Jacek Artymiak - Beginning OpenOffice Calc: From Setting Up Simple Spreadsheets to Business Forecasting

Beginning OpenOffice Calc: From Setting Up Simple Spreadsheets to Business Forecasting

Copyright 2011 by Jacek Artymiak

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Contents at a Glance

Contents

About the Author

Jacek Artymiak has written more than 100 articles and more than a dozen books on Linux, OpenBSD, OpenOffice.org, Open Source, firewalls, networking, security, and system administration.

Preface

Functions and formulas are the secret weapon in every spreadsheet user's arsenal. They help you quickly analyze huge amounts of data or build interactive models that let you try different scenarios before you commit your time and money to a project.

If you ever want to compare prices or financing options, or find out when you are going to break even, you should be using formulas to make such analysis as easy as punching different numbers into the spreadsheet.

I wrote this book to help you learn quickly how to use functions and formulas in OpenOffice.org Calc. It is not a long book because I want you to get up to speed as fast as possible.

I hope you will find this book a valuable resource.

C H A P T E R 1

Essentials

In this chapter you will learn the basics of working with data in OpenOffice.org Calchow to enter, edit, organize, and format information.

To get the best out of the information presented in this book, especially when you are just beginning to learn OpenOffice.org Calc, you might want to create a new worksheet to experiment with the tools and the techniques described on the following pages.

Creating a New Worksheet

You can create a new worksheet in a number of ways, but selecting FileNewSpreadsheet is probably the most convenient way of doing it from any OpenOffice.org module (see ).

Figure 1-1. Creating a new worksheet

Pressing Ctrl+N is also a handy shortcut when you already are working in Calc.

Entering Data

Entering information into an OpenOffice.org Calc worksheet is generally a matter of double-clicking on a cell and typing whatever it is you wish to type. A single hit on the Enter/Return key stores your input inside the current cell.