Patent ID: 8230322

Claim:
In an electronic multidimensional spreadsheet comprising a plurality of cells identified by a cell address along each dimension of the spreadsheet, a method 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 method comprising: (A) 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; (B) identifying the selected range of cells comprising the element to hide; (C) identifying the selected display focus level; (D) identifying a table associated with the selected range of cells, the table 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) 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.