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Google Spreadsheets Data Validation  (View post)

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

Thursday, February 19, 2009
15 years ago5,497 views

Good feature, should help me out, I like how it's configurable.

Christoph [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

I don't like it that much. It's UI is quite annoying when entering content and it doesn't play with input forms at all. I'm still missing the possibility to choose values from a dropdown.

ahab [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

for numbers its good,
for dates (and times) is so-so,
for text its far too limited
for URLs and e-mails it's cr*p

See also: https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=35192255&postID=729347532384985010

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> First of all when one uses 'Data validation' and a
> wrong input is detected, the input is simply erased
> – one would expect the user is allowed to edit any typos.

In my tries, that was not the behavior. Instead, the "corrupt" cell was focused and you had the chance to change what you entered. Only if you left the cell after it was focused again and you were able to edit it, is the data deleted – and if you don't like that Google offers the non-strict option.

> The Text validation of valid URLs and e-mail addresses
> is totally useless, unless you think www,google,com or
> http:/google;com are vaid URLs.

That is odd indeed. As the example said, Google allows "www,google,com" as URL and "A[put at-character here]b[put at-character here]c[put at-character here]example.com"...

[added an update to the post]

ahab [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

The behaviour of the 'Data validation' after entering an incorrect value is erratically at best. I found (testing in IE6) that the incorrect data is erased and replaced by the last data in the cell – which then can be edited – which is not the same as correcting the incorrect input.
But at least one time I found the incorrect data was presented for correction. Weird!

Bottom line: the 'Data validation' is hardly stable and of only limited use.

IMHO the Data validation feature – which also is incompatible with the new List View mode and the existing Form input – has been released far too early. And what's frustrating: users have been asking for 'drop-down-list' data validation, time and again, instead they get another half baked feature.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Why are some features so slow to roll out, e.g. the Google documents editor calls the search & replace function "alpha" and a "Preliminary feature" for ~1 year now? (At least going by http://blogoscoped.com/forum/88647.html#id88683)

ahab [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

My impression is, but I may be totally wrong, that there are only a few programmers left of the original Writely and Google-Labs Spreadsheets team.

I think these are constantly repairing the connection problems that crop up as a rsult of the continues updates for the existing cuttin-edge brosers: IE(8), FireFox (which really is a problem because its plugins can interfere, but also because overnight updates can break compatibility) and of course also Google Docs own Chrome (which is also constanly updated and in many respects still not stable enough for all the intricacies a complex web app like Google Docs needs).

New feature development is 'sourced out' to interns that can create great concepts, but leave unstable/unfinished ('half baked') features behind when their intern perod ends.

In essence this means the core programmers don't have time to repair bugs and finish the preliminary fatures the team was once so proud to present.

As a result Google Docs is is starting to 'rust' from the inside.
It's suffering from these instabilities that become harder and harder to repair and the new features, which are virtually always buggy, are seldom repaired or made into something really usable.

Some time ago I already stated this version of Google Docs should be thrown away and a brand new version should be created which avoids all the mistakes (e.g. the sharing system which has suffered very much from the effect of Google Apps Team Edition; creating Jekyll & Hyde accounts for unwary users) and dead ends (creating a growing ever more complicated web app for browsers that evade becoming compatible with each other using AJAX) that are apparent in this version.

IMHO the future looks bleak for Google Docs...

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

What's a Jekyll & Hyde account?

ahab [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

When you have created a Google account with a non-gmail e-mail address, e.g. me[put at-character here]myemailprovider.com you get a Google Account at which you can login at https://docs.google.com

Should however any user of myemailproveder.com decide to create a Google Apps Team Edition account (which acts as the potion that causes the split), all users suddenly get two account they can log into with the same login name – the @myemailprovider.com e-mail addres – and password :
one at https://docs.google.com and
one at https://docs.google.com/a/myemailprovider.com

Many users are not even aware of this until people share files with them (and some not even then).The shared files turn up in the second account, and it is extremely hard to merge both sides of the account, so users end up with files in both sides of what I like to call a 'Jekyll and Hyde' account.

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