Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 16: Formatting Your Spreadsheet

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Hour 16
Formatting Your Spreadsheet

In this hour, you will learn how to change the formatting of your spreadsheet.

The look of a StarCalc spreadsheet is almost as flexible as a StarWriter document. This hour describes how to set text attributes such as boldface, colors, and currency style. In addition, you'll learn how to add and delete rows and columns, and to use some other StarOffice features that make viewing and arranging your spreadsheet more convenient.

Changing Fonts and Sizes


When you write a report, you use headlines, special fonts, and italic and bold text to help get your point across. A spreadsheet is no different. The information that you are communicating needs to be easy to access and appealing--even attractive.

The best way to start making your spreadsheet attractive is to set up the fonts and text attributes that make information easier to locate and read.

When you're viewing a spreadsheet, most of the text formatting options you'll use are included in the Object Bar (see Figure 16.1).

Figure 16.1
The Object Bar contains many of the text formatting features that you'll use.

Included in the Object bar are the following text formatting options:

All these formatting options can be set using menu items in the Format menu, but the Object toolbar provides a quick shortcut. In the sections that follow, you'll learn how to work with these formatting options.

Formatting Cell by Cell

Formatting in a text document can be for a word, a paragraph, a page, or an entire document. Different formatting options apply to different areas of the document.

In Hour 13, "Creating Spreadsheets with StarCalc," you learned about printing a spreadsheet and setting options such as margins and page headers.

Almost everything else in a spreadsheet is formatted on a cell-by-cell basis. That is, all the choices that you make apply to one or more individual cells. When you select a column and apply a formatting option, you're really applying that option to each cell in the column, and not to the column itself.

Tip - There isn't much time to talk about it here, but cells can also use Styles, as described in Hour 9, "Using Advanced Formatting Tools." This means that you can apply several formatting options to a cell at one time by assigning it a named style.

Setting a Font and Size

Suppose that you want to make headlines for the main column headings in your spreadsheet. You might have a spreadsheet similar to the one in Figure 16.2.

Figure 16.2.
A spreadsheet often needs its column headings highlighted for easy reading.

You can use your own spreadsheet for this example. To make the column headings more readable and attractive, follow these steps:

1. Click on the far left column heading, hold the mouse button down, and drag right to select the entire block of column headings (see Figure 16.3).

Figure 16.3
All the column headings can be formatted at one time by selecting the cells before selecting a formatting option.

Tip - You can also use the keyboard arrows while holding down the Shift key to select a block of cells.


2. In the Format menu, choose Cells.... The Cell Attributes dialog box appears. Choose the Font tab (see Figure 16.4).

3. Select a font from the list under the Font field in the dialog box.

4. Select a style from the list under the Style field.

5. Select a size from the list under the Size field. If you're viewing text in point sizes (you can set this in the Options dialog box), the common sizes for headlines range from 12 to 24 points.

6. Choose OK to close the dialog box and apply your choices to all the cells that were selected when you opened the dialog box (see Figure 16.5).

Figure 16.4.
Cell formatting options can be set in the Cell Attributes dialog box.

Tip - In the Preview window of the dialog box, the font you define by your choices is shown for your review.


Figure 16.5
A 14-point Helmet font is used for these headlines.

You can set all sorts of things in the Cell Attribute dialog box, as you'll see in a minute. But after you're familiar with what you can do, it's usually easier to use the Object toolbar. You can still format a group of cells at the same time by selecting them before choosing a formatting option. With the cells selected, you can use the Object toolbar for any of the following operations:

Figure 16.6
A font can be chosen for selected cells from the drop-down list on the Object toolbar.

Figure 16.7
A font size can be chosen for selected cells from the drop-down list on the Object toolbar.

Figure 16.8
Bold, Italic, and Underline buttons are applied to any selected cells, or just to the cell with current focus.

Figure 16.9
Selected cells can be left-, center-, or right-justified using buttons on the Object bar.

Figure 16.10
Selected cells can also have their contents placed against the top or bottom of the cell border, or vertically centered in the cell.

Caution - Knowing how to set justification on cells is important because StarOffice sets justification automatically to the right side for words and to the left side for numbers, which might not fit how you want them to look.


Tip - Remember, if you leave the mouse pointer over a button for a couple of seconds, a small pop-up help dialog box tells you what the button is used for.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 16: Formatting Your Spreadsheet

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