Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 13: Creating Spreadsheets with StarCalc

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Setting Spreadsheet Options


In Hour 4, "Configuring StarOffice," you learned about setting options that apply to everything that you do in StarOffice. You can also set options that apply to how StarOffice works with and formats spreadsheets.

Tip - The options that you set while viewing a spreadsheet are specific to that file and are saved with that file. If you open a new spreadsheet, the default spreadsheet options are used.


To view or set the spreadsheet options, select Options from the Tools menu; then choose Spreadsheet from the submenu. The Spreadsheet Options dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 13.11.

Figure 13.11
The first tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box, Contents, enables you to set preferences for how spreadsheet information is displayed.

The Spreadsheet options dialog box consists of six tabs where you can set different options. The most important options are described in the following sections.

Choosing What to Display Onscreen

A spreadsheet contains a lot of information behind what you see onscreen. Formulas, charts, values, and notes can be part of different cells.

From the Contents tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box, you can select parts of the spreadsheet to be displayed onscreen. In the top part of the dialog box, you can check any item that you want displayed.

Tip - Notice that these display options are similar to the options for printing in the Sheet tab of the Page Style dialog box, described in the previous section. Remember that the options described here affect only onscreen display.


For example, if you want to have formulas displayed instead of the result of the formula calculation, you can check the Formulas check box in the Display field.

By default, any values in your spreadsheet that calculate to zero, or that you enter as a zero, are displayed. Also, any notes that you enter for a cell are visually noted in two ways. A red dot in the corner of a cell indicates that the cell has a note attached. When you leave the mouse pointer over a cell for a few seconds, the note appears in yellow (see Figure 13.12).

Figure 13.12
A note can be added to any cell. If the file is configured to view notes, they appear automatically when the mouse is left over a cell.

For objects, such as graphic images and charts, you can select from a drop-down list in the bottom part of the dialog box. You can choose to have any of these object types displayed, hidden, or used as a placeholder. (A placeholder appears, showing the size of the object, but without using the processing time or memory to prepare and display the real object.)

You can also select some display options from the Layout tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box (see Figure 13.13). The layout options define the display and color or gridlines, and whether screen elements such as the scroll bars, multisheet tabs, and page break lines are displayed.

Figure 13.13
The Layout tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box includes some display options.

Setting Input Options

In the Input tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box (see Figure 13.14), you can set preferences for how you use the keyboard to enter data in your spreadsheet.

When you're entering a lot of data in a spreadsheet, it can help to set where the focus goes when you press Enter, or whether pressing Enter in a cell starts Edit mode for the contents of that cell or just moves to a new cell. All these items can be set with the check boxes in the Input tab.

You can also select whether the row and column headings are highlighted for the currently selected cell.

Figure 13.14
The Input tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box determines how you use the keyboard to enter data in cells.

Adding a Grid to a Spreadsheet

When you use a spreadsheet, you probably think of the grid as the lines that divide the cells in the sheet. When you select printing options in the Page dialog box under the Format menu (in the Sheet tab), the grid does refer to the lines between cells.

In StarOffice, however, you can also turn on a grid of closely spaced dots to help you create or place charts or other objects within the spreadsheet. This is the grid that you're setting options for in the Grid tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box (shown in Figure 13.15).

Most of the time you won't want to use this grid at all. If you do, select the Visible grid check box. Checking the Snap to grid check box forces objects that you create or insert to be aligned on the grid points. A spreadsheet with a visible grid is shown in Figure 13.16.

Figure 13.15
The Grid tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box enables you to turn on a point grid to help you place objects in your spreadsheet.

Figure 13.16
A spreadsheet with a graphics grid can help you place objects such as charts and graphics files.

Setting Calculation Preferences

The Calculation tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box (shown in Figure 13.17) enables you to set how the formulas in your spreadsheet are to be calculated by StarOffice. These options refer to mathematical and alphanumeric operations.

Figure 13.17
The Calculation tab of the Spreadsheet Options dialog box determines how some operations in formulas are performed.

If you want to allow iterative formulas, check the Iterations check box. This enables self-referring formulas that reach a final value by a process of iterating--or refining--the cell value. The fields next to the Iterative check box determine how many times the formula iterates.

If the cell value doesn't change at least the amount in the Minimum Change value field, the iteration process stops. This keeps the formula from entering an endless loop .

The Date field is provided for compatibility with other programs or processes (including formulas) to which you might be accustomed. The difference in dating methods is only in where the dates begin. In the end, this isn't something that most users need to worry about.

The Decimal places field is the default number of decimal places to display in a cell. Of course, you can increase or decrease the number of decimal places displayed in any cell with a mouse click. This is just the default value for all cells.

Finally, the check boxes in the lower half of the dialog box are used for sorting and searching operations. They define how StarOffice determines the order of sorting, and which items qualify as matches for a search. This is a nice feature for manual searching or sorting.

Caution - When you start doing macros (which are not covered in this book), it's critical that you understand how the sorting and searching operations are done, and that you can adjust them here. Otherwise, your programmed operations might not turn out as you had planned.


Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 13: Creating Spreadsheets with StarCalc

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