access my documents from Sheet after uploading them to Docs
Hello everyone,
first, let me say this is a very good product. Hats off to you for you have done an excellent job.
I have started using zoho intensively in the last two days and hence started to find some bugs and/or annoyances along the way. so i decided to use zoho notes to write down my 'queries/suggestion/help please thoughts' and then merge them using zoho writer (if i can) and post them to the forum. This is going to be a long post and it feels more like a blog but i don't have a blog and i actually need answers or work a rounds to my questions.
A) As mentioned above i wanted to insert the notes i wrote to make writing this post easier but unfortunately i couldn't. so i have to copy/past. I opened zoho notes in a different window to minimize disruption.
B) On Sunday after noon i uploaded 90% of my documents to zoho docs. All files were either in office or OOo formats. However, i couldn't access them from sheet or writer. I went to sheet to access one of the files and i just couldn't see it there. It was not listed nor do i have access to my zoho docs from there. This is very strange and doesn't really make sense. I mean the files are on the server now so how hard is it to access them from the zoho sheet or writer application.
Apparently, after importing to docs i have to do another import step. To where you ask? I have no idea (I am being sarcastic here because the file is already on the server). The files are already imported to zoho docs, so import it again to where?? Anyway, when i ticked the check box next to a file and chose 'more actions' the import function was available so i used it. what happened was that the file (which in this case was located in a folder i created within the 'my folders' hierarchy) was moved/created in the main folder and had no extension (the original had .xls). And one more thing, there was a '+' instead of the spaces between the words in the file name. And, of course, now you have two copies of the same file. One that has a '.something' extension and one doesn't. One already in a neat organized folder and one just floating around.
By doing that the file became available for the other zoho applications.
Issue#1) why can't I access my files from the applications themselves before doing this extra import step. One of the benefits of docs is that I can organize my files in different folders but the way things are now defeats the whole purpose of organization. The extra import step is keeping duplicates of the files floating around which will count against my storage space limit and will make things look cluttered. Furthermore, in the 'view' box to the left of the application is a list of the files with no organization especially the folder organization I made in docs. What's that all about. Also, now, after editing the document and moving it back to the folder it came from originally (and deleting the same one with the '.something' extension) the file remains viewable from sheet/writer. Two or three months from now (when I have edited or created many many files) why do I still see a file that I no longer use. For easy access, maybe. But wouldn't it be much simpler and logical to keep things organized like how I made them in zoho docs and be able to access them directly from the application itself.
C) If you click on a folder in zoho docs you will be able to edit it from there but it will remain in the '.something' format and will not show in the 'view' box of the sheet/writer application after you finish. And also I discovered that I can't even organize the files that actually do show up in the 'view' box of the application itself (this more related to the previous point).
Issue#2) so how can i organize what i view in zoho sheet/writer?
The reason for coming back to this point is the following: zoho doesn't provide a plug-in to OOo. The only means to access zoho and see the files on zoho is the 'OO integrator' extension for OO. That extension only shows the files in sheet or writer and not docs. So if i want to edit something using OOo i have to: log-on to zoho, import file from docs to sheets (which as i said before in itself does not make sense), logout, go to OOo, use the OO integrator extension to see the file so i can finally edit it. Surely the program designers at zoho must find such approach illogical and time wasting. Not only for OOo users but also for on line zoho users who have to switch back and forth between zoho docs and the other applications just to get to there files. There must be a simpler way. I think all will be solved if we can access the files on docs from sheet or writer (with the same folder organization rather than just see a big list).
D) My last point regarding zoho docs and its integration with other zoho applications is this: after doing the extra 'import' step you have to rename the file to get rid of the '+' that replaced the spaces. So you do that. Then if you click on zoho sheets, for example, button/tab on the left (if you are on zoho personal page, that is) to go to the application you will find that the name hasn't changed yet. Refreshing the page will do the trick. However, there is a problem...
Issue#3) if, like me, you use zoho personal as your starting page to access the zoho universe, the page always loads with the mail tab open. If you navigate to a different tab and click 'refresh' on your browser, the page will load back with the mail tab open rather than the tab you were on. I found that extremely annoying and frustrating. Why take me away from the page that I am already on? What's the purpose in that? Other than to annoy me, that is?
Issue#4) how can I make zoho personal my start page when I enter the zoho 'universe' or my home page for that matter without having to enter my login info so often.?
E) moving along now to other things. One thing to mention, if you want to add an existing sheet/writer document in zoho notebook it will not work. Other people are having the same problem. I went to the forum yesterday and asked about it but no response yet. I think zoho engineers are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it before replying to us.
