formats Display Formats
Cell Styles Font, Color etc.
Extracts Queries within the Mesa worksheet
Scenarios Scenario tables
Layers Positioning of Graphic objects on the worksheet
Labels Names for areas on the worksheets
Charts Change charts created via the Chart Selector Tool

All Mesa Inspectors are grouped together in the Inspector Panel. Bring this up with Tools->Inspector or by selecting the Inspector icon on the Workbook.

     

Select the inspector you want by selecting the appropriate Icon from the Toolbar on the top. QuickHelp works on all icons in your Inspector panel. The Inspector options for Charts will not be available unless you have either just created a new chart or have selected an existing chart on the worksheet.  

Reports 

Mesa 3.0 uses a Report Designer Tool similar to the one in Mesa 2 to let you set up and save Reports. A Report is a a set of items to which you give:

  • Sheet name
  • the range(s) to print
  • holding
  • paper size/orientation
  • Header and Footer options (page numbering, dates, graphics etc.)
  • general display options

You can create as many reports as you like, giving a different name to each one.

Putting a Graphic item on a report for Printing

New in Mesa 3.0 is the ability to place graphic image file on your printout.

Just find the image you want using finder and drag it to the worksheet in a report

SplitScreen Formula Entry

You can make the Formula Entry area larger by dragging the 'dimple' at the top of the worksheet.

If you drag the Formula Entry area to zero size, then you can edit the cell contents directly in the cell.

Automatic Range Updating

Ranges in Reports, Extracts, and Labels will now fill automatically with the cell coordinates of the area currently selected on the worksheet.

To edit a defined range, select the range coordinates in the Report, Extract etc., and then click back in to the worksheet and reselect the area you require. This will automatically update the range.

Charts

Mesa 3.0 has a new Chart Selection Panel and a redesigned Chart Inspector.

One major improvement is that once you have created a new Chart, the chart selection panel disappears from the screen and is replaced by the Chart Inspector, from which you can select different chart types. This removes the problem in Mesa 2 whereby users created several charts on top of one another on the worksheet!

Key usage

So many users asked us to change the behavior of ESC to be like Excel and 1-2-3 (ie, abandoning the entry) that we've done it! If you prefer ESC to behave like it did in Mesa 2, use Preferences Keys and uncheck the 'Escape Abandons' box.

Dates as Strings

On the Preferences File menu you can now choose to have dates copy out of Mesa as strings rather than as numbers. This applies to Copy/Cut and Paste operations, and to the Export Delimited Text option.

See also:

 

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