Undo in fast mode for spreadsheets

alexsapps

Hi there,

Will undo / ctrl+z functionality in Fast Mode be coming to CryptPad spreadsheets in the future at all? Are technical details on why it's hard to implement available to read anywhere?

I would like to use spreadsheets more in my organization if we would be able to have real time collaborative editing with undo at the same time.

Also, do you know why "History" would be missing from the "File" menu? On the main cryptpad.fr instance, in spreadsheets I only see "Close Menu", "Save", "Print", "Advanced Settings" and "Help".

Thank you,
Alex

Mathilde

Hello Alex,

Thanks for reaching out and for your interest in CryptPad.

Fast Mode is real time collaboration and hence cannot support undo functionality. If two persons do it at the same time, what would happen? How would you handle the conflict between the two changes?

That's why we propose instead the strict mode as explained in our user guide. Which then allows to use undo/redo functionalities.

Regarding your question about the menu, you are likely getting confused by the fact there are two File menu buttons. See the screenshot below.

Screenshot of CryptPad Spreadsheet with two File menu buttons

We know it's quite an issue, degrading the user experience but haven't been able to find a viable workaround yet.

Hope this helps!

alexsapps

Thank you Mathilde!

I totally did not see that other File menu. That history functionality would come in handy in case someone makes a big lossy mistake in fast mode, although it could take some time to select the version to restore in a long lived spreadsheet since it seems one has to replay every update to the sheet since its creation until they find the desired version.

What's your opinion on Google Sheets' undo behavior? I'm sure it's not trivial to implement, but from experimentation it seems to undo only a user's own changes and does its best to handle conflicts, e.g. by

doing nothing when you undo a change in a cell deleted by another user
erasing another user's changes if they made changes in a cell that you're undoing changes to
undoing a change in the new location for a cell, if another user moves a cell you made changes to

alexsapps

Note for posterity: I posted a similar question in the OnlyOffice forum.
https://forum.onlyoffice.com/t/undo-in-spreadsheets-fast-mode/7469