Patent ID: 8230321

Claim:
A system for providing an electronic multidimensional spreadsheet comprising a plurality of cells identified by a cell address along each dimension of the spreadsheet, including a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon program code for displaying and/or hiding on a user interface, elements of a range of cells, the range of cells comprising one or a plurality of contiguous elements aligned along a given spreadsheet dimension, an element comprising one or a plurality of cells, the program code comprising: (A) program code for detecting a command for hiding at least one element in a selected range of cells, the command identifying the selected range of cells and identifying a display focus level selected from an ordered set of display focus levels defined for the selected range of cells wherein the set of focus levels reflects a user defined display hierarchy; (B) program code for identifying the selected range of cells comprising the element to hide; (C) program code for identifying the selected display focus level; (D) program code for identifying a table selected from a horizontal level range table, vertical level range table, horizontal range table, and vertical range table, the identified table associated with the selected range of cells, a focus manager linked to the identified table and associating each defined display focus level with at least one user defined cell content criteria to apply to the content of the at least one element, wherein a given display focus level is associated with a given cell in the selected range of cells if the given cell's content value matches the user defined cell content criteria for the given display focus level, wherein said user defined cell content criteria includes a user defined relationship to a predefined threshold value; and (E) program code for selectively displaying the element on the user interface only if the associated display focus level for the element is at least equal to or higher than the selected display focus level.