Mesa
for people who have used other spreadsheets
Mesa doesn't actually
look much like Excel or 1-2-3 (we think it looks better!), but it gives
you lots of the same functionality. You get multiple worksheets in a
workbook, all the usual editing options, over 100 functions, a great
Report Designer, charts and much more. There are certainly some things
in Excel and 1-2-3 that you don't get (yet) in Mesa - pie charts and
pivot tables being on testers wish lists at the moment. But we will
be enhancing Mesa and making upgrades available on a regular basis.
If you want to know if a feature is planned just mail us at mesa@plsys.com
and we'll get right back to you. It may even be in Mesa already, you
just haven't found it yet!
The best way to
get to know Mesa is to use the knowledge you already have of how spreadsheets
behave, and to spend a little time browsing around menus and just experimenting.
If you have time,
work through the Tutorial, which takes you through building a workbook.
If you don't have time or inclination for this, at least open up the
Tutorial Examples folder (which came on the Mesa.dmg you downloaded)
and open up the workbooks to see what a full Mesa workbook looks like.
Here are a few things
to try out after you've got used to the basics, just to save you the
time of reading through all the Help files.
1. Inspectors.
Mesa uses Inspectors
to let you view and change the Properties of the element you're on
(which could be a cell, a chart, a report, etc.). This is where you
change fonts, colors, sizes, formats, and more. The Inspector icon
on the Toolbar is therefore very important for you. When you use Mesa
for the first time, fill in a few cells with text and numbers, and
then click the Inspector to see what you can do to those cells.
2. Smart Copy
Of course you
can use Mesa's copy and paste to copy a formula around the worksheet.
But if you need to change the 'original' formula, then you have to
go through the nuisance of remembering where you'd previously copied
it to and copying the new formula over again. So Mesa gives you more
than that with its smart NEXT () and SAME () functions
Use Mesa's Smart
Fill Copy instead. To try it out, try the following. Enter some numbers
in cells A1 through to G1; then go to cell A2, and enter a formula
like '=a1+10%'. Then select A2 through to G2 and instead of the usual
'Copy+Paste' use the menu option: Range->Fill->Smart. Look at the
formula in B2, C2 etc. Then change the formula in A2 to '=a1-10%'
- all the 'dependent' cells immediately use the new formula too. On
the same theme, go to cell A3 and type in 'Jan'. Select A3 through
to G3 and use Range->Fill->Smart again. Smartly, Mesa fills in the
month names for you. Now change A3 to say 'January' - all the others
change to the full text month-names too. Now change A3 to say 'Monday'.
Now '2001'. Now 'Q1'….
3. Formula Builder
The Smart 'NEXT
()' and PREV () functions are unique to Mesa. But Mesa has a full
set of Excel and 1-2-3 financial, math, and string, date etc functions.
To find out more about them, click the Formulas icon in the Toolbar.
You can see a list of all the functions we use, read a description
of how to deploy them, and even build a formula to be copied into
the worksheet at the same time.
4. Colors
Lots of things
look better when they're colored - for example the content of cells,
the background of cells, and all the different parts of charts. You
can color these from the appropriate Inspector of course (just look
for the colorwell on the Sheet Inspector, Cell Inspector or Chart
Inspector and double-click it to bring up the Color Palette. But you
can also drag colors directly off the Palette onto the part of your
workbook you want to color. Set up the Palette with your favorite
colors in the bottom boxes.
- Drag a color
onto a cell to change the text/number color
- Select a group
of cells and drag a color onto any one of those cells to change the
text/number color for the entire group · Hold down the Alt key and
drag a color onto a cell to change the background color for that cell
- Select a group
of cells and Alt-drag a color onto any one of those cells to change
the background color for the entire group.
- Create a chart
with the Chart Icon. Drag colors directly onto the data ranges, the
titles, the borders and so on.
5. Printing
There are three
ways to get a printout of your spreadsheet data
- Simply choose
'Print' from the Workbook menu. Follow the dialog boxes to choose
printer, orientation, scaling etc. Mesa will print all the data in
your worksheet from A1 to the bottom leftmost data item.
- Select the area
you want to print, and then choose 'Print' from the Workbook menu.
Follow the dialog boxes to choose printer, orientation, scaling etc.
Mesa will print the area you selected.
Set up a Report.
This method is useful when you want more control over the layout
and/or want to print the same area of the workbook on a frequent
basis (e.g. to print out a weekly report).
Choose the Report
icon from the toolbar and select a New report.
- Drag 'tags'
like filename, path, date, time etc. to the position on the virtual
page that you want.
- Drag the
margins on the virtual page to the width you require
- Choose as
many Data Ranges as you want to print - they can be from different
worksheets in the workbook if you want - and set them to Smart
Width to make sure wide ranges are scaled automatically to fit
the page layout
- Use the
Page Setup button to choose orientation etc.
- Give the
report a name
- Print it
out from the Report list.
You can reprint
this report (with the latest data of course) simply by selecting it
from the Report list. Even better, you can drag the icon for that
report onto your worksheet (just select it from the bottom left of
the Report List) , place it somewhere convenient on the sheet, and
run the report just by clicking it's icon.
6. Customizing
the Toolbar
The Toolbar along
the top of every workbook comes with a 'default' set of tools. You
can customize the toolset and use just the ones you want. Take the
Window->Customize toolbar option, choose an option for the toolset
you want to select from, and simply drag the icons into your toolbar.
You can put in spaces and separator lines to group the icons in a
way that meaningful for you. We love Smart Fill, so we usually put
that onto our Toolbar, along with Copy, Paste and Clear…
See Also
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