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Content Tagged with Announcements + sheet
Macro Recording & Playback in Zoho Sheet
Some of you may know that we recently launched Macros (and Pivot Tables) support in Zoho Sheet. With our recent update, we now have a new addition - Support for Visual Basic Macro Record & Playback in Zoho Sheet.
While writing Macros from scratch requires knowledge of Visual Basic, recording Macros for your spreadsheet just needs couple of mouse clicks. Under the Macros Menu, you’ll now see the ‘Record Macro’ option to record your Macro.
After you start recording, all the changes you make to the spreadsheet will be recorded and the appropriate Visual Basic code will be created at the back-end for you. Once you are done recording, you can view the Visual Basic Macro code and apply that Macro to other Sheets.
This video shows this functionality in action.
We have been rolling out quite a number of features and enhancements to our applications and some of them give us a great level of satisfaction.This new feature in Zoho Sheet certainly falls into this category.
The fact that Zoho Sheet is the only spreadsheet (apart from Excel) to support Visual Basic Macros says a lot about our focus on the depth of our individual applications. With feature-rich apps, we are trying to address the business needs of our user base.
Please give this new Zoho Sheet functionality a try and let us know what you think.
Related posts at : CenterNetworks, ReadWriteWeb, Profy, The Dallas Morning News, Zoli’s Blog.
Syncplicity Integrates Zoho
Syncplicity, a document synchronization tool integrated Zoho into their application recently. This Sync tool lets you synchronize your documents from your desktop (PC-only currently) to their web application.
If you have Syncplicity installed on your computer, you can right-click on a document on your desktop and choose the ‘Edit in Zoho’ option for editing your document. This opens up a window with the Zoho document editor. When the ‘Save’ button is hit in Zoho editor, it saves the file to your local folder and also your Syncplicity account, thus keeping your document in sync. This works with Zoho Writer & Zoho Sheet Apps now with Zoho Show to follow.
Similar editing option is also available in their online application to edit documents online. After you save the changes, the documents are saved on their servers.
And here’s a nice screencast done by the Syncplicity team, demonstrating the integration.
We’d like to thank Syncplicity for integrating Zoho. Our other API Partners are here. If you have integrated Zoho into your application, do let us know so that we can profile you here and list you as a partner in our partners page.
Zoho for iPhone - Redesigned
We just rolled out a new design for Zoho on iPhone. You can play with it @ mobile.zoho.com (or iZoho.com). The new design introduces a tabbed interface for navigation between Zoho Apps. Currently, Zoho Writer, Sheet, Show & Creator are supported in this new interface. We plan to add more apps and more functionality to this new version.
Once you login, the Zoho tab shows the recent 5 documents from each Zoho app. You’ll be able to view your personal and shared documents under the respective application tabs.
We are looking forward to your feedback on this new redesign.
Macros, Pivot Tables & More in Zoho Sheet
Our Zoho Sheet team just rolled out a milestone update to our spreadsheet application with a cluster of new features. There are more than 15 new features added to this update, but two key features really stand out for businesses - Macros & Pivot Tables.
This video gives you a quick introduction to these key features.
Macros:
Zoho Sheet now supports Visual Basic Macros - the ones you use in MS Excel. This is an important milestone for Zoho Sheet as it becomes the only Spreadsheet application that supports VB Macros apart from Microsoft Excel. We now understand Visual Basic and can execute Visual Basic code at the backend (no, we don’t run any MS stuff back there). This capability opens up new set of possibilities.
In the current version, Zoho Sheet lets you import your existing speadsheets with Excel macros or create new ones. We support a broad set of functions and we do plan to extend the list further. We also plan to add Record & Play for Macros going forward.
We are also launching a Wiki (http://vbmacros.wiki.zoho.com/) which is kind of a free marketplace for Macros. You can browse for sample Macros or share your Macros with others.
Pivot Tables & Charts:
As you may know, Zoho DB supports Pivot tables. This functionality is now extended to Zoho Sheet allowing you to create Pivot tables & Pivot charts on your structured data or from a range of spreadsheet data.
This unique integration between Zoho Sheet & Zoho DB brings in some new capabilities to Zoho Sheet. You can now import upto 100,000 rows of structured data to Zoho Sheet from a CSV file. Pivot tables and pivot charts can be created by simple drag and drop interface. 
Pivot Tables & Macros are just two of the key functionalities added in this update. Complete list is available here.
