2021 is over, and what a year it has been! Spread.NET has added many awesome new features and enhancements, including .NET 6 and .NET 5 design-time support, many data visualization sparkline functions, support for LAMBDA functions, table binding enhancements, and more. Now we are excited to share our plans for 2022. We are adding several new enhancements and features in the upcoming releases. Here are highlights of the feature enhancements planned for the Spread.NET releases in 2022.
April 2021 Service Release
This release will focus on customer-reported issues and enhancements, but the significant main change across all DLLs will be the new baseline .NET Framework target v4.6.2. Microsoft has announced that long-term support for .NET Framework v4.5.2 ends April 26, 2022, so changing to the new Framework baseline version is necessary to continue getting support from Microsoft for Framework issues. Here are some other enhancements likely to be ready to be included in the April release:
- Cell Styles UI in Spread Designer (Windows Forms)
Cell Styles are supported in the API already, and this enhancement will make those cell styles available in the Spread Designer tool. Easily apply Cell Styles in template workbooks or to instances of the control in a form in design-time
- "+" and "-" Formula Entry
Excel and the recent SpreadJS v15 release support typing formulas in cells using '+' and '-' just like using '=', and with this enhancement, users will be able to enter formulas in cells or the formula text box that way too.
- Crop Shape Picture: use the ICrop interface to specify PictureOffsetX, PictureOffsetY, PictureWidth, and PictureHeight for cropping the picture in a shape.
- Excel Import/Export for Cell Comment Gradient Fill: open and save XLSX files with Gradient Fills in Cell Comments.
- Automatic Number Format: built-in automatic number format applied in all cells where there is no custom number format (flat-style mode only – LegacyBehaviors.Style can't be set).
- Inline Cell Image: built-in support for images in cells by simply setting the image object to the cell value, setting a local image file path, or setting a base64-encoded image string.
- Formatted Number Cell Value: Number value and format string together in one object, enabling consistent automatic formatting of the number values across calculation cycles; the format is applied to the value instead of the cell. (This feature is currently part of ExcelApi BETA.)
- Excel Compatible Keyboard Shortcuts: New shortcuts CTRL+PageUp and CTRL+PageDown navigate to Next Sheet and Previous Sheet when FpSpread.Features.ExcelCompatibleKeyboardShortcuts is enabled.
August 2022 Service Release
This release in early August 2022 will customer-reported issues and feature enhancements that can be implemented before the v16 release. The problems and improvements will come from your feedback, so please share your questions and issues with the team at /support/contact.
November 2022 V16 Release
The next major release in early November 2022 features many significant enhancements. Here are some highlights of what is coming.
- Calculation Enhancements including new calculation functions FORECAST.ETS, FORECAST.ETS.CONFINT, FORECAST.ETS.SEASONALITY, FORECAST.ETS.STAT, and Forecast Sheet:
- Goal Seek Dialog for finding the value for a Changing Cell that calculates the target To Value with the formula in the Set Cell:
- Worksheet Protection Options enable selective restrictions on what the user can do with the worksheet to protect the content from changes of various types, with the option to set a password required to unprotect the worksheet. This enhancement will include built-in dialogs for Protect Sheet and Unprotect Sheet, with a new API for showing the dialogs and support in the Spread Designer tool:
- Text to Columns Wizard and new API for showing the wizard or doing Text to Columns directly:
- Remove Duplicates to quickly and easily remove duplicate rows from a range of cells:
- Center Across Selection (using the default flat style)
- Frozen Line Width
Stay tuned to our next GrapeCity Spread.NET releases through 2022! We are genuinely excited to bring these new features and improvements to the community and hope you're excited about using these new items in 2022 and beyond!
If you have any questions or need clarification, please use the comments section below. You can also contact us by submitting your questions on the Spread Forums, or if you already have an account, you can log in to submit your support question.