Great question.  I have talked with a number of potential customer as well as actual customers.  The most unusual application came from a school educator.  The course being taught was a continuing education course in programming VBA code within Excel.  The instructor was looking for a way to present the assignments to the students and both receive and track receipt of completed assignments from the students. 

Distributed Spreadsheet was an easy solution.  The instructor creates a workbook containing a single worksheet for each student.  Each student is assigned Contributor status for their page.  The instructor put all the assignment details on the first worksheet and then copied the first worksheet to all the other pages.  The worksheets are sent to the students via Distributed Spreadsheet.  Each student receives only their assigned worksheet.  When the students complete their assignment, they return their worksheet containing the assignment ... (more)

Yes, sort of.  On the Distributed Spreadsheet website is a video tour of Distributed Spreadsheet.  The tour is based on the distributing, returning, collecting and merging of worksheets using one of the included sample workbooks.  The tour is probably better than talking to an actual user as the variety of usage models are all presented; most users employ a single usage model.  Give this link a try and see if this addresses your information needs.   http://www.c-e-p-inc.com/video/DS_Tour.htm

**** I am happy to announce the availability of Version 2.0 of Distributed Spreadsheet.  The 12-Contributor limit is NO MORE!!!!! ******

FREE upgrades for all current customers. 

In version 1.06 of Distributed Spreadsheet, the limit of 12 applies only to the merging process.  This means that in a single merge of contributed worksheets, only the work of 12 Contributors can be merged in a single step.  Allow me to explain further.

Distributed Spreadsheet works by assigning users as “Contributors” to worksheets within a workbook.  Let’s assume the workbook in question had a total of 25 worksheets.  There are 20 employees who will act as Contributors and each has been assigned a unique page within the workbook (it is permitted to assign a single user to multiple worksheets if necessary.  It is not recommended to assign multiple users to the same worksheet). ... (more)