As you may have noticed, we are adding more depth to our existing applications apart from adding new apps. We believe in feature-rich business applications and you’ll see us improving and integrating our apps further.
As always, we can’t wait to hear your feedback on this new update.
Baihui Distributes Zoho Apps in China
We are happy to announce a new distribution partner in China - Baihui, a subsidiary of PC Stars - the largest Chinese online distributor with more than 2300 Resellers and over 1000 System Integrators.
With this partnership, Baihui hosts Zoho Applications in China for distribution in China (ofcourse, in Chinese language). These applications will be distributed under Baihui brand. To start with, Baihui will offer the following Zoho applications…
- Zoho Writer - Baihui Xiexie
- Zoho Sheet - Baihui Gege
- Zoho Show - Baihui Xiuxiu
- Zoho CRM - Baihui CRM
This list will expand going forward. All these applications are currently available @ www.baihui.com.
As with Zoho, Baihui plans to offer these applications free of charge for individuals. Zoho CRM does carry a price tag (99RMB/User/Month) beyond three free users.
While I don’t understand any of the stuff in the above screenshot, we are certainly excited to see our apps up there. Almost 50% of our existing users are outside US which is a good sign. We think partnerships like these will extend our reach further.
There are more exciting stuff coming from Zoho. We’ll keep you posted.
Update : Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office
We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to our Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office. Users can download the new version of the plugin here. The salient features of this update are :
Option to keep a local copy
This is a nice little feature wherein users can keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, users just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when they are logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.
There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.
Added a new tab - Local Documents
Now that the users can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel. Users can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. Users are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet. The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access.
Users also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.
Offline editing of documents/workbooks
User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.
Multi-user Support
Our earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest users (as opposed to only allowing users with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can access & edit their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.
Do have a go at the enhanced Zoho Office Plugin and let us know your feedback.
Zoho Office Plugin Updates
We are pleased to announce several new enhancements to our Zoho Office Plugin. Users can download the new version of the plugin here. The salient features of the plugin updates are:
Option to keep a local copy
This is a nice little feature wherein users can keep a local copy of the existing document/workbook that is available in Zoho Writer & Sheet. To achieve this, users just need to enable the check box “Keep a local copy” when they are logging in to access their documents from within Microsoft Word/Excel.
There is also an option to create a new Zoho account from the Zoho Plugin credentials page. Click on the “New Zoho User? Sign Up” link to set up an account with us. This is for the users who have downloaded the plugin but are yet to sign up for Zoho Services.
Added a new tab - Local Documents
Now that the users can have a copy of the online document/workbook in their local drive, there is a new tab “Local Documents” added to the “Add-Ins” option in Word/Excel. Users can access the local copy by clicking on this particular tab. Locally downloaded documents/spreadsheets are password protected now. Users are asked to provide Zoho account password when opening a local copy of the document/spreadsheet. The enhanced security is to prevent unauthorised access.
Users also have the option to delete the local copy. Click on local documents tab from Add-Ins, select the document & choose delete button to perform the above operation.
Offline editing of documents/workbooks
User can now edit their documents/workbooks offline using the local copy and can sync up the updated offline version with the online version of the document/workbook in Zoho Writer/Sheet by connecting to the internet, signing in to their Zoho account from the Add-ins tabs in Word/Excel and then choosing the option “Save in Zoho Writer/Sheet”.
Multi-user Support
Earlier version of Office Plugin did not allow the guest user of Windows to access the documents/workbooks. Now guest users (as against only users with Administrator privileges previously) who have an account with Zoho can get their documents/workbooks in MS Word/Excel.
Do have a go at the enhanced Zoho Office Plugin and let us know your feedback.
Zoho Sheet : Scheduled Maintenance
Zoho Sheet will not be available between Saturday, September 29th, 9:30 PM PDT to Sunday, September 30th, 12:30 AM PDT due to scheduled maintenance. During this time, you will not be able to access your spreadsheets on Zoho.
Zoho Writer & Sheet Update : More language options etc
The latest Zoho Writer update added a few more goodies. In addition to English, we have had a Japanese version for quite sometime. Zoho Writer is now available in a lot many languages as well. Soon, there will be Chinese and Portuguese versions.
Zoho Sheet too has added support to more languages (to the initial five).
