Moving from Cell to Cell

Getting Started with OpenOffice 4

Chapter 4: Getting Started with Calc

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• What is Calc
• Parts of the main Calc window
• Open and Save CSV files
• Navigating within spreadsheets
  • Going to a particular cell
  • Moving from cell to cell
  • Moving from sheet to sheet
• Selecting items in a sheet or a spreadsheet
  • Selecting Cells
  • Selecting Columns and Rows
  • Selecting Sheets
• Working with Columns and Rows
• Working with Sheets
• Viewing Calc
• Entering data using the keyboard
• Speeding up data entry
• Validating cell contents
• Editing data
• Formatting data
• Auto-formatting cells and sheets
• Formatting spreadsheets using themes
• Using conditional formatting
• Hiding and showing data
• Sorting records
• Using formulas and functions
• Analyzing data
• Printing from Calc
  • Using Print Ranges
  • Selecting the Page Order, Details, and Scale
  • Page Breaks
  • Headers and Footers

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Moving from Cell to Cell

In the spreadsheet, one cell normally has a darker black border. This black border indicates where the focus is (see Figure 71). If a group of cells is selected, they have a highlight color, with the focus cell having a dark border.

Using the mouse

To move the focus using the mouse, simply move the mouse pointer to the cell where you want the focus to be and click the left mouse button. This changes the focus to the new cell. This method is most useful when the two cells are a large distance apart.

Using the Tab and Enter keys

• Pressing  ↵ Enter  or  ⇧ Shift  +  ↵ Enter  moves the focus down or up, respectively.
• Pressing  Tab ⇆  or  Shift+Tab  moves the focus to the right or to the left, respectively.

Figure 71. (Left) One selected cell and (right) a group of selected cells

Using the arrow keys

Pressing the arrow keys on the keyboard moves the focus in the direction of the arrows.

Using Home, End, Page Up and Page Down

•  Home  moves the focus to the start of a row.
•  End  moves the focus to the column furthest to the right that contains data.
•  Page Down  moves the display down one complete screen and  Page Up  moves the display up one complete screen.
• Combinations of  Ctrl  and  Alt  with  Home ,  End ,  Page Down ,  Page Up , and the cursor keys move the focus of the current cell in other ways. See the Help or Appendix A (Keyboard Shortcuts) in the Calc Guide for details.

Use one of the four Alt+Arrow key combinations to resize a cell.

Customizing the Enter Key

You can customize the direction in which the  ↵ Enter  key moves the focus, by selecting Tools → Options → OpenOffice Calc → General.

The four choices for the direction of the  ↵ Enter  key are shown on the right-hand side of Figure 72. It can move the focus down, right, up, or left. Depending on the file being used or on the type of data being entered, setting a different direction can be useful.

The  ↵ Enter  key can also be used to switch into and out of editing mode. Use the first two options under Input settings in Figure 72 to change the  ↵ Enter  key settings.

Figure 72 : Customizing the effect of the Enter key