At Collabora Productivity, we like to be productive by name and by nature. One recent feature fix for Danish insurance company – balticfinance, has shown this to be the case. Ten working days after being requested, the updated pivot table functionality was delivered.
Pivot tables are an extremely powerful feature, to reorganise (or pivot) data from one layout into another. In the image below for example, the data from columns B-D has been reorganised by ‘Category’ and the ‘Job#’ into columns F-H, with the Value of each Job automatically summed together at the bottom. As an additional convenience, each category could be collapsed/expanded by clicking on the – or + symbols to view the values itemised or summed for the category.
As the cells within a pivot table have been generated by the spreadsheet, the contents cannot be directly edited. They instead mirror the value from the cells they are referencing, or automatically sum a category/total. This also makes cell formatting within pivot tables more complex than other cells. While Collabora Online has had strong interoperability with pivot tables created in Microsoft Excel for some time, previously we did not display cell formatting (such as background colours) for pivot tables created in Excel. balticfinance came to us with this exact request.
After receiving the support request on Friday 26th January, Collabora engineers began work on the update on Monday the 29th, with the fix delivered for testing on the 9th February – two weeks from the initial request. The fix now means pivot table cells edited in Excel and opened in Collabora Online both retain their formatting, and survive the round trip export back to Excel in Microsoft’s OOXML format.
As well as being a great example of the deep interoperability offered by Collabora Online, we feel this story well illustrates the benefits of working with a responsive company such as Collabora Productivity for your office solution. Unlike some faceless companies, we are open and want to work with you.
If you have a special use case – get in touch! Let us help you free your documents. Learn more about our Consultancy or contact us at hello@collaboraoffice.com.