F) I thought zoho sheets was good. Functionally and visually. As a matter of fact, the whole zoho browsing experience is very visually appealing and beats Google docs in that sense. Zoho sheet has many useful functions. However, there are some minor points that I discovered along the way.
Issue#5) if you write something in a cell and the text overflows the boundaries of the cell (or exceeds the cell width of you like to call it that) and move to a different cell you won't be able to see the 'excess' text. The normal behavior of Excel and OOo is that you will still be able to see the excess text after the cell looses 'focus'. Not with zoho sheet. The extra text hides under the adjacent cell and the only way for you to see it is to select that cell again (have it in 'focus'). For a more permanent solution, you have to merge that cell with adjacent cells or resize the column. Both impractical solutions because in many cases either or both methods will mess with the way the sheet looks. I believe this is a bug in zoho sheet and needs to be addressed.
Issue#6) regarding the visual aspect, I think it will be wise it offer users more choices than the basic three that you do right now. I know this is a productivity suite but enhancing the overall visual experience of your users can be a major factor in making them take the leap into the online office world and choosing you rather than google, for example. See how the ability to customize Firefox was a big factor in its success. I think zoho should do the same.
Issue#7) did I mention that when you refresh zoho personal it takes you back to the mail tab rather to were you where. God, this is annoying.
G) zoho calender is smart and easy to use. I don't know if I can sync it with anything because I haven't tried that yet. However I did notice something unusual.
Issue#8) when adding an appointment in calendar there are only half hour intervals available to choose from. So if my appointment is at 13:45 or 13:50, for example, I can only choose 13:30 or 14:00. not all appointments run at half hour intervals. So this needs to be fixed.
Issue#9) along side calander there is contacts and I have a major beef with zoho contacts. No one on earth has one email account only. Many people have more than mobile number and much more have more than one work number that you get can access to them through. Why is zoho limiting our choices. If zoho engineers can't make up their minds on what we want then let us add custom fields. That way every one will be happy. And we must be able to add photos to contacts. If zoho is trying to lure the MS Office users then at least offer them something similar to they have. MS Outlook contacts is one of the best and you could add photos to your contacts there since 2003.
H) if I didn't want zoho personal as my start page then my next best thing would be zoho desktop. It is like opening MS outlook but with access to your documents.
Issue#10) however you need to add the contacts container on the page. And if you sort out the mess of file accessibilty from docs, as I mentioned towards the top of my post, you will be able to remove all the application containers and just keep the docs container thus minimizing clutter and freeing up space.
I) I use Flagfox extension on my browser. The Geo location tool indicated zoho to be in the US.
Issue#11) why don't you have servers set up in Europe to make things go faster for us (I live in Germany). Surely extra European based servers will mean more speed and better experience for those customers plus maybe more storage that you can in turn offer your users.
Issue#12) fix your spell checker in writer. Honestly it is rubbish. It doesn't recognize mistakes correctly and when you want to correct one word it just changes everything else. By the time I reached the fifth paragraph I had to re read and fix the mess that spell checker caused 4 times. So I got fed up and closed the document in zoho. Opened it from OOo using the before mentioned extension and continued working on it. So fix it. Do it like the one in Word. Very effective.
Issue#13) why don't you have an official plug-in for OOo users. Not interested in those users. Are you only after MS Office customers?
That's it. These are my initial thoughts and problems with zoho. I hope you can offer help to the issues that already have a solution or a work around and try to sort out the ones that don't. I am actually looking forward to the response of any zoho engineer or customer service personnel to see what are they doing to solve these issues or will be doing to sort things out.
Many thanks
Luay Kanaan (just another IT guy)
first, let me say this is a very good product. Hats off to you for you have done an excellent job.
I have started using zoho intensively in the last two days and hence started to find some bugs and/or annoyances along the way. so i decided to use zoho notes to write down my 'queries/suggestion/help please thoughts' and then merge them using zoho writer (if i can) and post them to the forum. This is going to be a long post and it feels more like a blog but i don't have a blog and i actually need answers or work a rounds to my questions.
A) As mentioned above i wanted to insert the notes i wrote to make writing this post easier but unfortunately i couldn't. so i have to copy/past. I opened zoho notes in a different window to minimize disruption.
B) On Sunday after noon i uploaded 90% of my documents to zoho docs. All files were either in office or OOo formats. However, i couldn't access them from sheet or writer. I went to sheet to access one of the files and i just couldn't see it there. It was not listed nor do i have access to my zoho docs from there. This is very strange and doesn't really make sense. I mean the files are on the server now so how hard is it to access them from the zoho sheet or writer application.
