Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 13: Creating Spreadsheets with StarCalc

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Printing Your Spreadsheet


Printing a spreadsheet can be a lot more complicated than printing a text document. Instead of just choosing which pages to print, you might need to print a certain block on the spreadsheet, compress its size, turn the grid on or off, or set other printing features. This section explores how to set these options and print your spreadsheet.

Setting the Print Area

When you have a large spreadsheet (several screens of data), you might want to print only a portion of the entire sheet. In StarOffice, you can select an area of your spreadsheet as the Print Area. Then, when you issue a command to print, only the part of the spreadsheet within the Print Area is printed.

You can define a Print Area, and then turn it on or off, so that the Print command prints only the Print Area or the entire spreadsheet, respectively.

To define a print area within a larger spreadsheet, follow these steps:

1. Select a block of cells within the spreadsheet, using either of the following methods:

2. Choose Print Range from the Format menu.

Caution - If you are not viewing a spreadsheet the Print Range option isn't shown on the Format menu.


3. Choose Set from the Print Range submenu.

After using this procedure, when you select Print, only the cells in the spreadsheet that you selected as the Print Area are printed.

If you want to print the entire spreadsheet again, you can choose the Clear item in the Print Range submenu of the Format menu. Then no Print Area is set, and each Print command prints everything.

To explore the Print Area options, select Edit from the Print Range submenu of the Format menu. The Edit Print Areas dialog box is displayed (see Figure 13.7).

Figure 13.7
In the Edit Print Areas dialog box, you can set which cells you want to print.

Tip - When you set a print area using the procedure outlined earlier, you're setting what StarOffice calls the User-Defined Print Area.


In the Print area part of the Edit Print Areas dialog box, you can select from the following three options from the drop-down list:

  • None--Don't use a Print area selection; print the entire spreadsheet when the Print command is issued.

  • User-defined--Print the area defined as the Print Area when the Print command is issued. The range of cells that is defined as the print area is shown in the field next to the drop-down list.

Selected--Print the selected block of cells when the Print command is issued. This is like a one-time print area. The range of selected cells is shown in the field next to the drop-down list.

You can use the Edit Print Areas dialog box to specify what you want to print using a few more options. If you choose None from the drop-down list, the entire spreadsheet is printed when you issue a Print command, but the User-defined Print area cell range isn't cleared. You can select it again from this list without having to set it again manually by selecting the cells.

If you choose Selected from the drop-down list in the dialog box, a Print command prints whatever cells you have selected. This is handy for printing several sections of a spreadsheet without setting and clearing the print area each time.

Caution - Be sure to reset your selection in the Edit Print Areas dialog box after you've used the selected setting for whatever you needed to print. Otherwise, you might try to print your spreadsheet later and be surprised to print only a single cell.

Using the Fit-to-Page Feature

One printing feature that always seems to be necessary when working on a spreadsheet is the fit-to-page feature.

When you've prepared a spreadsheet, you often want it to print onto a certain number of pages, scaling both directions to fit. Otherwise, you can end up with a single column or row on a separate page.

To set how many pages a spreadsheet is to print on, follow this procedure:

1. Choose Page from the Format menu (with a spreadsheet open).

2. Choose the Sheet tab in the Page dialog box (see Figure 13.8).

Figure 13.8
In the Sheet tab of the Page dialog box, you can fit your spreadsheet onto a fixed number of pages.

3. In the Scale area of the dialog box, click on the Maximum pages option.

4. Enter the number of pages on which to print in the field provided.

5. Select whether you want the pages printed from top to bottom or from right to left.

Here's an example of how you can use this feature. This hour walks through it without presenting actual spreadsheets, but it should still be clear.

Suppose you had prepared a long expense report with several columns for date, city, descriptions, amount, exchange rate, and so on. When you printed the expense report, the far-right column printed on a separate page. The entire printout was four pages long, two each way, although the two pages on the right (looking at all the pages arranged correctly after being printed) contained only a single column.

