A representation of a spreadsheet is displayed on a mobile communication device after receiving a description of a spreadsheet. The description relates to a plurality of map cells, where each map cell corresponds to a cell block, and the description includes location information and primary data type information for each map cell. Based on the location and content-type information in the description, a pictorial representation of the spreadsheet may be generated and displayed to a user of the mobile communication device. A mobile device server may not only generate the description, but also may interpret the user's selection of a region of interest and transmit enough information about the region of interest for the mobile communication device to present the region of interest to the user in a conventional viewer.