Apparently, after importing to docs i have to do another import step. To where you ask? I have no idea (I am being sarcastic here because the file is already on the server). The files are already imported to zoho docs, so import it again to where?? Anyway, when i ticked the check box next to a file and chose 'more actions' the import function was available so i used it. what happened was that the file (which in this case was located in a folder i created within the 'my folders' hierarchy) was moved/created in the main folder and had no extension (the original had .xls). And one more thing, there was a '+' instead of the spaces between the words in the file name. And, of course, now you have two copies of the same file. One that has a '.something' extension and one doesn't. One already in a neat organized folder and one just floating around.
By doing that the file became available for the other zoho applications.
Issue#1) why can't I access my files from the applications themselves before doing this extra import step. One of the benefits of docs is that I can organize my files in different folders but the way things are now defeats the whole purpose of organization. The extra import step is keeping duplicates of the files floating around which will count against my storage space limit and will make things look cluttered. Furthermore, in the 'view' box to the left of the application is a list of the files with no organization especially the folder organization I made in docs. What's that all about. Also, now, after editing the document and moving it back to the folder it came from originally (and deleting the same one with the '.something' extension) the file remains viewable from sheet/writer. Two or three months from now (when I have edited or created many many files) why do I still see a file that I no longer use. For easy access, maybe. But wouldn't it be much simpler and logical to keep things organized like how I made them in zoho docs and be able to access them directly from the application itself.
C) If you click on a folder in zoho docs you will be able to edit it from there but it will remain in the '.something' format and will not show in the 'view' box of the sheet/writer application after you finish. And also I discovered that I can't even organize the files that actually do show up in the 'view' box of the application itself (this more related to the previous point).
Issue#2) so how can i organize what i view in zoho sheet/writer?
The reason for coming back to this point is the following: zoho doesn't provide a plug-in to OOo. The only means to access zoho and see the files on zoho is the 'OO integrator' extension for OO. That extension only shows the files in sheet or writer and not docs. So if i want to edit something using OOo i have to: log-on to zoho, import file from docs to sheets (which as i said before in itself does not make sense), logout, go to OOo, use the OO integrator extension to see the file so i can finally edit it. Surely the program designers at zoho must find such approach illogical and time wasting. Not only for OOo users but also for on line zoho users who have to switch back and forth between zoho docs and the other applications just to get to there files. There must be a simpler way. I think all will be solved if we can access the files on docs from sheet or writer (with the same folder organization rather than just see a big list).
D) My last point regarding zoho docs and its integration with other zoho applications is this: after doing the extra 'import' step you have to rename the file to get rid of the '+' that replaced the spaces. So you do that. Then if you click on zoho sheets, for example, button/tab on the left (if you are on zoho personal page, that is) to go to the application you will find that the name hasn't changed yet. Refreshing the page will do the trick. However, there is a problem...
Issue#3) if, like me, you use zoho personal as your starting page to access the zoho universe, the page always loads with the mail tab open. If you navigate to a different tab and click 'refresh' on your browser, the page will load back with the mail tab open rather than the tab you were on. I found that extremely annoying and frustrating. Why take me away from the page that I am already on? What's the purpose in that? Other than to annoy me, that is?
Issue#4) how can I make zoho personal my start page when I enter the zoho 'universe' or my home page for that matter without having to enter my login info so often.?
E) moving along now to other things. One thing to mention, if you want to add an existing sheet/writer document in zoho notebook it will not work. Other people are having the same problem. I went to the forum yesterday and asked about it but no response yet. I think zoho engineers are aware of the problem and are trying to fix it before replying to us.
F) I thought zoho sheets was good. Functionally and visually. As a matter of fact, the whole zoho browsing experience is very visually appealing and beats Google docs in that sense. Zoho sheet has many useful functions. However, there are some minor points that I discovered along the way.
Issue#5) if you write something in a cell and the text overflows the boundaries of the cell (or exceeds the cell width of you like to call it that) and move to a different cell you won't be able to see the 'excess' text. The normal behavior of Excel and OOo is that you will still be able to see the excess text after the cell looses 'focus'. Not with zoho sheet. The extra text hides under the adjacent cell and the only way for you to see it is to select that cell again (have it in 'focus'). For a more permanent solution, you have to merge that cell with adjacent cells or resize the column. Both impractical solutions because in many cases either or both methods will mess with the way the sheet looks. I believe this is a bug in zoho sheet and needs to be addressed.
