More versatility. That's what the new version of Quattro Pro is about. The major new features of Quattro Pro 5.0 include the following:

• Notebooks: A notebook is a collection of 256 spreadsheet pages, labeled A..Z, then AA..AZ, through IV. A page is a rectangular grid made up of 256 columns, identified by numbers. Each intersection of a column and a row makes up a cell, which is where you enter data. Each notebook is saved in its own file, with a .WQ2 extension. The new notebook structure opens up many possibility for organizing your data. You can gather consecutive pages into a group and perform operations on many pages at once. You can customize the page names that appear on the tabs, and you can easily move pages by dragging the tabs with the mouse.
• New Improved Speed Bar: Previously called the Mouse Palette in version 3.0, and introduced to us in version 4.0, the Speed Bar is similar to Lotus' Smart Icons or WordPerfect's Button Bar. In 5.0, the PgNm button is added. It has the equivalent commands of choosing Edit, Page, and Name. This allows us to logically name the new notebook pages mentioned earlier. Instead of just calling them A, B, and C, we can name them January, February, March or Radiation, Pathology, Immunology. The new Grp button is the same as choosing Edit, Group, and Create. Finally, the WYS and CHR buttons from 4.0 have been combined into one button, which toggles between WYSIWYG and text mode. Otherwise the Speed Bar is the same, giving you quick access to commonly used operations including erasing, copying, moving, aligning, fonts, and the sum function.
• New and revised @ functions: @SHEETS is a new @ function that returns the number of pages within the given block. @CELL, @CELLINDEX, @CELLPOINTER, and @INDEX have been modified to accommodate notebooks.
• Intelligent graphics: Includes analytical graphing functions such as aggregation and moving averages, and a new bubble graph type. If your spreadsheet contains daily experiment totals, but you want to graph average monthly totals, you can calculate and graph that information without changing the spreadsheet. Or if your daily experiment values vary widely, you can display a moving average which smooths the data points.
• Aggregation lets you combine multiple data points and plot them as a single point that may be the sum, average, standard deviation, minimum, or maximum of the period. Since you would often aggregate a series according to a time period, the Aggregation commands are based on one (1) day representing a period of one (1). This can be changed to weeks, months, quarters, years, or to an arbitrary value.
• Moving Average smooths fluctuating data points by plotting progressive averages. The first point in the series is used as the starting point for calculations as Quattro plots the average for a specified number of points, called a period. At each following point, the specific period is maintained, but the oldest value, the one farthest from the new point, is dropped. This ensures that the number of points that are averaged is always the specified period. You can weigh recent points more heavily, and use a linear fit or exponential fit to generate a line or curve respectively, to fit the data.
• Enhanced competitor compatibility: Supported formats include Lotus version 3.1 and later (.WK3), Always (.ALL), Impress (.FMT and .FM3), Lotus WYSIWYG publishing formats, dBASE, Quattro Pro for Windows (import only), and Harvard Graphics (.CHT and .CH3), though you can't bring .CHT files into Quattro's Annotator.
• Lotus files are imported as follows: If the file contains no features unique to version 3 of 1-2-3, Quattro opens it and converts it as if it were a 1-2-3 version 2.x file. If, however, there are version 3 features in the file, then the following things need to be considered. Labels longer than 254 characters are truncated, and @ functions not in Quattro Pro are converted to the value of the original cell (string or numeric) and is followed by the comment "Formula contains unknown @function." Any .WK3 graph feature not supported in Quattro Pro, as well as 1-2-3 formula annotations, are lost in the conversion. However, reversing the process is easy. Simply save a Quattro Pro file with the .WK3 extension and a 1-2-3 version 3 format will be created.
• If you have spreadsheets created with 1-2-3 version 2.01 or 2.2 which were designed with Allways, you can load these files directly into Quattro Pro. If Quattro Pro finds a file with the .ALL extension and with the same name as the 1-2-3 file you're loading, it asks you if you want to load the Allways file at the same time. If you answer yes, the translation is automatic. However, Quattro does not import Allways' inserted graphs, because Allways points only to a graph stored in a separate .PIC file.
• Quattro Pro imports 1-2-3 files created with either the WYSIWYG or Impress add-in in the same way. If you retrieve a .WK1, .WKS, or .WK3 file that has a corresponding .FMT or .FM3 file, Quattro Pro asks you if you want to read the .FMT or .FM3 file and apply the WYSIWYG/Impress formatting respectively. When retrieving a .WK1 or .WKS file, if there are corresponding .ALL and .FMT files in the current directory, only the .FMT file is loaded, with the .ALL file being ignored. The .ENC and .CNF files created by WYSIWYG/Impress are not imported. Also, there are several restrictions on the following WYSIWYG/Impress formats that can be imported. Blank graphs, Print Layout settings for page size and borders on the bottom, and Print Configuration settings are not brought into Quattro.
• You can import a Harvard Graphics version 2.x or 3.x graph by using the .CHT or .CH3 extension when you open or retrieve a file. Quattro Pro converts all graphs except for organization charts, multiple pie graphs (only the first pie is imported), and multiple graphs or combinations of graph types. Some Harvard Graphics fill patterns and graph options do not have an exact match in Quattro Pro. In these cases, Quattro Pro applies the closest match available. Data series in Harvard Graphics appear as values in the spreadsheet in Quattro Pro. You can export a Quattro Pro file as a Harvard Graphics file by saving it with the .CHT extension. Because of the inherent differences between the two products, there are two things to consider. One, because Harvard Graphics doesn't support multiple graphics on one file, only the Current Graph exports. Named graphs are not transferred. Secondly, because Harvard Graphics files can hold only graph information, non-graph data is not transferred.
• Print Block Display feature: In WYSIWYG mode, the print block display feature allows you to show print blocks and page breaks on screen with dotted lines. The advantage to this, is if you add data to the document, you can easily see if it falls outside the print block. Accordingly, if it does, you can expand the block before printing, and then verify it again to see if the page breaks are appropriate.
• Audit feature: Audit now offers you several ways to examine and refine your spreadsheet by showing you cell dependencies, circular references, and other information about cells linked by formulas. You can understand an unfamiliar spreadsheet at a glance by finding initial values and gathering a quick look at the spreadsheet's organization. More importantly, audit allows you to find potential errors, such as formulas that erroneously refer to labels.
• Quattro Pro 5.0 is the best DOS spreadsheet program. Important capabilities incorporate network management, including being able to log on to network file servers and map to volumes on those servers. Competitors' files are handled with ease in the new version, and the improved Audit feature is a blessing to anyone who has ever had to maintain someone else's calculations and macros. All in all, Quattro Pro 5.0 will be a worthwhile upgrade if you work with many programs or you have multiple linked worksheets that could be brought into the latest notebook feature.