Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

ContentsIndex

Hour 14: Entering Spreadsheet Data

Previous HourNext Hour

Sections in this Hour:

 

Entering Data in Your Spreadsheet


Hours 15, "Using Formulas, Functions, and Names," and 16, "Formatting Your Spreadsheet," provide more detailed information on entering spreadsheet data. In this hour, however, you'll being entering basic numbers and dates, and you'll see how text can be formatted.

Entering Numbers, Dates and Text

You can enter information in a StarOffice spreadsheet just as you do in a word processor; the only difference is that you enter it one cell at a time.

Each time you type information into a cell, StarOffice examines what you enter and determines what type of data it is. Hour 15 provides more information about formulas; to begin, though, here are a few rules that you'll see StarOffice following as you enter data:

Tip - You can turn off Capitalization as part of the AutoCorrect feature. See Hour 12, "Using Spellcheck and the Thesaurus."


There is one important point about entering numbers: Although the display formatting constrains how numbers are shown in the spreadsheet, the cell actually stores the full number that you enter. Try the following experiment:

1. Open a new spreadsheet so that the default settings apply.

2. Click in a cell so that you can enter a number.

3. Enter the following number (or another one with several decimal places):


45.149874

4. Press Enter. The focus moves to the next cell down, but notice how the number in the cell is rounded to two decimal places:


45.15

5. Press the up arrow key once to return the focus to the cell where you entered the number.

6. Look at the input line above the cells and notice that it still contains the full number you entered (see Figure 14.12).

Figure 14.12
Numbers are displayed according to formatting rules, but they are stored with their full precision.

This is the important point: When you refer to a cell in a formula, the full number is used in calculations--not the rounded number that might be displayed on screen. This means that your calculations are accurate no matter how you format cells. (Cell formatting is described in Hour 16.)

Cutting, Pasting, and Moving

As with information in a word processor, information in spreadsheet cells can be deleted, copied, and pasted. The difference is that data in spreadsheets is more structured, and therefore has more rules and possibilities attached to it.

When you're working in a spreadsheet, you can use several methods to delete things. When you have a block of cells full of information, you can

  • Delete the contents of the cells, so that they are all empty. Use the Delete key or the Delete Contents item on the Edit menu. You can also use the Undo item from the Edit menu to reverse a delete operation.

  • Delete the contents of the cells by pressing the backspace key. This method doesn't use a confirmation dialog box; it simply clears the cell contents.

  • Delete the contents of the cells and place them in the paste buffer, as if you were using cut and paste in a word processor. Use the Cut item on the Edit menu, or press Ctrl+X.

  • Delete the cells from the spreadsheet so that other cells, which might have other numbers in them, move up or over to fill the space in the spreadsheet left by the deletion. Use the Delete Cells option on the Edit menu.

If you want to copy information, you can use Copy from the Edit menu, or the Ctrl+C key combination. This is similar to the Cut operation, except that the cell contents are not deleted.

Spreadsheets contain different types of information, such as labels (text), numbers, and formulas that resolve (calculate) into numbers (values). Because of this, you can paste information into cells using several different rules.

When you paste cells that you have cut or copied, you can decide exactly which pieces of the structured spreadsheet information you want to place in the new location.

To see how this works, select some cells and press Ctrl+C to place them in the buffer. Then select Paste Special from the Edit menu. The Paste Special dialog box appears (see Figure 14.13).

Figure 14.13
Pasting information can take many forms in the Paste Special dialog box.

Notice that you can select which types of information are to be pasted into the cells at the current focus point in the spreadsheet.

Tip - If you use Ctrl+V or the regular Paste item on the Edit menu, everything is pasted--without regard to the type of data being pasted.


The Paste Special command gives you control over what is pasted, how existing cells are shifted around, and other operations that can be performed during the paste operation.

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

ContentsIndex

Hour 14: Entering Spreadsheet Data

Previous HourNext Hour

Sections in this Hour: