Welcome to the spoken tutorial on Introduction to LibreOffice Calc.
In this tutorial, we will learn:
About LibreOffice Calc
Various toolbars
How to open a new and existing spreadsheet.
How to save and close a spreadsheet in Calc
How to save as MS Excel spreadsheet and
How to export as a PDF document
What is LibreOffice Calc? LibreOffice Calc is the spreadsheet component of the LibreOffice Suite.
It is the equivalent of Microsoft Excel in Microsoft Office Suite.
It's free and open source software.
It can be shared, modified and distributed without any restrictions.
LibreOffice Calc can run on any of the following operating systems:
Microsoft Windows 8 or higher versions
GNU/Linux OS and Mac OSX
This tutorial is recorded using Ubuntu Linux OS version 18.04 and LibreOffice Suite version 6.3.5
By default the latest Ubuntu Linux OS has LibreOffice pre-installed in it
To install a specific version, refer to the LibreOffice Installation series on this website.
Let us learn to open LibreOffice Calc.
In Ubuntu Linux OS, click on the Show Applications icon at the bottom left corner.
In the search bar type Calc.
From the displayed list, click on the Libreoffice Calc icon.
In Windows OS, click on the Start Menu icon located at the bottom left corner.
In the search bar type Calc.
From the displayed list, click on the Libreoffice Calc icon.
This will open an empty spreadsheet document in the main Calc window.
Now let us learn about the main components of the Calc window.
The Calc window has various toolbars.
Title bar, Menu bar, Standard toolbar, Formatting bar, Formula bar, Status bar and Sidebar.
We will learn about these as the series progresses.
The entire spreadsheet document in Calc is called a workbook.
The work area where the data is to be typed, contains various cells in the form of a grid.
In other words, the cells are arranged in rows and columns.
A particular cell refers to an intersection of a row and a column.
It is identified by its relevant row number and column alphabet.
Cells can hold information like text, numbers, formulae, and many other data elements.
Cells can be used to display and manipulate the data.
We can see a sheet tab at the bottom left corner of the spreadsheet. This tab enables access to the sheet.
By default, we see one sheet on the interface and it is named as Sheet 1.
Each spreadsheet can have several sheets.
Each sheet can have little more than one million rows and one thousand columns.
Which is, more than one billion or hundred crore cells in a single sheet.
Each row is identified by a number and each column by an English alphabet.
There are a series of grey boxes containing letters at the top of the column.
Likewise, we see grey boxes containing numbers at the left end of the rows.
These are the column and row headers.
The columns start from “A” and go on to the right.
And the rows start from “1” and go down.
Along with the toolbars, we have two additional fields also at the top. Name box and Input line.
The column and row headers form the cell references. And these will appear in the Name box field.
This was a brief description of the various components in Calc.
Now let us learn how to open a new spreadsheet in Calc.
We can open a new spreadsheet by clicking on the New icon in the Standard toolbar.
Alternatively go to the File menu in the menu bar.
Then click on the sub menu New and select the option Spreadsheet.
A new Calc spreadsheet named Untitled 2 opens up.
Close the newly opened spreadsheet named “Untitled 2” by clicking the X icon on the top right corner.
Now we will learn how to build a “Personal Finance Tracker” in the spreadsheet.
Click on the cell referenced as A1 in the spreadsheet.
Type the heading as “SN”.
It denotes the serial number of items which we will input in the spreadsheet.
Now click on the cell referenced as B1 and type another heading “Items”.
All item names which we will use in the spreadsheet, will be under this heading.
Similarly, click on the cells C1, D1, E1, F1 and G1 one after the other.
Type the headings as “Cost”, “Spent”, “Received”, “Date” and “Account” respectively.
Once done typing our document, we should save it for future use.
To save the file, click on the Save icon in the Standard toolbar.
A dialog box appears on the screen.
It prompts us to enter the name of our file in the Name field.
I will type the name of the file as “Personal-Finance-Tracker”.
On the left side, I’ll select Desktop as file location to save my file.
Notice, we have a File type drop-down at the bottom right corner.
Click on this drop-down.
It shows a list of file types or file extensions in which we can save our file.
