Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 17: Adding Charts and Graphics to Spreadsheets

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Hour 17
Adding Charts and Graphics to Spreadsheets

This hour guides you through creating graphics and charts from the data in your spreadsheet, and then inserting those graphics into your spreadsheet or exporting them for other uses.

StarOffice includes many types of chart options. You'll learn how to use the most popular ones in this hour. You'll also see how to modify and format charts after they're created and inserted into your spreadsheet.

Adding a Graphic to a Spreadsheet


After formatting your spreadsheet with the options presented in Hour 16, "Formatting Your Spreadsheet," you can add graphic images of your data (charts) to further spruce up the look of your spreadsheet.

Importing a Graphic File

Hour 11, "Adding Graphics to Documents," described how to add a graphic to a text document. The process is identical for adding a graphic to a spreadsheet. Just follow these steps:

1. Move to the cell in which the upper left corner of the graphic image is to be positioned.

Tip - You can move or resize the image after you import it, but it's helpful to have the graphic near the location at which you want it.


2. Choose Picture from the Insert menu. Then choose From File from the Picture submenu. The Insert Picture dialog box appears (see Figure 17.1).

Figure 17.1
Select a graphics file to insert from the Insert Picture dialog box.

Tip - You can also create a picture in the Image Editor or StarDraw and insert it into your spreadsheet. Using the Image Editor is described in Hour 11. The use of StarDraw is described in Hour 6, "Creating Graphics with StarDraw."


3. Browse through the filesystem until you find the graphics file you want to insert.

4. Select the Preview checkbox and click on a listed filename once to view it in the Preview window; double-click the filename to choose and load it.

Caution - Importing a graphic file can make your spreadsheet file very large. If you're concerned about this, or if the graphic file might change, use the Link checkbox in the Insert picture dialog box so that the picture is reloaded from the original graphic file each time you open the spreadsheet. Note that if the graphic file is later moved or the spreadsheet file is copied to another machine, this method might loose the image, displaying an empty box instead.


5. The graphic is loaded into the spreadsheet and appears as a selected item (with green handles and an anchor icon). See Figure 17.2.

Figure 17.2
A newly-imported graphic is selected, ready to edit using the procedures in the following section.

Editing an Imported Graphic

After you load a graphic file into your spreadsheet, you can move and edit it in many ways. Although this is covered in detail in Hour 11, Table 17.1 shows you the most important things that you can do with an imported graphic.

Table 17.1  Editing Imported Graphics

Action

Steps

Select the graphic

Click once anywhere on the image.

Move the graphic

Select the image. Click and drag the image to a new location.

Resize the graphic

Select the image.Click and drag on a green corner handle. (Hold down the Shift key while dragging to maintain the aspect ratio)

Do bitmap editing on an image

Double-click on the image to open it within an Image Editor window

Arrange the image within several layers

Right click on a selected image and select an item from the Arrange submenu


Note - Because a spreadsheet isn't arranged in paragraphs and pages, you can't use the justification and alignment settings for a graphic in a spreadsheet.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 17: Adding Charts and Graphics to Spreadsheets

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