Spread.NET v15.1.20221.0 is Released

April 26 2022

We are happy to announce the release of Spread.NET v15.1.20221.0. This release introduces important changes and new features:

Baseline .NET Framework Reference Changed from .NET 4.5.2 to .NET 4.6.2
New NuGet Package introduced for GrapeCity.Spread.WinForms.Design
Cell Styles UI in Spread Designer
Enter Formulas Using '+' and '-'
Crop Shape Picture
Automatic Number Format
Inline Cell Images
Formatted Number Cell Value
Enhanced Excel-Compatible Keyboard Shortcuts: Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn

Baseline .NET Framework Reference Changed from .NET 4.5.2 to .NET 4.6.2

Dependencies

Microsoft has announced the end of Long Term Support for .NET 4.5.2 will happen today, April 26, 2022, in their blog post from last year, so all GrapeCity Spread.NET components will now be built using .NET 4.6.2 as the baseline .NET Framework. All customers with projects still targeting .NET 4.5.2 will need to change the target Framework version for their projects to .NET 4.6.2 or later.

In addition, we have also dropped support for the .NET 5 platform target, as that platform target was never included for LTS by Microsoft and will be no longer supported as of May 8, 2022. For full details, please see Product Requirements.

New NuGet Package introduced for GrapeCity.Spread.WinForms.Design

NuGet

This release introduces a new NuGet package, GrapeCity.Spread.WinForms.Design, which contains the Spread Designer run-time component and associated dialogs and other user interface elements. This package can be referenced when you want to show the Spread Designer dialogs (for example, the Border Editor Dialog) or show the Spread Designer in run-time inside your application. For full details, please see Adding NuGet Package for Spread Designer.

Cell Styles UI in Spread Designer

Cell Styles

The Spread Designer now supports setting built-in Theme Styles using the new Styles panel and drop-down in the ribbon bar. All the standard Excel built-in styles are available, and custom styles can be easily created and reused. For full details, please see Cell Styles Gallery.

Enter Formulas Using '+' and '-'

Entering cell formulas has always previously required starting the formula with: '=‘ but many customers have requested that formulas starting with '+' and '-' should also be recognized. Starting in this release, Spread will automatically recognize and parse formulas entered by the end-user, starting with '+' and '-' when AllowUserFormulas is true. Please see Allowing the User to Enter Formulas - Using Plus or Minus Sign for complete details.

Crop Shape Picture

Pictures in a shape can now be cropped using the ICrop interface to specify offset coordinates and crop width and height. This useful enhancement makes it much easier to get exactly the part of an image that you want to show. For full details, please see Working with Images - Crop Images.

Automatic Number Format

This release introduces new enhanced behavior for the default General format concerning numbers. Numbers are formatted to be displayed just as they are typed initially in the cell, but the value displayed may be rounded if the full value can't fit in the cell, or the cell might even show "##...#" indicating that the value can't fit. With the new behavior:

With Decimals: If a number is longer than 11 characters, including the decimal place, the decimals are rounded to show a maximum of 11 characters

For example, 123456.7891234 is rounded off to 123456.7891

Without Decimals: If a number is longer than 11 characters and there are no decimals, the number is changed to a Scientific format

For example, 123451234512 is rounded off to 1.23451E+11

For full details, please see Working with Cell Formats - General Format.

Inline Cell Images

This feature enables the developer or end-user to directly load and display inline cell images in the worksheet without using ImageCellType. The Image object can be set directly to the cell or using CellImageAttribute to specify an Image property in a Custom Data Type using IRichValue, which can display both the image and the value in the cell at the same time. For full details, please see Adding an Image in a Cell.

Formatted Number Cell Value

This feature associates a specified format string with a cell value and allows the format string to follow the value when used in formulas. The format string can be a number or a date-time format. When a formula references the cell, then it will automatically pick up the format to apply in the formula cell if there is not already a cell format applied to that cell. For full details, please see Formatting a Cell Value.

Enhanced Excel-Compatible Keyboard Shortcuts: Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDn

This feature must be enabled using FpSpread.Features.ExcelCompatibleKeyboardShortcuts = true, which will update the key mappings to support the most common Excel keyboard shortcuts automatically. This support now includes mappings for Ctrl+PageUp and Ctrl+PageDown to navigate the previous and next worksheets in the workbook as in Excel. For full details about these new shortcuts and the many others supported when this feature is enabled, please see Excel-Compatible Keyboard Shortcuts.