Welcome to the spoken tutorial on Formatting Data in Calc.
In this tutorial, we will learn to:
Format cell borders and cell background colors.
Format multiple lines of text using Automatic Wrapping.
Merge cells.
Shrink the text to fit inside the cell.
This tutorial is recorded using Ubuntu Linux OS version 18.04 and LibreOffice Suite version 6.3.5
First let us learn about formatting cell borders in Calc.
Open our Personal-Finance-Tracker.ods file.
Formatting of borders can be done on a particular cell or a block of cells.
Select the cells, A2 to G2 by holding the left mouse button.
Then go to the Formatting toolbar and select the Borders icon.
If you have resized your LibreOffice window, some of the icons may not be visible.
In that case, click on the double arrow icon at the end of the toolbars to see the hidden icons.
Click on the Borders icon.
A drop-down box opens up containing several border styles.
Click on any one of the styles you wish to apply on the borders. I will select the last option.
Now click anywhere on the spreadsheet to deselect the cells.
Notice that the cell borders are formatted according to the selected border style.
Let us undo this change by pressing Ctrl+Z keys.
We can also do the same thing using the Format cells dialog box.
Right-click on the selected cells and choose Format Cells option.
Or press Ctrl+1 keys on the keyboard.
Either way, the Format Cells dialog box opens up. Now go to the Borders tab.
We see the options for Line arrangement, Line, Padding and Shadow style.
One can change any of these as per our preference.
In the Line Arrangement section, we can see a small preview window named: User-defined.
Under Presets, I will click on the third option.
You can see that it gets reflected in the preview window.
I will also change the Style, Width and Color from the Line section, as shown.
From the style drop-down, I will select the dotted lines.
I will set the width as 2.00 pt. and select the color as Red.
Observe the changes in the preview window.
Next, go to the Padding section.
Observe that all the values are the same.
If we try to change the padding value of any one of the sides, all of them get changed.
This is because the Synchronize option is checked.
If we wish to set different values for each side.
Then the Synchronize option needs to be unchecked.
Let’s uncheck the Synchronize option.
I will set the padding value for Top and Bottom margins to 1.5 mm.
And the Left and Right margins to 1 mm.
You can explore the various Shadow styles on your own later.
Click on the OK button at the bottom.
Now click anywhere on the spreadsheet to deselect the cells.
Notice that our chosen border style is now applied to all the selected cells.
In our earlier tutorial, we had set one of the default styles to the headings.
Now let us set some other colors to the headings, using the Background Color option.
Now select the cells A1 to G1 by holding the left mouse button.
Then go to the Formatting toolbar and select the drop-down next to the Background Color icon.
The Background Color popup menu opens up.
Select the color you wish to apply as a background to the cells. I will click on the color Orange.
Observe the change.
Now the background color for the headings is set to Orange.
Calc provides various options for formatting multiple lines of text.
One of them is Automatic Wrapping.
It allows a user to type multiple lines of text into a single cell. Let us try this.
Right-click on cell B9 and select Format Cells option.
Then go to the Alignment tab.
Under the Properties section, check the Wrap text automatically option. Then click on the OK button at the bottom.
Now type the following text in cell B9.
“This is a personal Finance Tracker. It is very useful”. And press Enter.
We see that the multiple statements get wrapped into the same cell.
Undo these changes by pressing Ctrl+Z keys.
Next we will learn how to merge cells in Calc.
First click on the cell with value 1 under the heading SN.
Now hold down the Shift key on the keyboard and click on the cell which has the word Salary.
The selected cells get highlighted.
Click on the Merge and centre cells icon in the Formatting bar.
Merge Cells dialog box opens up.
Here three options for merging the cells are displayed along with a preview. We can select any one as per our preference.
I want to move the contents of both the cells into a single cell.
So, I will select the Move the content of hidden cells into the first cell radio button.
Then click on the OK button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Observe that the selected cells and their values are merged together.
Alternatively, we can merge cells by clicking on the Format menu in the menu bar.
From the sub-menu, go to Merge Cells and select any one preferred option. Explore these on your own later.
Undo these changes by pressing Ctrl+Z keys.
Next we will learn how to shrink text to fit into a cell.
The font size of the data in a cell can be automatically adjusted to fit the data into the cell. Let us learn how to do it.
First type the following text in cell B10 - “This is for the month of June”. Then press Enter.
In order to shrink the text so that it fits, right-click on cell B10.
Then select the option Format Cells.
Format cells dialog box opens up.
Go to the Alignment tab.
Under the Properties section, click on the Shrink to fit cell size check-box.
Then click on the OK button at the bottom of the dialog box.
Observe that, the entire text inside the cell shrinks and fits within the cell.
It adjusts itself by decreasing its font size so that the text fits into the cell.
Undo the changes by pressing Ctrl+Z keys together.
Then save and close the file.
This brings us to the end of this tutorial, let us summarize.
In this tutorial, we learnt to:
Format cell borders and cell background colors.
Format multiple lines of text using Automatic Wrapping.
Merge cells and
Shrink the text to fit inside the cell.
As an assignment: Open “spreadsheet-practice.ods” sheet.
Select all the headings.
Give Grey background color to the headings.
Using “Automatic Wrapping” type the text in cell A10 - “This is a Department Spreadsheet”.
Shrink this text to fit inside cell A11.
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