The default file type in LibreOffice Calc is ODF Spreadsheet (.ods).
ODF stands for Open Document Format which is an open standard.
I will click on the ODF Spreadsheet option to save my file. Do so likewise on your machine.
Click on the Save button at the top right corner of the dialog box.
We will be redirected back to the Calc window.
Observe the change in the title bar now.
It has changed to Personal-Finance-Tracker.ods
Besides saving in dot ods format, we can also save our file in dot xls and in dot xlsx format.
Files with these formats can be opened later in MS Excel application.
Click on the dropdown arrow beside the Save icon and then on the Save As option.
In the Save As dialog box, click on File type drop-down at the bottom right corner.
Select Excel 2007-365 (.xlsx) format.
Click on the Save button at the top right corner of the dialog box.
If we save the file in any other file format, Confirm File Format dialog box opens up.
Put a check on “Ask when not saving in ODF or default format” option.
Then click on the Use Excel 2007-365 format button.
We will be redirected back to the Calc window.
Notice the change in the filename in the Title bar.
The spreadsheet can also be exported to PDF format.
To do so, click on the Export Directly as PDF icon in the Standard toolbar.
Alternatively, we can do so by clicking on the File menu in the menu bar. And then on the Export as PDF option.
PDF options dialog box opens up.
In this dialog box, we will see various settings to customise the PDF option.
Keep the default settings as it is and click on the Export button at the bottom.
Choose the location file location where we wish to save and then click on the Save button.
A pdf file will be created in that folder.
Another popular file extension which opens in most applications is dot csv.
This is often used to store spreadsheet data in a text file format.
This will reduce the file size hugely and is easily portable.
Additionally, we can save the spreadsheet in dot html format, which is a web page format. This is done in the same way as explained above.
In the File type drop-down, select HTML Document (Calc)(.html).
This option gives the dot html extension to the spreadsheet.
Again choose the same file location to save.
Then click on the Save button at the top right corner of the dialog box.
The Confirm File Format dialog box opens up.
Put a check on “Ask when not saving in ODF or default format” option.
Then click on the Use HTML Document (Calc) Format button.
We see that the file gets saved with dot html extension.
This format is used when we want to show our spreadsheet as a web page.
It can be opened in any web browser.
Let's close this spreadsheet by clicking on File menu and then Close.
Next we will learn how to open an existing spreadsheet in LibreOffice Calc.
Let's open the spreadsheet Personal-Finance-Tracker.ods
Click on the Open File menu on the left of the LibreOffice interface.
The file browser dialog box opens up.
Go to the location where our file was saved.
Now in the list of filenames that appears, choose Personal-Finance-Tracker.ods.
Then click on the Open button at the top right corner.
The file Personal-Finance-Tracker.ods opens in the Calc window.
Likewise, we can also open files with dot xls and dot xlsx extensions in Calc.
Next let’s see how to modify a file and save it under the same filename.
So let us modify the file by making the headings bold and increasing their font size.
To do so, first click on the cell referenced as A1.
Now click on the Bold icon in the Standard toolbar. The heading SN becomes bold.
Click on the down-arrow in the Font Size field in the Standard toolbar.
In the drop-down, let us select 14.
The font size of the heading SN increases to 14.
Next, let us change the font we are using.
Click on the down-arrow in the Font Name field in the Standard toolbar.
From the drop-down select Arial as the font.
Likewise, modify the rest of the headings.
Let us now save the changes that we made.
To do so, click on the Save icon in the Standard toolbar.
Let's close the spreadsheet now.
Click on the File menu in the menu bar and then click on the Close option.
This brings us to the end of this spoken tutorial. Let us summarize.
In his tutorial, we learnt:
About LibreOffice Calc.
Various toolbars in Calc.
How to open a new and existing spreadsheet.
How to save and close a spreadsheet
How to save as MS Excel spreadsheet and
How to export as a PDF document in Calc.
As an assignment Open a new spreadsheet in Calc.
Save it under the name Spreadsheet-Practice.ods
Type the headings as “SN”, “Name”, “Department” and “Salary”.
Underline the headings and bold them.
Increase the font size of the headings to 12.
Save and close the file.
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