Monday, October 20, 2008

OO-Calc: How can I see the row and column captions as I scroll through a sheet that is larger than my display

There are two ways to obtain this result:
Mode 1 (with a single row or column caption): Freeze the caption.
  • Click on the cell just below and to the right of the row and column that will contain your caption.
  • Select Window - Freeze from the main menu.

If you have either row captions or column labels, you can create a cross freezing by clicking on the uppermost left side cell that does not contain a caption. For example, in a sheet with single row and column captions, choose the B2 cell. The position of all cells above and to the left of the cell where the Freeze was activated will be frozen.
Mode 2 (with multiple row or column captions): Split the sheet.

  • Click on the cell just below and to the right of the row and column that you want to contain your caption.
  • Select Window - Split from the main menu.

The sheet window will be split. The result is different from Mode 1 because you can scroll all sections of the split window, showing the caption according to your needs.

There is another (almost hidden) way to split a sheet window:

  • At the top of the right scroll bar and at the right of the bottom one, you can see little black lines. When the mouse is over one of these zones, the mouse pointer changes into a dragging icon.
  • When this icon shows, click and hold down the left mouse button to display a border line in the grid of cells.
  • With the mouse, drag the line on the grid to the row or column that will contain your caption.
  • Release the mouse button. The sheet will be split at this border.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Migrating from MS-Office to OpenOffice ?

This article is a big confidence builder if you are wanting to switch from MS-Office to OpenOffice:
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2008/06/90-things-that-are-the-same-in-microsoft-office-and-openofficeorg.html
If you just started to think about it, start reading about it from here:
http://www.fanaticattack.com/2008/switching-office-suites-from-microsoft-office-to-openofficeorg.html
If your organisation uses a lot of VBA macros and a lot of complex functionalities in the spreadsheet environment (Pivot Tables, Multiple File Linking, etc.), you might want to evaluate the Novell Edition of Open Office for a more compatible migration process. This would be a licensed and supported product (much cheaper than MS-Office, but not FREE) and you can email me if you would like to evaluate it.

Friday, October 17, 2008

About

ooo - OpenOffice.org - What I can share about it
ah - All other help - pointers to anything I think would be useful
wow - Words Of Wisdow - Registered from various sources and senses