Tough new spreadsheet in town: Quattro Pro for Windows - Borland International Inc - Software Review - Evaluation

Home Office Computing, Feb, 1993 by Jack Nimersheim

Quattro Pro for Windows

Rating: * * * 1/2

ATA GLANCE: Third of the "big three" electronic spreadsheets; a robust and well-designed program that promises to heat up theWindows war.

DOCUMENTATION: Two large manuals clearly explain Quattro Pro's many features; online help in the standard Windows format makes finding information easy, even from within the program.

EASE OF USE: Quattro Pro's Notebook metaphor makes it much easier to manage complex spreadsheets than the traditional, multiple-display window approach used by the Windows versions of both Excel and Lotus 1-2-3.

SUPPORT: Borland offers comprehensive support that includes voice phone, fax, its own electronic bulletin board (BBS), and online access through several commercial information services.

VERSION REVIEWED: 1.0

LIST PRICE: $495

AVERAGE STREET PRICE: $305

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: 4MB 386 PC or higher (SMB recommended); hard-disk drive; VGA, SVGA; Windows 3.0 and DOS 3.3 or higher

PUBLISHER: Borland International, 1800 Green Hills Rd., P.O. Box 660001, Scotts Valley, CA 95067; (408)438-8400, (800) 331-0877

To paraphrase an old joke: What do you call an electronic spreadsheet that requires 4MB of RAM and 10MB of disk space to install and use? "Sir"--that is, If you're the competition (Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel) and you're talking about the new Windows version of Borland International's Quattro Pro.

Quattro Pro provides a new twist on the old concept of working with numbers. Unlike Excel and 1-2-3 for Windows, which organize multiple spreadsheets into multiple display windows, Quattro Pro uses what Borland calls a Notebook metaphor. Individual spreadsheets in a Quattro Pro file are represented by separate tabs, running across the bottom of a stylized Notebook display. Initially marked with single letters (A, B, C, and so forth), the tabs may be assigned representative names. Quattro Pro's Notebook metaphor results in a display that's much less cluttered than either the Lotus or Excel screen and multiple spreadsheets that are much easier to access on the fly.

Despite its gargantuan size, Quattro Pro installs faster than most other Windows programs. A self-explanatory installation routine begins by copying several compressed files from the program's distribution disks to your hard disk. Each file then expands for use, after which the original files are erased.

Plenty of extras. It's not hyperbole to say that Quattro Pro for Windows is feature-laden. And most of the features are designed to make even complex procedures easy to master. Consider, for example, the program's Object Inspector menus. Pressing the right mouse button while pointing to an object on-screen brings up a menu of formatting options and other related operations. Call up the Object Inspector while you're pointing to a column heading, for instance, and the resulting menu includes options for adjusting the size of both columns and rows. This feature also allows you to customize, among other things, your overall Quattro Pro environment, a multi-spreadsheet Notebook, single spreadsheets, columns, rows, individual cells, and graphic frames.

Quattro Pro supports a wide range of Windows features. With drag-and-drop editing, for example, you can easily select and then move or copy cell ranges, Notebook pages, graphic frames, and other items, either to a different location within a single spreadsheet or onto a different Notebook page. Toolbars (horizontal and vertical rows of commonly used command buttons) are becoming increasingly popular devices in Windows applications. On Quattro Pro's toolbar, called the SpeedBar, common procedures such as Cut, Copy, Paste, cell alignment, type formatting, and the like are reduced to a single mouse click. If you don't like the default options, Quattro Pro's SpeedBar can easily be customized to contain icons that automate virtually any computing activity.

Convenient for calculations. Performing complex computations in Quattro Pro is especially easy. Start to enter or edit information in a cell, and a Function icon (@) automatically appears in the SpeedBar. Selecting this icon opens a dialog box which provides immediate access to 100 built-in mathematical and database functions: the so-called "at" functions first popularized by Lotus 1-2-3 and now a familiar tool found in almost any spreadsheet.

Creating professional-looking graphs or charts from your spreadsheet data is an equally straightforward procedure. You begin by dragging your mouse over those cells containing the data you want graphically represented. Next, click the Charting button in Quattro Pro's SpeedBar. A series of interactive dialog boxes walks you through all steps required to select one of the numerous graph types and add formatting options (legends, titles, callouts, and so on) to a graph or chart.

Presentations, ton. With Quattro Pro, multiple spreadsheets and graphics can be combined into impressive slide shows. Select from a wide range of transition effects--wipes, dissolves, overlays, and more--to turn an otherwise static slide show into a dazzling presentation.