Understanding spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are central and common components in ftrack and it’s essential to know how they work and what can be accomplished with them in addition to showing large amounts of data.
Managing which columns that are included is a basic action that can be found in the settings menu to the right in the toolbar. Sorting can be performed by clicking the header of each column.
Editing items
The values of each item in a spreadsheet can be edited in two ways: either by double clicking the specific cell to edit the value or by clicking the name of the item on the row corresponding to the item you would like to edit to bring in the sidebar.
Note that the shortcuts in the shortcuts column only are shown when moving the mouse over the item in the spreadsheet.
Tip
To change values of multiple items in one column at the same time, select two or more items by holding down Ctrl / Cmd when selecting items and change the value of one item to change all at the same time.
Configuring columns
All spreadsheets includes both a row number column and a shortcuts column as the first and second columns. Which shortcuts that are present in the shortcuts column depends on which spreadsheet you’re looking at. The rest of the columns in the spreadsheet are in most cases custom and can be either a predefined column or a custom attribute column.
You can add and remove columns (attributes) by clicking the settings button to the right in the toolbar and selecting which attributes to show in the Attributes menu.
Filtering
A filter toolbar is part of every spreadsheet to make it easy to filter and narrow down the data displayed in the spreadsheet. The toolbar consists of three parts: quick filters, a free filter textfield and a Filters button with a menu of options like to apply a saved filter or open the Filters panel etc.
Formatting cells
Some columns can (depending on data type) be formatted when displaying the data in the column. A cell in a column can for instance get a red background color if the value in the cell is negative and a date can either be displayed as is or relative today (a fuzzy date).
To change formatting, move the mouse over the column header and click the small arrow to the right and select Cell formatting.
Showing summaries with functions
The use of spreadsheet functions in spreadsheet columns is a way to get a quick overview of the data in the columns. Columns can have different functions applied like sum, min, max or a custom expression that pulls data from other columns in advanced calculations.
Follow these steps to enable a spreadsheet function:
Go to the tasks spreadsheet.
Move the mouse over the column header you want to add a function to and click the small arrow to the right.
Select Functions and then the function you want to apply on the column, either a predefined function like sum or count or write your own expression by selecting Expression.
The selected function name and the calculated value is presented immediately in the column header.
More help on how to write expressions can be found by clicking the question mark icon in the Expression dialog in the ftrack interface.
Sorting manually
In the tasks spreadsheet there are two sorting options: automatic and manual sorting.
Click the settings icon to the right in the toolbar and select Manual sort to enter manual sorting mode. This will enable objects to be moved and reordered the way you like.