Hi Yair,

1. When it comes to the Excel File, it depends what kind of 'complicated functionalities' it might have.

- For example, if you have any formulas on it  - Excel with formulas can't be used.

- But if you pass this to a Google Sheet and have formulas on your Google Sheet, you can use this with our Tables.

Please check this Guide to see how you can link a Google Sheet with Formulas to our Table.

So if you can elaborate a bit more, how the Excel Sheet will look, if you can show some screenshots or a Video?

- For example, if you merge any cells - merging of cells is not supported for Tables from linked files.

You can only merge cells in our Simple Tables.

2. When it comes to clients receiving their passwords, and limiting access to a Table for a specific user if they log in :

Our Plugin does not have anything like that.

You can only try a workaround, where you use a Membership Plugin.

Any Membership Plugin can be used to restrict access to a certain Page.

For example, you can either have one page for each User;

For User Role 1, for example - you can make a Page, where only this User Role can enter and it will block anyone else;

and there you can make a Table shortcode filtered only for that User to see his data, etc;

On another Page 2 - it can be differently filtered for another user, and so on...

You just have to configure the 'restrictions of access' outside our Plugin via Membership Plugins and you can also add Custom Roles with something like "user Role Editor" Plugin.

3. You can also try this feature, if you wish to make one Table which will limit for each user what they can see.

Creating Editable Tables in WordPress where users can see and edit only their own data.

Please note, that feature is available only for editable Tables.

So you can import the Data from your Sheet :

 If you import the file, the plugin reads the source file and creates a manual table. 

Once the table is created, it is no longer linked to the source file, so changing data in the table will not show up in Excel or Google Spreadsheet, and vice-versa. 

This table will be editable in our Plugin.

If you need quicker editing, you can either switch to the Excel-like view, 

and then select and copy the range of cells you want to paste from the source file, and paste it in the Excel-like view, 

or you can Update manual tables from source files (CSV, Excel or Google sheet) with three options :

• Replace data within an existing table.
• Or Add data to an existing table.
•  Or  Replace the entire table with new data.

-

Or, if you wish to have a source Sheet which you will edit - and have that linked/sync with the Table :

 if you Link the table to Google Spreadsheets,

when you modify or add new rows on the source sheet,

 the plugin will show those changes within 15 minutes (since there's cache on Google's side). 

If you don't want to face any issues with Google cache, i recommend to try our Cache and Auto Update Cache Feature, which helps with performance and you can also set up custom update time via Cron Job.

If you need to use Private Sheets, you can try the Google Sheets API method. 

- This table will not be editable from the plugin side,  but it will be synced with editing from the source Sheet.

And i just wanted to point out that you can try wpDataTables before purchasing

 on our sandbox Demo sites ( you can find links for the main plugin Demo,  

as well as add-on Demos, in my signature),

and there is a 15-day money-back guarantee period, 

so if you purchase the plugin, you can safely fully test it out, and if it doesn't fit your needs you can request and receive a refund in that period. ( same goes for all plugins and add-ons)

Let me know if you have any additional questions. 

Hi Yair,

Sorry - I just forgot to add one more 'workaround', for example if you wish to make a Table linked from a Google/or Excel Sheet;

and if you wish to create a pre-defined filter which will only show the rows associated for each user ( by user ID, or Username) and it will hide other user's rows.

We have a workaround for non-editable ( linked to a file source) tables, 

to restrict only showing the rows for the currently logged-in user.

I will show you an example.

- First, you would have to add a custom "user_id" column on the source Excel side, which you can hide if needed in our plugin from the front-end. 

We will add a predefined filter value to it, using a Place Holder "Current User ID";

- Check that the filter type is set as "Text", as shown on this screenshot.

- Here is how an example table linked to a source file looks before we make any changes, with visible filters above the table.

And now, when we set the pre-filter, with Administrator logged in ( In our case, the user ID is 1), we only see rows matching that user ID.

- (If you need more detailed information about using Place Holders in wpDataTables, here is our documentation about that https://wpdatatables.com/documentation/table-features/using-placeholders/);

- The user_ID filter is still visible, which means, if someone changes/deletes this value, they could see the whole table.

We will hide it from the front-end with some custom CSS added in the "Customize" section of the main table settings.

- It should be easy to do, depending on your knowledge of HTML and CSS.

You have to find the correct selector using the browser inspector tool, add the style "display:none" property to it, and it will disappear from the front-end.

On our example table, the custom CSS is :

#table_1_5_filter_sections  {
    display:none; }

- Now, the user_ID filter is gone from the front-end.

- Optionally, you can hide the user_id column from the front-end, if needed, either using the column settings tab or the "column list" button from the back end Admin area.

- If you need more details about this, don't hesitate to contact us further.

So please go over all the details from both replies and let me know if that can work for you,  and if you have any additional questions.

Thanks.