How is Catalyzer different from a spreadsheet?
The key difference is structure: because you can put what you like where you like in a spreadsheet, there usually isn’t enough structure to merge sheets, mine the data or export it on the web. But if you already use spreadsheets very systematically with headings for each column and one table per sheet, then you will find it very easy to import them into Catalyzer. Catalyzer forces you to be more precise, (eg by giving types to columns – number, date, color, text, menu selection etc), with the result that you can browse and search the data much more efficiently. And you get tree structures more like a file system. Most spreadsheets also offer other functions like equations and charting that Catalyzer does not provide. But we do provide a convenient export function to take a subset of a catalog out into a spreadsheet if that is what you need.