Issue#6) regarding the visual aspect, I think it will be wise it offer users more choices than the basic three that you do right now. I know this is a productivity suite but enhancing the overall visual experience of your users can be a major factor in making them take the leap into the online office world and choosing you rather than google, for example. See how the ability to customize Firefox was a big factor in its success. I think zoho should do the same.
Issue#7) did I mention that when you refresh zoho personal it takes you back to the mail tab rather to were you where. God, this is annoying.
G) zoho calender is smart and easy to use. I don't know if I can sync it with anything because I haven't tried that yet. However I did notice something unusual.
Issue#8) when adding an appointment in calendar there are only half hour intervals available to choose from. So if my appointment is at 13:45 or 13:50, for example, I can only choose 13:30 or 14:00. not all appointments run at half hour intervals. So this needs to be fixed.
Issue#9) along side calander there is contacts and I have a major beef with zoho contacts. No one on earth has one email account only. Many people have more than mobile number and much more have more than one work number that you get can access to them through. Why is zoho limiting our choices. If zoho engineers can't make up their minds on what we want then let us add custom fields. That way every one will be happy. And we must be able to add photos to contacts. If zoho is trying to lure the MS Office users then at least offer them something similar to they have. MS Outlook contacts is one of the best and you could add photos to your contacts there since 2003.
H) if I didn't want zoho personal as my start page then my next best thing would be zoho desktop. It is like opening MS outlook but with access to your documents.
Issue#10) however you need to add the contacts container on the page. And if you sort out the mess of file accessibilty from docs, as I mentioned towards the top of my post, you will be able to remove all the application containers and just keep the docs container thus minimizing clutter and freeing up space.
I) I use Flagfox extension on my browser. The Geo location tool indicated zoho to be in the US.
Issue#11) why don't you have servers set up in Europe to make things go faster for us (I live in Germany). Surely extra European based servers will mean more speed and better experience for those customers plus maybe more storage that you can in turn offer your users.
Issue#12) fix your spell checker in writer. Honestly it is rubbish. It doesn't recognize mistakes correctly and when you want to correct one word it just changes everything else. By the time I reached the fifth paragraph I had to re read and fix the mess that spell checker caused 4 times. So I got fed up and closed the document in zoho. Opened it from OOo using the before mentioned extension and continued working on it. So fix it. Do it like the one in Word. Very effective.
Issue#13) why don't you have an official plug-in for OOo users. Not interested in those users. Are you only after MS Office customers?
That's it. These are my initial thoughts and problems with zoho. I hope you can offer help to the issues that already have a solution or a work around and try to sort out the ones that don't. I am actually looking forward to the response of any zoho engineer or customer service personnel to see what are they doing to solve these issues or will be doing to sort things out.
Many thanks
Luay Kanaan (just another IT guy)
Topic Participants
Sridhar Vembu
deepak.vasudevan
Sticky Posts
My Zoho Story #19 - How and IT service provider, CTSP, are streamlining customer support using Zoho
My Zoho Story is a video podcast series where we connect with Zoho users worldwide to hear from them about their experiences with Zoho and how it became an integral part of their everyday business life. Our recent 'My Zoho Story' took us to AustraliaMy Zoho Story #18- How Mirage Visual Limited achieved enhanced customer service experience, using Zoho
My Zoho Story is a video podcast series where we connect with Zoho users worldwide to hear from them about their experiences with Zoho and how it became an integral part of their everyday business life. Our recent interview with Sam Blenkiron from MirageMy Zoho Story #17 - How Superior Trucking Payroll Service scaled their business with Zoho
My Zoho Story is a video podcast series where we connect with Zoho users worldwide to hear from them about their experiences with Zoho and how it became an integral part of their everyday business life. In our recent episode, we had the opportunity toUpdate on the upcoming Zoho User Group meetups - Q1
Hey Zoho Community! How're you all doing? We have an important announcement about the Zoho User Group meetups this quarter - Owing to the looming threat of COVID - 19, we're recalling several of our ZUG meetups that can't be run locally and are pulling back our Zoho teams who have traveled for these events. We have also suspended Zoho meetups run by our local partners and user group leaders as we do not want any of our users to come in harm's way. For those of you who have not seen the email aboutEighth day of Christmas - Zoho Recruit
Check out the story behind our sixth day of Christmas post. The eighth day of the 12 days of Christmas relates to Zoho Recruit "On the eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me: eight maids a milking, seven swans a swimming, six geese a laying, five golden rings, four calling birds, three french hens, two turtle-doves, and a partridge in a pear tree." The eight maids walking up with portfolios in their hands signifies Zoho Recruit's recruitment solutions built to provide diverse, end-to-end