One main and valid complaint from our users is that the UI across Zoho services lacks consistency. And we have just started addressing it. We introduced the easy ‘Switch to’ option in Zoho Writer first and most other Zoho services now have it. Now, the collaborative chat functionality in Writer has been made similar to the one in Sheet. Clicking on the small text bubble at the bottom-right of your screen will open the Chat tab to the right. More UI related updates soon.
The last but not the least, a very important update has happened in Zoho Writer. Full search was disabled for sometime in between (due to performance issues) and you were able to search on document names & features alone. You can now search within documents as well. For now, we support searching in English alone and search for other languages will be available soon.
Do test drive the new features and we will be glad hearing your feedback.
Zoho Apps on Facebook
Zoho Applications (Writer, Sheet and Show) are now available on Facebook and we are excited about this. We got several requests from many users and well wishers like Krish asking us to do this integration. Considering the fact that 30% of our users are students, we couldn’t resist.
So, what can you do with this application?
You can now create documents, spreadsheets and presentations from Facebook. You can also view and edit all your existing documents, spreadsheets and presentations (both personal and shared) from Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show. Here is a quick screenshot.
This makes Zoho the first office app on Facebook. Do give it a try and add it to your profile. This application provides a good view of all your documents in a single page.
Talking about providing all documents in a single page, let me pre-announce something else here. We are working on way to better organize your documents in a single place (compared to our application specific organization). We will reveal more details on this soon.
Meanwhile, do give our new Facebook app a try and let us know what you think.
iZoho - Zoho for iPhone
…or should I say ‘Office for your iPhone‘. This is fun project going live in record time (thanks to our APIs and of course our team).
iZoho (no, its not an online desktop 
) is an easier way to access your Zoho Apps on your Mobile…atleast, iPhone for now. Sure, you can use Zoho Apps in their current form on your iPhone, but there is lot of stuff you don’t need on your mobile phone. So we simplified the interface and just provided simple features you’d normally use on a mobile phone.
We have three applications available currently in iZoho - Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show which lets you view your documents, spreadsheets and presentations in Zoho. Currently you can view and edit your documents, but you cannot edit your spreadsheets and presentations (you can only view them). You can also create new documents and view your presentations in landscape mode. There will be more features coming as we move along.
Frankly, we don’t know how this will work on iPhone as we haven’t tested it. It certainly works well on Safari so we hope it’ll be a non-issue. In any case, we will be fine tuning this over the next few days.
As I mentioned earlier, a device with a big screen, built in Wi-Fi, good usability and a full fledged browser will only improve the chances of practically using web apps on a mobile device.
Do give it a try and let us know what you think (support at zoho.com). Below are some screenshots.
Zoho Writer now in Japanese
Japanese users of Zoho Writer are in for a treat. Thanks to our Japanese colleagues who are putting in a lot of effort in translating the Zoho services’ UI screens, Zoho Writer now joins Zoho Sheet in providing a Japanese UI. In your Zoho Writer account, click on ‘Options’ -> ‘Settings’ and you will find the language option there.
Soon we will be adding other language UIs to Zoho Writer (and other Zoho services) as well.
Zoho APIs made easier
The Zoho API for Zoho Writer, Sheet & Show have been made more developer friendly. In addition to the existing XML-RPC format, we have added the REST APIs as well. This makes it a lot easier for the developers to read data by just making HTTP GET requests to Zoho. The new storage REST APIs for :
Zoho Writer
Zoho Sheet
Zoho Show
One more change is the way time/date is handled in our API response messages. It wasn’t flexible enough since it returned the date in a particular format & the time was in our server’s timezone. We have changed this to the standard long milliseconds format which is just the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970, 00:00 GMT.
Omnidrive, Box.net, myDataBus, Kearen are some of the web services which have implemented the Zoho API and there’s a lot more to come. Try the new APIs out and we will be glad hearing your feedback.
Multilingual Support in Zoho Sheet & more
Most of the Zoho apps provide Unicode support which enable our users to enter/store their data in any language. But they had to make do with an English interface which was a slight drawback as far as non-English speakers & online collaboration for teams spread across the globe were concerned. Not anymore.
Today, Zoho Sheet took a major step forward in bridging this gap. Zoho Sheet becomes the first of the Zoho apps (Zoho Mail which is private Beta supports 6 languages) to provide non-English UI as an option. You can now choose to have your UI in one of the 5 languages - English, French, Spanish, German or Japanese. We plan to support many other languages soon. Zoho Writer and Zoho Show will be joining Zoho Sheet in offering multilingual support as well.
