You can quickly design a spreadsheet component using the Spread Designer. Whether you are prototyping a complete spreadsheet component or simply customizing some aspect of an existing spreadsheet component, the dedicated graphical interface offers many features to save time and effort. It also provides a way for you to add data to and set properties for the component, including properties that are not available at design time in Visual Studio. You can set both design-time and run-time properties. In most cases you can preview changes before applying them to the spreadsheet. Once all the changes are made, you apply the changes to the spreadsheet component on your form. With the Spread Designer, customizations can be made quickly and easily.

The Spread Designer also allows you to save your work to a file and share that file with others. You can save your design as a file and open files of previous work or from another team member from within Spread Designer.

Spread Designer lets you make just about any customization to the spreadsheet component as well as add shapes to improve the user interface. There are dozens of built-in shapes and the ability to customize them.

For more details, refer to these introductory topics:

• Overview of Spread Designer Features
• Starting Spread Designer
• Using Spread Designer in Runtime
• Getting Started Designing
• Understanding Applied Settings
• Simple Example Using Spread Designer
• Running Spread Designer Stand Alone
• Understanding the Built-in Shapes

Then, when you are finished with the introductory material, find the more detailed explanations in these topics:

• Spread Designer User Interface
• Designing in the Data Area
• Working with the Design
• Designing Shapes