Working with sheets

Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3

Chapter 5. Getting Started with Calc

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• Parts of the main Calc window
• Starting new spreadsheets
• Opening existing spreadsheets
• Saving spreadsheets
• Navigating within spreadsheets
• Selecting items in a sheet or spreadsheet
• Working with sheets
• Viewing Calc
• Entering data using the keyboard
• Speeding up data entry
• Editing data
• Formatting data
• Autoformatting cells and sheets
• Formatting spreadsheets using themes and Conditional Formatting
• Hiding and showing data
• Sorting records
• Printing from Calc

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Like any other Calc element, sheets can be inserted, deleted and renamed.

Inserting new sheets

There are many ways to insert a new sheet. The first step for all of the methods is to select the sheets that the new sheet will be inserted next to. Then any of the following options can be used.

• Click on the Insert menu and select Sheet, or
• Right-click on its tab and select Insert Sheet, or
• Click into an empty space at the end of the line of sheet tabs.

File:CalcInsertSheet.png

Creating a new sheet

Each method will open the Insert Sheet dialog. Here you can select whether the new sheet is to go before or after the selected sheet and how many sheets you want to insert. If you are inserting only one sheet, there is the opportunity to give the sheet a name.

File:InsertSheet3.png

Insert Sheet dialog

Deleting sheets

Sheets can be deleted individually or in groups.

Single sheet

Right-click on the tab of the sheet you want to delete and select Delete Sheet from the pop‑up menu, or click Edit > Sheet > Delete.

Multiple sheets

To delete multiple sheets, select them as described earlier, then either right-click over one of the tabs and select Delete Sheet from the popup menu, or click Edit > Sheet > Delete from the menu bar.

Renaming sheets

The default name for the a new sheet is “SheetX”, where X is a number. While this works for a small spreadsheet with only a few sheets, it becomes awkward when there are many sheets.

To give a sheet a more meaningful name, you can:

• Enter the name in the name box when you create the sheet, or
• Right-click on a sheet tab and select Rename Sheet from the popup menu and replace the existing name with a better one.

Sheet names must start with either a letter or a number; other characters including spaces are not allowed. Aside from the first character of the sheet name, allowed characters are letters, numbers, spaces, and the underline character. Attempting to rename a sheet with an invalid name will produce an error message.