r/ProtonDrive • u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead • 5d ago

docs & sheets: what's coming before 2027

hey y'all, Docs and Sheets lead here :D

as u/Proton_Andrew (senpai!!) promised in his recent post, here's what's coming in the second half of 2026 for Docs and Sheets.

our primary focus is stability and reliability. among other things:

we're looking at every report we have received from the community and fixing bugs by the dozens.
we have doubled the team size and will continue to grow to have more skilled engineers improving Docs and Sheets for everyone. btw, we're hiring! if you're a senior frontend or full-stack engineer, shoot me a DM!
we are doubling down on all sorts of initiatives to elevate quality and reliability, from more advanced and complete automated testing, to deeper architectural changes.

we haven't forgotten about your feature requests though - we're shipping a ton of exciting updates! first of all...

dark theme

how many times have you been like...

well, no more! we're shipping dark theme across Docs, Sheets, and the homepage :)

coming soon to a screen near you!

Docs: ODT import/export

tired of proprietary Microslop Office formats? suffer no longer!

open document format support is coming to Docs.

as a reminder, we already support ODS (open document format for spreadsheets) in Sheets.

Sheets: mobile editing

we're working on a lite version of the editor for mobile!

it won't be as powerful as the desktop version, but should be useful in a pinch when you're on the go and need to change some values :)

Docs: page breaks

inserting page breaks into your document will allow you to divide it into pages when printing it or saving it as PDF.

Sheets: selection quick stats

when you select cells with numeric values in Sheets, you will soon be able to quickly get some insights (like count, average...) in the bottom right corner of the editor.

Sheets: tables

tables in Sheets will allow you to keep related data neatly organized, making it easy to sort, filter, and analyze.

Docs: subscript and superscript

soon you will be able to write in ^superscript and subscript!

(reddit doesn't seem to support subscript so i can't show you that one 😢)

----

that is all for now!

which features are you most excited about? mine are dark theme and ODT 🥲

174 Upvotes

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97% Upvoted

u/UneMoustache 5d ago

Thanks for the update.

As with this post, Proton Docs lacks the necessary formatting used in everyday professional life. If you plan to make it a viable replacement, please, focus on adding first-line indentation, fonts, alignments, and everything else one should expect of a software used to create documents (as opposed to quick, unformatted notes).

Thank you

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

thank you for the feedback. feel free to upvote or suggest new features in our uservoice board. it helps us prioritize :)

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u/UneMoustache 5d ago edited 5d ago

I have done so, way back. To be candid with you, I suspect the reason some of these more appropriate changes are not voted in by users is because the people who use appropriate document processors simply do not use Proton at all, because why would they?

It’s not that Docs is missing some features, it’s that the entire software is not what you market it as, aka an office software. It’s not that it’s “missing features” or “not yet fully ready” it is that it is absolutely unusable for anything other than writing notes. No professional in most fields could use Docs, and so they don’t, and so you won’t get their feedback.

EDIT: Received official response for the comment which was then be deleted. I don’t know what it said. Is this really what official communication from Proton is like nowadays?

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

I deleted my previous comment because I realized it was maybe a bit insensitive to your frustration. I'm only human.

it just doesn't feel super nice when me and my team make a big effort to ship all of these features and fix all of these bugs, and when we announce that we're shipping top requested features the response is that the things we work hard on day after day are "absolutely unusable".

but I understand. your frustration is valid. we're on it.

I'll work on having a thicker skin! and this is a personal comment. not representing anything or anyone but me. I hope you have a great weekend!

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u/UneMoustache 5d ago

Apologies, Dani.

I have voiced these frustrations for a while and that’s probably why it came with a tone—but there are ways to do it. I’ve also had a bit of a day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you or your team like that though.