Now, if you use the Sheet tab of the Page dialog box, you can choose Maximum pages and enter 2, and then select print Top to bottom. StarOffice compresses the spreadsheet horizontally just enough to fit all the columns onto one page, but still prints two pages (see Figure 13.9).

Figure 13.9
The fit-to-page feature squeezes your spreadsheet onto the number of pages that you specify.

Caution - If you try to squeeze too many cells onto too few pages (I always try for one page), StarOffice does it; however, you can't read the type--it is too small.

Turning Grid Lines On or Off

When you print spreadsheets in StarOffice, you can also choose from other options that define what parts of the spreadsheet are printed.

Each of these are selected individually in the Page dialog box (choose Page from the Format menu while viewing a spreadsheet), in the Sheet tab.

The following options are listed in the dialog box. You can select whether each one prints:

  • Column and Row Headers --Include the alphanumeric labels on columns (such as column D). When you include these labels, you can troubleshoot your spreadsheet by checking formulas and references to actual cells in the sheet.

  • Grid--The grid in the spreadsheet is made up of the vertical and horizontal lines that separate cells. If you've turned on shading or other formatting (such as borders on some cells), you might not want the grid labels in the way.

  • On the other hand, if you have a complex or busy spreadsheet, the grid lines make it much easier to read.

  • Formulas--Printing formulas means that instead of printing the results of a formula, the behind-the-scenes instructions are printed. For example, instead of printing


$23,419

    the formula that generated the number is printed--perhaps something similar to the following:


=sum(D7:D28)

    If you're reviewing your spreadsheet design or looking for potential errors before you pass on your work, printing the formulas enables you to check how the sheet is put together.

Tip - Printing Formulas works best if you also print Column and row Headers. That way you can see which cells a formula refers to.


  • Notes--You can add a note to any cell in your spreadsheet (just choose Note from the Insert menu). If you choose to print notes, they are added to your printed pages as footnotes are in a report. If notes are not printed, they are visible only when you view the spreadsheet onscreen.

  • Charts--Charts that have been imported or created in your spreadsheet can add a lot visually, but they take a lot of time and toner to print. While you're in the draft stages of preparing a spreadsheet, you can choose not to print Charts.

  • Zeros--Sometimes it's important to distinguish between cells that have values of zero and cells that are just empty (have no data entered). This option enables you to have StarCalc indicate in your printed pages the cells in which a zero value occurs. A zero can be typed in or can be the result of a formula calculation.

After you've chosen which items to print, choose OK in the dialog box to set those options.

Choosing the Page Format

As with text documents, you need to correctly define the overall page layout that you'll be using. This amounts to the following two things above all:

  • Landscape or portrait style (long or tall pages)

  • Page size

You can decide on landscape or portrait depending on the layout of the spreadsheet that you're preparing. Use whatever fits the shape of the data best.

Both of these options can be set in the Page Style dialog box. Just follow these steps:

1. Choose Page from the Format menu.

2. Click on the Page tab in the Page dialog box. (See Figure 13.10.)

Figure 13.10
The Page tab of the Page dialog box enables you to set paper size and print orientation.

3. In the Paper format part of the dialog box, check that the page size drop-down list displays Letter. (Select Letter if it doesn't.)

4. To the right of the paper size field, click on the Landscape or Portrait buttons to change the print orientation.

Tip - The results of your changes in this dialog box are shown graphically in the Preview area of the dialog box (on the right side). Changes don't take effect, however, until you choose OK.


5. Review other options in this dialog box, such as page margins and page numbering, to see whether you want to make other changes.

6. Choosing OK causes your changes to take effect, and closes the dialog box.

Caution - If the margins that you've set in the page formatting don't seem to match what comes out on your printed pages, you probably have the paper size set to A4 instead of Letter.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 13: Creating Spreadsheets with StarCalc

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