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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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