Splitting the window

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 2.x

Chapter 7: Getting Started with Calc

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• Parts of the main Calc window
• File management
• Navigating within spreadsheets

• Going to a particular cell
• Moving from cell to cell
• Moving from sheet to sheet

• Selecting cells
• Selecting columns and rows
• Inserting columns and rows
• Deleting columns and rows
• Working with sheets

• Inserting new sheets
• Deleting sheets
• Renaming sheets

• Viewing Calc

• Freezing rows and columns
• Splitting the window

• Entering data into a sheet
• Printing

• Print options
• Selecting sheets to print
• Printing rows or columns on every page
• Defining a print range

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Another way to change the view is by splitting the window—otherwise known as splitting the screen. The screen can be split either horizontally or vertically or both. This allows you to have up to four portions of the sheet in view at any one time.

Why would you want to do this? Imagine you have a large sheet and one of the cells has a number in it which is used by three formulas in other cells. Using the split screen technique, you can position the cell containing the number in one section and each of the cells with formulas in the other sections. Then you can change the number in the cell and watch how it affects each of the formulas.

File:SplitScreen.png

Figure 11: Split screen example.

Splitting the screen horizontally

To split the screen horizontally:

1. Move the mouse pointer into the vertical scroll bar, on the right-hand side of the screen, and place it over the small button at the top with the black triangle.
2. Immediately above this button you will see a thick black line (Figure 12). Move the mouse pointer over this line and it will turn into a line with two arrows.
3. Hold down the left mouse button and a grey line will appear, running across the page. Drag the mouse downwards and this line will follow.
4. Release the mouse button and the screen will split into two views, each with its own vertical scroll bar.

File:Split-horiz.png

Figure 12: Split screen bar on vertical scroll bar.

Notice in Figure 11, the 'Beta' and the 'A0' values are in the upper part of the window and other calculations are in the lower part. You may scroll the upper and lower parts independently. Thus you can make changes to the Beta and A0 values and watch their affects on the calculations in the lower half of the window.

You can also split the window vertically as described below—with the same results, being able to scroll both parts of the window independently. With both horizontal and vertical splits, you have four independent windows to scroll.

Splitting the screen vertically

To split the screen vertically:

1. Move the mouse pointer into the horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the screen and place it over the small button on the right with the black triangle.
2. Immediately to the right of this button you will see a thick black line (Figure 13). Move the mouse pointer over this line and it will turn into a line with two arrows.
3. Hold down the left mouse button and a grey line will appear, running up the page. Drag the mouse to the left and this line will follow.
4. Release the mouse button and the screen will be split into two views, each with its own horizontal scroll bar.

File:Split-vert.png

Figure 13: Split bar on horizontal scroll bar.

Splitting the screen horizontally and vertically at the same time will give four views, each with its own vertical and horizontal scroll bars.

Removing split views

• Double-click on each split line, or
• Click on and drag the split lines back to their places at the ends of the scroll bars, or
• Select Window > Split. This will remove all split lines at the same time.

You can also split the screen using a menu command. Click in a cell that is immediately below and immediately to the right of where you wish the screen to be split, and choose Window > Split.