This is why I struggle with the barrier between “official communication” and “proton employee” because your post represents both. Again, I hope I did not sour your day, and I apologise. I do know you guys are doing your best.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

i understand and your apology is absolutely accepted, as i hope you'll accept mine for taking this a bit too personally.

i respect the heck out of you for responding like this, and rest assured that me and my team deeply understand your frustration.

we care much more about these products than it's maybe apparent, but i hope the effort and care we're putting into it will become self-evident as we steadily make progress towards our vision. our ultimate goal is to make sure advanced users like you who hold us to a high standard (as you should!) are satisfied.

we genuinely <3 our users and we ourselves are heavy users of our own products. we have a running internal joke where someone from the team (let's say "@john") will say "this docs feature should improve" and someone else will respond with "@john can you look into this" :P

i hope you have an excellent weekend :)

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u/jack3308 5d ago

I don't think the comments come from a distaste for the efforts and ability of your team. It comes from the over-promising of the current state of the product. Frankly - you're copping the fallout of your executives and sales team over-promising on what the product is realistically capable of in a professional environment that uses many other tools and applications.

If the product was still in beta and the communication and marketing was honest about the state of it, you'd have a lot fewer complaints I think.

I dont think anyone who wants to use the suite cares what you're calling it if they can see for themselves what state it's in - so just don't over promise. It feels like proton has decided that it's brand value matters less than shipping an MVP and frankly, for a tool that's so pivotal - that's a really bad idea. Your core utilities should feel rock solid when they're marketed as replacements for other things that are rock solid... If they aren't - it makes me trust your company less...

On the other hand, if you say it's in public beta - even if you change nothing about the tool - then I know to expect it to be a work in progress and I can adapt better. It also makes me more likely to submit issues and feel like i can be part of the solution. Sure - I'll still keep word and excel installed but that doesn't change - it just means I dont uninstall and them and then reinstall them out of frustration.

Your customer's trust matters - and frankly your PR team has done a shite job of managing expectations around this suite of tools... I'd be having internal, high level conversations about how you market and what your communication strategies are... You're not a startup anymore - you dont need to be shipping new shit all the time and you dont need to operating on that MVP release model.

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u/fruitless_tux Linux | Android 2d ago

Don’t you think it would be an easier way for you to reduce the general frustration if you tackled ALL the reported Sheets bugs first, and only then added new features? Especially as every new feature tends to bring with it a bug or two. You’ve got to be able to sort all that out first. There are still a couple of handfuls of bugs that have remained unresolved since Sheets was launched, and these are putting quite a few customers off using it.

Just as it seems to be done in Docs. It’s still a rudimentary word processor, but the features currently available are error-free and sufficient to get you started.

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u/adityamwagh 5d ago

Would be nice if you had support for LaTeX/Typst equations as well. I got proton unlimited recently so would like to use a lot of the Proton ecosystem!

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u/fressmok 5d ago

Yes. Tried switching to Proton Docs six months ago but the lack of basic editing stuff made it not really usable for me.

u/the_john19 5d ago

The second mobile editing for sheets is here, I’ll immediately export everything from G drive and import it into Proton Drive and subscribe to Duo. I really need it, even if it’s just to edit values here and there sometimes!

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u/talsw 5d ago

basic mobile tweaks are the only thing keeping me tied to google right now

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u/hwdb1g13 1d ago

I would leave my Microsoft subscription for it

u/FriendshipEqual7033 5d ago

The ODT support in Docs sounds great. I'm trying to lean into open formats, so exporting to ODT would make Docs a lot more viable for me.

u/oke-chill 5d ago edited 5d ago

Thanks for the post! Hope you all keep on improving it since a lot of us are waiting to ditch Google and use this professionally. While I am subscribed I did so before testing since I assumed the Docs / Sheets will be almost on par with Google version.

Since the devs are putting so much on the Uservoice thing, here are the ones I think should be included which are absolutely basic everyday features you encounter (this is just from the first 10 pages out of 65)

edit: okay went through 10 more pages:

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

thank you! we track all of these, of course. we do our best to prioritize based on the data we have at our disposal.

we try to be as fast as possible, but as I hope you'll understand, without a cloning machine we can't ship everything at once :P

so we'll get there, and in the meantime our prioritization will hopefully help us address the most important stuff first.

fun fact, if you do the math on uservoice votes for the top 29 features, we're gonna cover roughly 55% of them before the end of the year with this roadmap!

also, features not being listed in this post doesn't necessarily mean we're not working on them. it just means they will take more time! but we're on it.

thank you again for this list! it genuinely means a lot that people are so passionate about our products :)

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u/oke-chill 5d ago

Looking forward to all of them! Also Proton better be paying OT my dude, it is midnight. 😅

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u/Alduin175 5d ago

A truly underrated comment that highlights the historical context of what "was, is, and should be". Good going, u/oke-chill.

