With a redesign and update on the Mac, iOS and the web today, Quip has made the spreadsheet component of its document collaboration tool significantly more powerful. However, most of the changes today are only to the Mac version of Quip.
Quip redesigned its spreadsheet menu and formula bars on the Mac to make existing features more discoverable. Number crunching is one of Quip’s strengths. The formula bar supports over 400 different functions and over a dozen data formats.
Quip for Mac also adds several new features to spreadsheets including:
- Column filters
- Cell merging
- Checkboxes, which great for creating task lists
- Better text formatting options
- Additional currency options
One feature that sets Quip apart from many other spreadsheet apps is the ability to combine text and spreadsheets in one document, adding context to the numbers in a spreadsheet. This leads to another handy advantage. The formulas you are familiar with using in a spreadsheet can be dropped directly into the text surrounding the spreadsheet so the results of those formulas are automatically updated when the spreadsheet data changes. This, combined with the ability to add comments down to the individual cell level and chat in the sidebar with colleagues, makes an excellent choice for teams.
The improvements to Quip on the Mac and web are welcome, and bring Quip spreadsheets closer in functionality to dedicated spreadsheet apps like Numbers or Excel, but Quip for iOS’s functionality remains behind its Mac counterpart in significant ways. For instance, on iOS there does not appear to be a way to search for data in a spreadsheet or undo actions like sorts performed on columns, which is problematic if you make a mistake. Notwithstanding the limitations on iOS, today’s update of Quip make it a strong alternative to things like Google Docs.
Full details and a video preview on the Quip update are available on Quip’s blog.
