TaskRox Help & User Manual

The Spreadsheet module gives every project browser-based workbooks with live formulas, formatting, and controlled import/export.

Two entry points:

• Project sidebar → Commercial → Spreadsheet (/project/[id]/spreadsheet) — the project's standalone workbook list. Create general-purpose workbooks here for estimating, take-offs, registers, and working calculations.
• Budget → BOQ → View as spreadsheet — a workbook bound to the project BOQ (see the BOQ integration section below).

TaskRox spreadsheets are not an Excel clone. There is no macro/VBA support, no pivot tables, and no solver. The workbook engine is web-native, with its own portable file format (.xwbk) plus controlled .xlsx and CSV import/export.

Click New workbook on the list page to create a workbook. Each workbook contains one or more sheets — use the sheet tabs at the bottom to add or rename sheets.

Every edit is recorded as an ordered operation, which gives you:

• Undo / Redo from the toolbar — multi-step, and it survives a page reload
• a deterministic edit history per workbook
• safe concurrent editing — your changes are applied in sequence on the server, and stale edits are rejected rather than silently overwritten

Calculation is server-authoritative: formula results are recalculated on the server when operations are applied, so what is stored is what every other user sees.

Start a cell with = to enter a formula, or use the formula bar. References use A1 style (B2, A1:C10), including cross-sheet references and absolute/relative forms ($A$1).

The function registry covers 74 functions across:

Criteria strings support >, >=, <, <=, <>, = and */? wildcards.

Error codes follow spreadsheet convention: #DIV/0!, #VALUE!, #REF!, #NAME?, #N/A, #NUM!, plus #CYCLE! — TaskRox detects circular references and marks every cell on the cycle path instead of hanging.

Named ranges are workbook-scoped: define a name for a range, use it in formulas, and manage names from the name manager. Named ranges shift automatically when rows/columns are inserted or deleted, and they round-trip through .xlsx export/import.

Number formats — pick from the toolbar format dropdown: numbers, percentages, currency, and date presets.

Cell styles — bold, italic, underline, font size, text colour, fill colour, and alignment.

Layout — resize rows and columns by dragging, hide rows/columns, and freeze panes so headers stay visible while you scroll. Large workbooks stay fast: the grid renders only the visible viewport, tested to 10,000 × 100 cells.

Supported formats:

Drag a file onto the workbook (or use Import) — uploads show progress and can be cancelled, and re-importing prompts before replacing content. After any import, the diagnostics panel lists anything that could not be carried over (unsupported formulas, truncated values, stripped content) with severity levels, and the diagnostics persist so you can review them after a reload.

Size caps protect the workspace (e.g. 25 MB input per file). Imports and exports are also registered as versioned documents in the project Documents module, so the file trail of where a workbook came from and what was issued out of it is controlled.

Open Budget → BOQ → View as spreadsheet to work on the project BOQ as a live workbook.

• The BOQ rows project forward into the workbook automatically.
• Edits to mapped BOQ columns write back to the BOQ register through a controlled server-side mirror — the workbook and the register stay consistent.
• The mirrored region is protected by a mirror lock so the row/column anchors that keep the mapping intact cannot be broken by accident. Section header rows are excluded from writeback.
• BOQ import/export (CSV, .xlsx, .xwbk) is available from the same page with the same diagnostics surface.

Access to a BOQ-attached workbook follows the Budget module permission, not the Spreadsheet permission.

Sheets support locked ranges and input ranges:

• Locked ranges cannot be edited by view/edit users — use them for formula blocks, headers, and reference data.
• Input ranges mark the cells users are expected to fill in.

Protection is managed by users with module Admin on the workbook's host module, and admins bypass locks when they need to restructure.

Standalone workbooks use the Spreadsheet project module permission:

BOQ-attached workbooks gate on the Budget module permission instead, so BOQ access stays consistent whether you use the register or the spreadsheet view.