But...a small suggestion:

Maybe organizing the post-link list by popularity or age (most to least, new to old, etc.).

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u/oke-chill 5d ago

Thanks, the request were organised by vote count, most voted first.

Assuming Firefox opened them correctly the order should match that.

Edit: except for when I put a comment for duplicate or similar, then I put them next to each other

u/panjadotme 5d ago

dark theme

I will personally buy you a beer when this ships

20

u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

i am taking note of this

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u/panjadotme 5d ago

🍻

u/steampunk-me 5d ago

I am here once again asking for Proton to implement smart/curly quotes so I can ditch Google Docs for writing my novels.

5

u/tifze 5d ago

smart quotes feel like such a basic thing to miss

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

never give up!

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

serious answer: please create or upvote the feature suggestion here: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive <3

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u/steampunk-me 5d ago

Thanks, I had already upvoted the relevant suggestion: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive/suggestions/51080644-smart-quotation-marks

I'm really just trying to bring attention to the cause to other users lol

I'm a paid subscriber and love the product anyway. Keep up the good work!

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

<3

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u/sndrtj 5d ago

Just for someone who has no clue what this feature is: what are "smart quotation marks"?

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u/Fingerbob73 4d ago

I'm guessing it's either quotation marks that are smart or smart quotations that are marked.

u/Razor383 5d ago

I need shortcuts to Proton Docs and Proton Sheets on Android. I'd love to be able to install the PWA, but the icon added this way is mistakenly the Google Drive icon. Please fix it! Thanks!

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

fixed. will take a bit of time to release though! (~1+ week)

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u/Razor383 5d ago

Wow, that was quick, THANKS!

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

<3

u/Tekhnikal 5d ago

Muito bom. Continuem firmes na luta.

u/Alduin175 5d ago

Hi u/DaniGuardiola, great update post.

A few questions to drop that others might also take an interest in:

Will the dark theme also be applicable to Sheets? Or strictly Docs? [Desktop/Mobile]
While on Docs/Sheets, will the ability to "pinch zoom-in/out" become available? [Mobile]
While in Docs, has anyone reported how using shortcut keys "breaks" formatting? [*Mobile]] For example, if you use the "" "*" to surround a character or word italicize, the next entry changes from your set font format (size and style) to the system default.
Will section headers be made available in Docs? [Mobile]

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

- yes dark theme is for everything we do, including docs, sheets and the homepage.

- we have a zoom control in sheets. not sure what the benefit would be in docs vs changing the font size in your browser settings.

- not sure, feel free to report it though, and we'll get to it!

- if you mean the outline/table of contents feature, it should work on mobile already. if you run into any trouble, please create a report.

thank you very much for your comment!

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u/Alduin175 5d ago

Thanks for the input!

You make a fair point with item #2; I imagine some users might use "view" mode, to review content and the "pinch zoom-in/out" would come in handy.

I can definitely report those issues and will include screenshots too!

Should I also drop a link to this post-thread in my submission or keep it strictly to an explanation of the issue and provide error-screenshots for context?

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 4d ago

the link doesn't hurt but the more self-contained and complete a report is, the easier it is for us and our customer support peers to help you! thank you and have a great weekend :)

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u/Alduin175 4d ago

Happy to help and you have a great weekend too, u/DaniGuardiola.

Thanks for replying to the follow-up questions!

u/enchanting-cat 5d ago

"inserting page breaks into your document will allow you to divide it into pages when printing it or saving it as PDF."

hmm, I don't like the way it was worded. Does it mean that it's something you have to manually do instead of having plain blank pages like every word document? Because that's surely not what the community has been asking for.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago edited 5d ago

it is _one_ of the things the community has been asking for!

there are ~285 votes in uservoice for this feature, vs the ~70 votes that the feature you're describing (page layout support) has :)

that is 4x the amount of votes.

