Spreadsheets

When you add an Excel workbook or a CSV file, Sopycat opens it as a spreadsheet: the sheets, the cells with their colors, borders and number formats, merged cells, frozen rows and column widths, all as they look in Excel. You can change it right there and save. The file you added is kept, and every save is a new version beside it.

Which spreadsheet files open?

Type into cells

1. Click a cell and start typing. What you type replaces what was there.
2. Press Enter to put it in and move down, or Tab to move right.
3. To change part of a cell instead, double-click it or press F2. You can also type in the long box above the sheet (the formula bar).
4. Press Save or Ctrl+S. "Not saved yet" shows until you do.

Sopycat reads what you type the way Excel does: 1,250 becomes a number, $40 a currency amount, 15% a percentage, 9/29/2026 a date, and TRUE a yes/no value. To keep something as text, start it with an apostrophe: '007.

To start a new line inside a cell, press Alt+Enter.

Formulas

Start a cell with = to write a formula, such as =SUM(D2:D10) or =B2*C2. When you change a cell, every formula that uses it is worked out again straight away, on every sheet. Sopycat knows the functions offices use every day, including SUM, AVERAGE, IF, VLOOKUP, XLOOKUP, SUMIFS, COUNTIF, TEXT, DATE and many more.

If a formula uses a function Sopycat doesn't know, the cell keeps showing its last result, and a line above the sheet says so. Excel works every formula out again when the file is next opened, so nothing is ever left wrong.

When you copy a formula, fill it down (Ctrl+D) or sort rows, its cell references move with it, as in Excel. $A$1 style references stay put.

Make it look right

The toolbar has bold, italic and underline, text color and fill color, left, center and right alignment, and the number format (General, Number, Currency, Percent, Date, Long date, Time, Text). The Format menu has Wrap text, Merge cells, Borders and Clear formatting.

Formatting works on every cell you have selected. CSV files can't hold formatting, so those buttons are off for them.

To change a column's width, drag the line at the right of its letter. Double-click that line to fit the column to its words.

Add, remove and sort rows

Spreadsheet › Rows & columns, or right-click a cell

• Insert row above / below and Insert column left / right. Select several rows first to add that many.
• Delete row and Delete column take out the selected rows or columns.
• Formulas, sums, merged cells and conditional formatting move with the rows, so a =SUM(D2:D10) grows when you add a row inside it.

Sort puts the rows of your selection (or of the table around the cell you're in) in order by the column you're in, A to Z or Z to A. A heading row stays at the top.

Freeze keeps the top row, the first column, or everything above and left of a cell in view while you scroll.

Sheets

Each sheet has a tab under the spreadsheet. Click a tab to open it, double-click it to rename it, and press + to add a sheet. The arrow on the open tab has Rename and Delete this sheet. When you rename a sheet, formulas on other sheets that use it follow the new name.

Select some numbers and the bar under the sheet shows their sum, average and count.

Charts

Spreadsheet › Chart

Charts in a workbook show on the sheet as they do in Excel, and they follow the cells: change a number and its chart changes straight away.

1. Select the cells to chart, with their headings: the first row names the series and the first column labels the points.
2. Press Chart and choose Column, Bar, Line, Area, Pie, Doughnut or Scatter. Every column of numbers becomes a series.

Click a chart to pick it. Drag it to move it and drag its corner to resize it. The bar above the sheet changes its kind, its title, whether it has a legend, and for column, bar, line and area charts whether the series sit side by side, stacked, or stacked to 100%. Delete chart, or the Delete key, removes it. Double-click a chart to go straight to its title.

A chart on a sheet of its own (a chart sheet) has a tab beside the worksheets. It fills the page, and the bar above changes it the same way; it is the sheet, so it is not deleted on its own.

Pictures

Pictures placed on a sheet show where they sit. Click one to pick it, drag it to move it and drag its corner to resize it; Delete picture, or the Delete key, takes it out. A picture's own bytes are never changed, and a picture shown on two sheets stays in the file until the last one is removed.

Pivot tables

Spreadsheet › Pivot table

A pivot table sums up a table: the total sales for each region, say, or the number of orders each month.

1. Click inside the table to sum up (its first row must name the columns), or select it.
2. Press Pivot table. Tick the columns that give it its rows, choose a column to spread across the top if you want one, and say what to show: the Sum, Count, Average, Max or Min of a column.
3. Press Make the pivot table. It goes on a new sheet called Pivot.

Click a cell in a pivot table (one of yours or one the workbook came with) and the bar above the sheet has Refresh, to work it out again after the table it sums changes, Change fields… and Delete pivot table. A pivot table's cells are worked out from its table, so they can't be typed over.

Find and replace

Press Ctrl+F to find in the open sheet. Enter goes to the next match, Shift+Enter to the one before. Ctrl+H, or Replace…, replaces text you typed in cells. Formulas and numbers are left alone.

Keys

What does saving keep?

Saving writes a new version of the file in its own format, beside the one you added. Sopycat changes only what you edited in the file and leaves everything else exactly as it was: values, formulas, formatting, merged cells, column widths, frozen rows, notes, data validation, conditional formatting, named ranges, pictures, charts and pivot tables. To go back, use ⋯ › Versions, as with PDFs.

What about macros and other parts?

Some workbooks have parts Sopycat keeps but doesn't change: macros, slicers, sparklines, form controls and links to other workbooks. A line above the sheet says which ones it found. You can still edit the workbook and save it, and those parts come through exactly as they were. Sopycat never runs macros; to run one, press Open in its app to open the workbook in Excel.

Workbooks that opened read-only in Sopycat 2.5 can be edited from 2.6 on.

Make a PDF of a spreadsheet

Spreadsheet › ⋯ › Make a PDF copy

Sopycat makes a PDF with one page per sheet, each as wide as the sheet, so columns are never split across pages. The PDF joins your library beside the spreadsheet, ready to sign, mark up or send. This needs the Office pack.

My spreadsheet opens as a PDF

Spreadsheets added with an earlier version of Sopycat were turned into PDFs. Open one and press Open as a spreadsheet in the blue bar at the top. If you had already changed the PDF, the button says Open the original spreadsheet instead, and it adds the spreadsheet as its own document so your PDF changes are kept.