Parts of the Main Calc Window

Getting Started with OpenOffice 4

Chapter 4: Getting Started with Calc

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• What is Calc
• Parts of the main Calc window
• Open and Save CSV files
• Navigating within spreadsheets
  • Going to a particular cell
  • Moving from cell to cell
  • Moving from sheet to sheet
• Selecting items in a sheet or a spreadsheet
  • Selecting Cells
  • Selecting Columns and Rows
  • Selecting Sheets
• Working with Columns and Rows
• Working with Sheets
• Viewing Calc
• Entering data using the keyboard
• Speeding up data entry
• Validating cell contents
• Editing data
• Formatting data
• Auto-formatting cells and sheets
• Formatting spreadsheets using themes
• Using conditional formatting
• Hiding and showing data
• Sorting records
• Using formulas and functions
• Analyzing data
• Printing from Calc
  • Using Print Ranges
  • Selecting the Page Order, Details, and Scale
  • Page Breaks
  • Headers and Footers

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Parts of the Main Calc Window

When Calc is started, the main window looks similar to Figure 62.

Title Bar

The Title bar, located at the top, shows the name of the current spreadsheet. When the spreadsheet is newly created, its name is Untitled X, where X is a number. When you save a spreadsheet for the first time, you are prompted to enter a name of your choice.

Menu Bar

Under the Title bar is the Menu bar. (On a Mac, the Menu bar is at the top of the screen, above the Title bar, the same location as for other Mac applications.) When you choose one of the menus, a sub menu appears with other options. You can modify the Menu bar, as discussed in Chapter 11 (Setting up and Customizing Apache OpenOffice).

Toolbars

Three toolbars are located under the Menu bar by default: the Standard toolbar, the Formatting toolbar, and the Formula Bar.

The icons (buttons) on these toolbars provide a wide range of common commands and functions. You can also modify these toolbars, as discussed in Chapter 11 (Setting up and Customizing Apache OpenOffice).

In the Formatting toolbar, the three boxes on the left are the Apply Style, Font Name, and Font Size lists. They show the current setting for the selected cell or area. (The Apply Style list may not be visible by default.) Click the down-arrow to the right of each box to open the list.

Formula Bar

On the left-hand side of the Formula bar is a small text box, called the Name Box, with a letter and number combination in it, such as D7. This combination, called the cell reference, is the column letter and row number of the selected cell.

To the right of the Name box are the  Function Wizard' ,  Sum , and  Function  buttons.

Clicking the Function Wizard button opens a dialog from which you can search through a list of available functions This can be very useful because it also shows how the functions are formatted.

In a spreadsheet the term function covers much more than just mathematical functions. See Chapter 7 in the Calc Guide for more details.

Clicking the Sum button inserts a formula into the current cell that totals the numbers in the cells above the current cell. If there are no numbers above the current cell, then the cells to the left are placed in the Sum formula.

Clicking the Function button inserts equals (=) sign into the selected cell and the Input line, thereby enabling the cell to accept a formula.

When you enter new data into a cell, the Sum and Equals buttons change to  Cancel  and  Accept  buttons .

The contents of the current cell (data, formula, or function) are displayed in the Input line, which forms the remainder of the Formula Bar. You can edit the contents of the current cell on the Input line or in the cell itself. To edit on the Input line, click in the line, then type your changes. To edit within the current cell, just double-click the cell.