Product Updates - January 30, 2021 - View Permissions and Locking

🌟 What's new?
1

What’s new?


1. View Permissions
One of the most popular requests we’ve heard from early users has been the ability to limit access to certain views in a worksheet to a specific group of people. Now you can quickly and easily set permissions on any view by using the new View permissions button in the view toolbar, or from the view’s context menus:

ViewPermissions2
ViewPermissions21090Ă—712 1.34 MB

By default all views are Public, meaning they can be accessed by anyone who has access to the workbook. With view permissions, you can now set specific views to Private, which then allows you to select which users do not have access (note that Owners of the workbook, or the folder it lives in, always have access to all views).


2. View Locking
Another popular request has been the ability to lock certain views so other users cannot change the filters, sorts, hidden columns, and other aspects of the view configuration. Now you can lock a view simply by clicking the new Lock this view button in the view toolbar, or from the view’s context menu:

LockThisView


When a view is locked, other users who are not Owners of the workbook still can open the filters, sorts, hide columns, and other view configuration dialogs, but they cannot make changes:

LockedView
LockedView1090Ă—711 1010 KB


Fixes and enhancements

  • Issue #002883: Converting a column or range from the Select data type to Multiselect, or vice versa, will no longer remove any options that are not used in the selected column or range.

  • Issue #002892: Column references in formulas should no longer result in errors when a workbook is exported as an Excel (XLSX) file. These errors would previously appear in Excel when the exported file was opened.

  • Issue #001569: The EOMONTH function now works as expected, returning the last day of the month.

  • Issue #002229: The DATEVALUE function now works as expected, returning a date value given a valid date string.

  • Issue #001568: Issues with the MONTH function returning the wrong integer value, as reported here, have been fixed.

  • Issue #002794: The IF function now returns an #NA error when an incorrect number of parameters are passed, and an error as expected when non-boolean values are provided, including arrays and null.

  • Issue #002865: The AND function now returns appropriate errors if non-boolean values or other invalid arguments are provided.

  • The TODAY and NOW functions have been enhanced to fetch a result based on the Workbook’s assigned time zone, which is not yet exposed for end-user customization. We will enhance this further when we expose options to set a workbook’s time zone.


What’s next?

  • Workbook backup history
    Ability to preview old versions of a workbook showing each change made, when it was made, and who made it. This also includes the ability to restore and create copies of any version. You’ll be able to see granular changes down to the individual cell level, and restore the whole workbook or copy just the cells you need from a backup to your live version, data types and all. We plan to store full backup history on all workbooks for at least 3 years.

  • Forms
    A new Form view type, providing the ability to define a form based on a worksheet’s columns, and share a direct link to it or embed it in any site that supports iframes. Each form submission becomes a row in the worksheet.

  • Array syntax in formulas
    Ability to use array syntax such as A1:A10 * B1:B10 and { A1, A2, A3 } in formulas. This is a prerequisite for array formula support.