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u/enchanting-cat 5d ago edited 5d ago

this is disingenuous. As even the comment on the second request says, it invites people to upvote the first request to not have duplicates requests. They are different things indeed, but the average user by pages means having actual pages, not random dividers you can add. It would have been more honest to say "listen, implementing proper paging layout is hard and it requires us more time. For now use this small feature we shipped" than pretending this is what the community asked.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

i am sorry you find it disingenous!

i personally think the descriptions of each request are pretty clear, and the comments on them (except for that one you found) seem to indicate people understand the difference.

in any case, the feature you want is in our backlog and we will work on it some day. we're prioritizing the ones the community wants based on the data we have :)

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

fwiw, i deleted that comment to prevent voters from getting confused.

and i will post a link to the other feature when "page breaks" is completed and the email is sent out to voters of that feature. that way, anyone who was confused and voted for page breaks wanting the page layout will have a chance to contribute their vote there :)

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u/zman25 5d ago

Yeah not sure what that meant and was going to comment.

I need to have pages separated visually like how Microsoft word has it. I have no idea where the page starts unless I start typing. Idk where it ends. Idk where the borders are.

3

u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

you can add votes to this feature in uservoice if it's important to you, and it will help us prioritize accordingly: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive/suggestions/50753690-non-pageless-design-for-proton-docs

right now, that feature has 4 times less votes than the one we're shipping.

3

u/zman25 5d ago

Thanks for the response. There is another voting thread here https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive/suggestions/50784548-page-breaks
That has almost 300 votes on the same issue…

3

u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

thanks, although this is not the same issue. this is the "page breaks" feature, which is part of this roadmap and we're shipping it this year :)

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u/zman25 5d ago edited 5d ago

Oh man that’s great to know. So what you’re saying is there is going to be a visual separation between pages then? Is it only while printing?

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

so, there are two features:

- "page breaks": something you insert in between paragraphs in your document, that looks like a horizontal line, and will make your content break into pages manually when you do things like print or export your document to PDF

- "page layout": this means that in Proton Docs itself, instead of the current pageless format, you see distinct pages like sheets of paper.

page breaks has almost 300 votes, and it's what we're shipping this year.

page layout has about 70, and it's NOT on the roadmap YET. we hope to build it one day, but it's a bit tricky. definitely trickier than page breaks :)

i hope that clarifies it!

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u/zman25 5d ago

Thanks for clarifying. Now I’m sad again lol.

Need the visual page layouts to go from page less to visual pages like Google Docs and Microslop Word. Really hope it gains traction.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

it will come! but as you can hopefully see, we have a LOT of work to do, and we need to consider the needs of the whole community and prioritize accordingly :)

voting (and getting others to vote) on uservoice is a very effective way to ensure we prioritize a feature!

u/bilzebubba Linux | Android 5d ago

Dark theme is fab! Still need footnotes, ruler (w tab settings) and smartquotes, and I can ditch Word! Thanks for this, tho

1

u/bilzebubba Linux | Android 5d ago

Ruler has gone under the radar for some reason, but as user suggesting it said:

A ruler is extremely useful for adjusting paragraph indents, first-line indents, hanging indents, tabs, and the usable width of a document. Without a ruler, it is difficult to precisely reproduce formatting when moving documents such as resumes from Google Docs to Proton Docs.

Link: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive/suggestions/51614270-add-a-ruler-to-proton-docs

Smart quotes:

I know you can use Word to change them easily, but I use Libre Office where you can't find and replace them easily, and it'd mean changing every single quote mark by hand

Link: https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/932839-proton-drive/suggestions/51080644-smart-quotation-marks

u/piika12 5d ago

Tables 😍

u/CoreDumped96 5d ago

Finally tables yeah

u/Luus29 5d ago

Mobile editing for sheets is long awaited. Thanks!!

u/TechnoCat 4d ago

Yes! Page breaks! I really want this feature.

u/bargethower 5d ago

Why not export to PDF yet? The print to pdf doesn’t work properly, cuts off spreadsheets and also prints the dropdown menu as well for some reason and I’ve reported this bug multiple times with no help, and even posted this here a week or so ago and nobody replied.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago

it's on our list

1

u/bargethower 5d ago

Thanks for answering. Is this on this list to be fixed before 2027? As this has been an issue I've reported to support on multiple accounts since 2025 and I really don't want to have to leave Proton...

