Understanding Spreadsheets Lessons

Working with Spreadsheets

Open, close a spreadsheet application. Open, close spreadsheets. To start Calc, click on the ‘Start’ button on your Windows machine. Click on ‘All Programs’ and then go to the ‘LibreOffice’ folder in the list of all programs which gets displayed. Click on the ‘LibreOffice’ folder and then click on ‘LibreOffice Calc’. This will start the…

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Enhancing Productivity

Set basic options/preferences in the application: user name, default folder to open, save spreadsheets. To set the basic options in the Calc application, click on ‘Tools’ from the main menu bar. From the resulting drop-down, click on ‘Options’. This will open the ‘Options’ dialog box. In the ‘Options’ dialog box, under ‘LibreOffice’, in ‘User Data’…

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Spreadsheet Cells

Insert, Select Understand that a cell in a worksheet should contain only one element of data, (for example, first name detail in one cell, surname detail in adjacent cell). Any cell in a worksheet should always contain only one element of data. Even if we want to enter the name of a person; then the…

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Edit and Sort Spreadsheet Cells

Edit cell content, modify existing cell content. To edit or modify the content of a cell, double click on that cell. This will enable the editing for that cell. After this, delete the already present data in that cell using the backspace button from the keyboard and enter the new data as per the requirements.…

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Copy, Move, Delete Spreadsheet Cells

Copy the content of a cell, cell range within a worksheet, between worksheets, between open spreadsheets. To copy the content of a cell or a range of cells within a worksheet, between worksheets or even to another open spreadsheet, simply select the cell or the range of cells. Then right click anywhere on the selected…

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Managing Worksheets

Rows and Columns Select a row, range of adjacent rows, and range of non-adjacent rows. To select a row, simply click on the row header for that row. It should just be a single click and not a double click. This will select the entire row. To select a range of adjacent rows, click on…

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Worksheets

Switch between worksheets. To switch between different open worksheets, we just need to click on the appropriate sheet name from the bottom of the Calc window, as has been shown in the below given illustration. When we click on a particular sheet name, that sheet will get opened. This is how we can switch between…

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Formulas and Functions

Arithmetic Formulas Recognize good practice in formula creation: refer to cell references rather than type numbers into formulas. We have been entering either text or numbers into the cells till now, but in case the data in a cell is dependent on the value of data of other cells, we use formulas. Formulas use numbers…

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Functions

Use sum, average, minimum, maximum, count, counta, round functions. Functions help us in analyzing and referencing data. To use functions in a worksheet, first of all we need some data on which the functions are to be applied. Any function needs some arguments to be passed to it as parameters, upon which the calculations or…

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The IF Function

Use the logical function if (yielding one of two specific values) with comparison operator: =, >, <. To use the logical function ‘IF’, we need to follow the same steps as before to reach the ‘Function Wizard’. In the ‘Function Wizard’, select ‘Logical’ in the ‘Category’ and from ‘Function’, select ‘IF’. Click on ‘Next’ and…

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Formatting

Numbers/Dates Format cells to display numbers to a specific number of decimal places, to display numbers with, without a separator to indicate thousands. It is possible in Calc to format cells to display any input in some particular styles. To format a cell to display numbers to a specific number of decimal places, right-click on…

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Change Spreadsheet Cell Content Appearance

Change cell content appearance: font sizes, font types. In the same ‘Format Cells’ dialog box, under the ‘Font’ tab, we have the ‘Font’ and ‘Size’ drop-down lists. The ‘Font’ drop-down list gives the different font types and ‘Size’ gives the different font sizes. These values can be chosen accordingly. After selecting the required values, click…

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Spreadsheet Formats – Alignment and Border Effects

Apply text wrapping to contents within a cell, cell range. To apply text wrapping to contents within a cell or a cell range, first select the cell or the cell range and then right click anywhere on the entire range. From the resulting menu, click on ‘Format Cells’, this will open the ‘Format Cells’ dialog…

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Create Spreadsheet Charts

Create different types of charts from spreadsheet data: column chart, bar chart, line chart, pie chart. In Calc, we can represent our data with the help of different graphical representations like column chart, bar chart, line chart, or pie chart. This makes the data more presentable and also easier to comprehend. To create the different…

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Edit Spreadsheet Chart Title

When a chart is created, then in the ‘Chart Wizard’, under the ‘Chart Elements’ tab, we have the option to add a ‘Title’ for the chart. Appropriate title can be added in this tab during the creation of the chart. Another way is to first create a chart, then select it by double clicking, and…

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Changing The Spreadsheet Chart

Change the column, bar, line, pie slice colors in the chart. To change the column, bar, line, or pie slice color in a chart, simply double-click on the respective element for which you want to change the color. If it is a bar chart, double-click on the individual bar, and if it is a pie…

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Prepare Outputs

Setup Change worksheet margins: top, bottom, left, right. In order to change the worksheet margins, click on the ‘Format’ button from the main menu bar. Click on ‘Page…’ button from the resulting drop-down. This gives the ‘Page Style’ dialog box. Under the ‘Page’ tab, you can make the appropriate changes to the ‘Margins’ in order…

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Check and Print

Check and correct spreadsheet calculations and text. In order to check the spreadsheet calculations, we need to check the sheet for the error codes. These error codes have already been discussed. If error codes are present, this means that some errors exist in some of the calculations and we must check these calculations again. To…

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Preview a worksheet

To preview a worksheet, click on ‘File’ from the main menu bar and from the resulting drop-down menu, click on ‘Print Preview’. This will open the preview display of the worksheet as has been shown below. To close the preview, click on ‘Close Preview’. Print a selected cell range from a worksheet, an entire worksheet,…

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Understanding Spreadsheets Quiz

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