Spreadsheets

Any page can be a spreadsheet instead of a document — the whole page becomes a live, editable grid with formulas, formatting, and multiple sheets. Under the hood the page is still plain markdown (compact tables plus a small style layer), so a sheet is versioned, searchable, syncable, and agent-editable like any other page — but you work with it as a real grid. A page is either a doc or a sheet, never a grid mid-document.

Make a sheet

Click New page → Sheet. You can start blank, or Import CSV / XLSX right in the dialog to turn an existing spreadsheet into a tela sheet (the title is prefilled from the filename). You can also ask an AI agent — "make a budget sheet for X" — which sets the sheet page property and writes the grid for you (see [[Agents & MCP]]).

Edit — the grid

Editing a sheet opens a full-page grid, not a text box:

• Type to enter a value or a =formula; the formula bar shows the active cell.
• Format from the toolbar — bold/italic, fills and text color, number formats (currency, percent, decimals), alignment, borders, and merges.
• Formulas are a full spreadsheet language — SUM, AVERAGE, IF, VLOOKUP/INDEX/MATCH, SUMIF, text and date functions, and dozens more, across sheets. Values are computed as you read, never frozen into the document.
• Multiple sheets — add tabs at the bottom of the grid; formulas can reference another sheet (=SUM(Budget!D2:D9)).
• Charts, conditional formatting, data-validation dropdowns, and named ranges are supported and follow the data when you insert or delete rows.

[!TIP] The fastest way to build a real, formatted sheet is to ask an agent — it writes the tables, formulas, number formats, and even a chart in one go (see [[Agents & MCP]]).

Collaborate

Sheets are real-time collaborative. Everyone editing sees each other's cell cursors and selections live, colored per person, and edits merge cell-by-cell with no clobbering. Undo only ever reverts your own changes, never a teammate's concurrent edit. Presence works the moment two people open the same sheet.

Freeze rows & columns

Scrolling a long sheet? Use the Freeze menu in the header to pin the header row and/or first column so your labels stay in view. It's off by default (a sheet may not have a header) and remembered per sheet.

Read & share

Opening a sheet you're not editing shows it as a live read-only grid — formulas are computed, formatting is applied, you can scroll and switch tabs, but not change anything. Published and public-space sheets render the same way for anyone with the link (see [[Publishing & public URLs]]). Because the underlying document is markdown, a sheet's contents are also fully searchable and answerable by [[Search & ask your docs]] and by agents.

Import & export

• Import a .csv or .xlsx when creating a sheet (New page → Sheet → Import).
• Export from the sheet header's Export menu — the current sheet as CSV, or the whole workbook as XLSX. Formulas export as their computed values, so the file carries numbers, not =source.

History

Every save snapshots a revision, so a sheet has the same [[Page history & revision restore]] as any page — view or roll back to an earlier version.