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EtherCalc

FAQ

Answers to recurring questions from GitHub issues. For how-to topics see the rest of the user guide.

How big can a sheet get?

Section titled “How big can a sheet get?”

EtherCalc runs SocialCalc in the browser. Every cell you see is rendered in the DOM. Practical limits are far below desktop Excel:

  • Thousands of populated cells work fine for typical collaboration use cases.
  • Millions of rows (for example 7M × 200) are not supported. EtherCalc is not a big-data store; use a database or columnar analytics stack for that scale.

For programmatic bulk load, PUT /_/:room with CSV or XLSX is usually faster than typing cells one by one. See API.md.

What license applies?

Section titled “What license applies?”

The EtherCalc TypeScript rewrite is CC0-1.0 (public domain dedication).

SocialCalc is bundled from the audreyt/socialcalc fork (upstream CPAL). The legacy socialcalcspreadsheetcontrol.js / socialcalctableeditor.js filenames from older READMEs are gone — the worker ships a single headless bundle.

How do I delete a spreadsheet?

Section titled “How do I delete a spreadsheet?”

DELETE /_/:room removes the room (snapshot, log, audit, chat, ecells) and drops it from the room index. Example:

Terminal window
curl -X DELETE 'https://ethercalc.example.com/_/my-room'

On hosted instances without ETHERCALC_KEY, anyone with the URL can delete — treat room names as unlisted secrets. Self-hosters can gate discovery with ETHERCALC_DISABLE_ROOM_INDEX; see Self-hosting.

Is it safe to delete or truncate the audit trail?

Section titled “Is it safe to delete or truncate the audit trail?”

Operationally: yes, if you accept losing history.

  • The audit log (audit:<seq> keys) is append-only and never folded into the snapshot. Truncating it does not corrupt the live sheet.
  • DELETE /_/:room wipes everything for that room, including audit.
  • There is no supported HTTP endpoint to delete only audit while keeping the sheet; you would need direct access to storage (Redis in legacy, Durable Object storage in the rewrite).

For compliance retention, export audit periodically (/_/:room save string includes audit in the worker model) rather than deleting in place.

Sandstorm: why don’t API room names match tab titles?

Section titled “Sandstorm: why don’t API room names match tab titles?”

Each Sandstorm grain is one spreadsheet. The default room is sheet1 (ETHERCALC_DEFAULT_ROOM in run_grain.sh), not the display name you gave the grain in the Sandstorm UI.

Multi-sheet workbooks (/=:room) use URL slug ids from the TOC link column (for example mybook.2), not the human-readable tab label. Use GET /_/:room/cells or the save string to discover actual ids. See Sandstorm packaging.

Sandstorm: export failed with “Cannot GET /sheet1/=sheet1.xlsx”

Section titled “Sandstorm: export failed with “Cannot GET /sheet1/=sheet1.xlsx””

Fixed in client-multi: production builds no longer redirect API calls to http://127.0.0.1:8000 when the grain is served on localhost:8080. Exports use same-origin paths like /_/sheet1/xlsx.

Viewer mode (?auth=0) hides multi-sheet export controls when there is no TOC; single-sheet CSV/JSON export still works via the API.

Can I save SocialCalc text and reload it later?

Section titled “Can I save SocialCalc text and reload it later?”

Yes, via the HTTP API:

  1. GET /_/:room — fetch the SocialCalc save string.
  2. PUT /_/:room with Content-Type: text/plain (or the sc format) — replace the room snapshot.

The in-browser clipboard UI is optimized for copy/paste between live sessions, not version-control round-trips. For git-friendly diffs, prefer the GET /_/:room save string or GET /_/:room/csv.

Excel F9 “evaluate and store” (paste values)

Section titled “Excel F9 “evaluate and store” (paste values)”

EtherCalc does not implement Excel’s F9 “replace formula with current value” shortcut. Workarounds:

  • Copy the displayed value and paste-special as text.
  • Use PUT with CSV/JSON export data if you need a value-only snapshot server-side.

Quotes and URLs disappear when pasting clipboard data

Section titled “Quotes and URLs disappear when pasting clipboard data”

SocialCalc’s clipboard parser strips decorative quotes around wiki-style links. This is upstream SocialCalc behavior when converting between TSV/CSV and the internal clipboard format. Workarounds:

  • Paste URLs without wrapping quotes, or use text-wiki formatting with explicit [[url label]] syntax (see Syntax).
  • Load data via PUT /_/:room CSV instead of the clipboard dialog.

Where should I ask questions?

Section titled “Where should I ask questions?”