Tablexcel: a Multi-User, Multi-Touch Interactive Tabletop Interface for Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets

In this paper, we present Tablexcel, a tabletop interface to Microsoft Excel. Single-user, desktop-based computer applications are pervasive in our daily lives and work. An application like Microsoft Excel, a widely deployed spreadsheet application, is used by a large number of businesses and users. Often, several users will collaborate on the creation of a spreadsheet, for example exchanging Excel files by e-mail. A multi-user, multi-touch interactive tabletop could create better working conditions, but Excel is not compatible with tabletop interfaces. Tablexcel use the scripting capabilities of Excel to extract live data from Excel files, and display them in a tabletop-appropriate way. Multiple users can interact with the Tablexcel interface using tabletop interactions, like gestures or rotating windows. Tablexcel manage the collaborative aspect of the interaction and send the resulting modifications to the original Excel application, which update the formulas, graphs, macros, etc.