Other useful features in today’s update include :
- Customizing invitation email
- Email notifications on shared spreadsheet updates
- Easy recalculation of formulas by hitting F9
- Use your mouse to select cell ranges while typing formulas
- Data label option in charts
And more…
Zoho Sheet Major Update: Collaborative Editing, Chat Integration & More
We just rolled out an important update in Zoho Sheet. The key features include
- Collaborative Editing
- Zoho Chat Integration
- Extended API
- Open Document Sheet Support
Collaborative Editing:
With this update, multiple users can work on the same spreadsheet at the same time. When you open a spreadsheet that someone is working on, you’ll see a small message informing this.
From then on, all the changes made by multiple users will be reflected immediately.
Zoho Chat Integration
If you want to chat with the users working on the sheet, just click on the chat icon (
) at the bottom right corner and it’ll open up the chat interface.
APIs
We also extended our APIs for Zoho Sheet for reading more granular data like a cell or cell range. APIs are now available in 3 formats - XML, CSV and JSON (also JSONP). Complete API documentation is available here.
The following video demonstrates these functionalities.
Do give these new features a try and let us know what you think.
Update: I forgot to mention another significant feature we added with this update - OpenDocument Sheet (.ods) Support. Now you can import and export .ods sheets into Zoho Sheet. Thanks Samy for observing this.
OmniDrive becomes perfect with Zoho
Early last year I talked about Shortcomings of existing online storage solutions where the primary issue was upload/download. Once you have your documents uploaded to online storage solutions, you have to download them to view/edit them. This defeated the purpose of having online storage and hence online storage solutions were used more for backup than being your extended drive.
All of this is history today. OmniDrive, the online storage solution overcomes this limitation by integrating Zoho Apps. I call it ‘The Perfect Online Drive’. What does this mean? Well, if you have your documents online in OmniDrive, you can view/edit these documents just by double clicking on them. The documents then are opened in Zoho Applications. As of today you can open Word, HTML, txt and ODT formats in Zoho Writer. Next week this will also work with Zoho Sheet and Show as well.
Apart from viewing/editing documents online, you can also create new documents directly from OmniDrive.
It was really great working with OmniDrive on this solution. Look forward for more integration. Below are couple of screenshots.
Here is the article on TechCrunch.
Here is the announcement from OmniDrive.
Zoho features in PC World’s “The Web’s Most Useful Sites”
Ryan Singel at PC World looked at the best of the new Web services in 14 categories and has his results at “The Web’s Most Useful Sites“. While Zoho Writer won the best word processor, Zoho Sheet came runner-up in the spreadsheets category.
Zoho Writer features a hideable list of documents divided into sections for private, shared, and public documents, plus templates. Like Google Docs and ThinkFree, Zoho Writer can publish items directly to a blog and can save and import a range of text document formats, from Microsoft Word to HTML. With a plug-in for Microsoft Word, you can save from that application directly to your Zoho account.
It includes most of the common word processing features, from multiple undo to find-and-replace to extensive text formatting. You can also edit the HTML of a document, but the feature is so hidden you must use the search box to find it. Besting both Google and ThinkFree overall, Zoho handles multiple documents in a single window via tabs and lets you embed a Zoho spreadsheet in a Writer document. Modifying the spreadsheet automatically updates the Writer files.
Zoho Sheet’s clear icon-based controls, snappy response, intuitive keyboard navigation, graphs, and sharing options (which let you decide who can read particular worksheets in a document) make this an excellent tool for collaboration. It should improve as Zoho adds real-time collaboration and integrates it with other office offerings.
Thanks to Ryan & PC World! And thanks to all you Zoho users whose continuous feedback suggestions have kept us doing the right things, making this possible! Expect more from Zoho in 2007.
Eating one’s own dog food
Pandurang Nayak, one of our long time well-wishers had asked :
Would the AdventNet sales team use Zoho Show? (Would they? Really?) Or would their finance team create all of their balance sheets and tax calculations for they year on Zoho Sheet. (Really, again?) Or would they expect their technology teams to create 3000-page product and technical documentation on Zoho Writer?
The answer to his last question is now public. Zoho Projects had an update just minutes before and its help documentation is now available. It was fully created and is hosted on Zoho Writer.