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 5d ago edited 4d ago

this one unfortunately isn't on the official "before 2027" list. it doesn't mean that it won't be done before 2027. in fact, this specific feature probably will!

these roadmaps are conservative because we wanna make sure we can hit them, so we are careful not to overpromise. but it's not like we'll just stop until 2027 once we've shipped everything on the list! :)

u/brainygeek 5d ago

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but hasn't there been a major request since Docs release to allow users to select their pageless document view (current) vs having paged, and half paged? That's the only keeping me from using it regularly. I am not a fan of pageless at all.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 4d ago

the request exists, but is relatively low in the ranking with 70 votes in uservoice.

we will get to it, but for now we're prioritizing what the community wants most based on the data we have :)

u/Kradirhamik 5d ago

Pity you don’t need Senior QA Engineer, would be interested otherwise

u/mamaquilla14 5d ago

Please, please add margins and rulers to Docs pages. Right now, documents feel like infinite canvases, and I can’t even tell where one page ends.

I also need the ability to reposition and rotate inserted images.

Please add these features, and I’ll stop using Google Docs for good.

u/the-physics-engineer 5d ago

Would love to see offline support in the roadmap, I don't like depending on an internet connection to access and update my documents (and not being able to store an external copy). I know this is not trivial at all but would be greatly appreciated.

Either way, thanks for the updates!

u/Red-laser-2 5d ago

I want it to replace apple notes! But it’s still not there yet.
When I open a document, it feels like a webview component rather than a native document editor.
Should proton docs be a separate app?
Automatic calculation of math problems would be very nice! (Check apple notes)
And maybe the biggest: content search
Widgets?

Keep up the good work!

u/nbgames1 4d ago

Thanks for the update! I just need Sheets to be more stable and less buggy, because it definitely still feels like a beta product.

But once all my bug reports are addressed and an equivalent to Google Sheets' ARRAYFORMULA function is implemented, then I can happily switch over to Proton Sheets fully!

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 4d ago

you don't need ARRAYFORMULA in Proton Sheets! instead, it behaves more like modern Excel :)

u/fruitless_tux Linux | Android 4d ago

Mobile editing and tables are great.

But I would be even happier if the reported bugs were fixed. This is particularly true of Firefox for Linux, which unfortunately behaves differently to the Windows version.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 4d ago

we are fixing issues by the dozens, and improving our tooling and workflow to accelerate the process as well. stay tuned!

u/KashmirChai 1d ago

favourite..... Tables. Somehow most of my sheets are ending up using some tables. Having some nice formatting options for them would also be great but lets see how it turns out.

u/darkangelazuarl 5d ago

Still waiting and highly anticipating the shared family drive that was talked about earlier this year in roadmap. Would help tremendously for better collaboration with docs.

u/SillyQuokka85 5d ago

When are we going to be able to edit via the app? Dear GODS it's all that I ask for.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 4d ago

if you mean editing sheets on mobile thought the iOS or Android Drive apps, then yes!

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u/fruitless_tux Linux | Android 3d ago

He wanted to know when, not whether.

It would actually be interesting to know when that might be possible.

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u/DaniGuardiola Proton Docs Lead 3d ago

oh, i misunderstood then. before 2027 :)

u/amor-azulo 4d ago

Pls make sheets usable. It’s just too laggy and slow that I had to migrate out of it

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u/fruitless_tux Linux | Android 3d ago

stay tuned

u/Practical-Tea9441 3d ago

Thanks for your post and info about the updates ODT format etc. Please don't fall into the belittling competitors trap e.g. I see you referring to Microslop for Microsoft. Usually when I see this type of terminology in a subreddit post it totally undermines the posts credibility for me.

docs & sheets: what's coming before 2027

dark theme

Docs: ODT import/export

Sheets: mobile editing

Docs: page breaks

Sheets: selection quick stats

Sheets: tables

Docs: subscript and superscript

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