Display multi-sheet spreadsheet with only a browser and a link

[artengill]

Hi,

I have written a small spreadsheet app on my PC (windows 10) using LibreOffice calc. This spreadsheet contains three separate sheets within the app, one for individual player scores, a second cross-ref showing who has played who, the last the computed average for each player. I have moved the spreadsheet into a Dropbox folder and use LibreOffice on my PC to update the spreadsheet. The app works exactly as required and tabbing between sheets absolutely no problem.

Now I wanted to be able to display only, (edit Not allowed), the 3 sheets on an android, an iPad, iPhone or another PC. I wrote a blog in wordpress.com and gave the user the option to click a link that pointed directly to the Dropbox file. It worked! The first sheet displayed beautifully on all the devices.
My big mystery is why? None of the tablet devices had wordpress.com, Dropbox or LibreOffice installed. All they had was a browser and a link. How did the device know how to interpret the LibreOffice file in Dropbox?

Bigger mystery was that none of the devices would display sheet 2 and sheet 3. By accident I tried it on a device that happened to have Dropbox installed ( Not LibreOffice or wordpress.com) and strangely enough now I could display all 3 sheets.
I'm not complaining, I've got a superb app that all players can easily access and get up-to-date results with little if any change on their device. Just curious to know how it is working!

Thanks

Mike

[Walter]

Hey @artengill, thanks for using Dropbox and posting on our Community!

Could you please send us a screenshot of how the preview looks like and also clarify if this happens when people are accessing the shared links that point to your files are logged into a Dropbox account or not?

This would help us assist further. 

[artengill]

Hi Walter,

User clicks on a link in my wordpress blog and "Resultsheet" is shown.

The "Result" sheet screen is the first to display with the 3 sheet tabs at the very bottom left corner. User clicks on "Average" tab to display the averages.  The user does NOT require libreoffice or wordpress installed on their "phone". However without Dropbox installed only the first sheet (Result) is displayed. To display the other sheet tabs the user needs to install Dropbox on their phone. ONLY installed NOT registered or opened. This works on android, iphone and ipad. 

Result SheetAverage Sheet

[Nancy · Accepted solution]

Hi from me as well, @artengill!

In general, previews may work better if the Dropbox mobile app has been installed, as it has the "ability” to preview the files correctly. 

If your users use the mobile browser instead to access these sheets, the preview may differ depending on the device OS of each user and the web browser they’re accessing it from.

I hope this clarifies things a bit.