Other Zoho documentation on Zoho Writer currently include the Zoho Writer FAQ page, pages for the Zoho API (the application form for getting the API key is on Zoho Creator) and the help page for Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Office. Thanks to Ahmed and Nithya who created all the content. And I expect all future technical documentation for Zoho to be hosted on Zoho Writer.
Coming back to the Zoho Projects update, users can now be notified by mail when a task is being assigned to a user and when a forum post is being made. And while sending feedback, you now have the option to post your feedback directly to the product forum too.
Check out the latest in Zoho Projects.
Projects
sheet
General
Announcements
creator
writer
ZohoCreator
Zoho Announcements - How about three of them?
Today, we announce three different additions to Zoho.
1. Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office
2. Zoho APIs
3. Desktopize for Zoho (Download)
We are very excited about the plugin for Microsoft Office as this extends the Office functionality online offering mobility etc….or should I say ‘This is what Office Live is supposed to be’ The screenshot below may not do justice to its functionality. I recommend trying it out if you are a Microsoft Office user. Writer and Sheet connects in to Word and Excel respectively.
Zoho APIs is our first major step towards opening up our applications to be integrated into other services. With these well defined APIs, other web apps can now integrate closely with Zoho applications.
Desktopize, our partner customized their offering for Zoho making our applications behave more like a desktop application. If you like desktop shortcuts, quick tray access, Drag-n-drop documents into Zoho apps, I recommend installing this application.
More detailed posts about each of these releases will follow. Do drop us a line about your views on these announcements.
Update :
# Techcrunch covered this Zoho update. Thanks to Natali & Mike!
# For details on Zoho API, see the Zoho API developer guide
# Download your copy of Zoho Plug-in for Microsoft Office now.
Zoho Office Update
A cool & very useful update for the Zoho Online Office Suite happened just a few minutes ago. Ismael Ghalimi and a few other Office 2.0 patrons have been discussing about opening Office files directly on the web. With the latest update to Zoho, you can just do that.
If you noticed, Zoho Writer login page went for a re-design (tell us how you like it compared to the old page) & there are two new buttons right in the middle - QuickRead Plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Install QuickRead and you can directly open documents, spreadsheets and presentations present on the web with Zoho! With Zoho QuickRead, downloading files to your computer & opening it with a desktop app becomes passé
Note : Zoho QuickRead works only for Office files on unauthenticated web pages
The above screenshot shows how a sample .doc can be opened with Zoho Writer. Notice the ‘Open with Zoho Writer’ option added to the right-click menu. ‘Open with Zoho Sheet’ & ‘Open with Zoho Show’ menu items will appear for spreadsheets & presentation files respectively.
Thanks are due to to Craig Cmehil, Dennis Howlett & Ismael Ghalimi who beta-tested QuickRead.
What’s more, if you are like Ismael and not so keen on having browser plugins, try using the following URL APIs for opening files
Documents (.doc, .sxw, .odt, .rtf) - http://www.zohowriter.com/publicimport.im?url=<url of document>
Spreadsheets (.xls, .csv, .sxc) - http://www.zohosheet.com/view.do?url=<url of spreadsheet>
Presentations (.ppt, .pps, .sxi) - http://www.zohoshow.com/publicimport.im?url=<url of presentation file>
(The QuickRead plugin is now downloadable from http://zohowriter.com for now. Links to the plug-in will be made available in Zoho Sheet & Zoho Show pages too soon)
Now to some Zoho Writer specific goodies. Important Note : Do a Shift+Refresh (for clearing browser cache) before trying the below features.
Zoho Writer now offers category support for WordPress (and other metaWeblog API supported blogs). I’m posting this to Zoho blogs from Zoho Writer!
Click on the ‘Insert Table’ icon now & you will be in for some surprise
For all those who have been struggling with Zoho Writer’s print functionality, we now have a direct ‘Print’ icon. (It is the second icon just next to the ‘Save’ icon & can be recognized easily)
Enhancements have been made to the right-click context menu. The menus will be context specific, ie., you will be offered the appropriate choices alone depending upon which part of the document you are.
Some bugs have been fixed too, the most notable one being the functioning of ‘Tab’ inside tables while in IE. You can now press the ‘Tab’ button and can move from cell to cell while using IE.
Do try the latest features added to the Zoho Online Office Suite & tell us what you think.
Tags : Zoho, QuickRead, Office 2.0, Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show
