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Episode: 1895
Title: HPR1895: 65 - LibreOffice Impress - OLE Objects, Spreadsheets, and Charts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1895/hpr1895.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:54:01
---
This in HBR episode 1,895 entitled 65 Libra Office Impress, OLE Objects,
Premsheets and Charts and in part of the series Libra Office.
It is hosted by AYUKA and in about 16 minutes long.
The summary is using Calc Modules and later in a presentation.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
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Hello, this is AYUKA, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio in another exciting episode.
In our ongoing series on Libra Office Impress.
What I want to talk about today is something called Object Linking and Embedding.
I want to talk about that and apply that to spreadsheets and charts because those are two areas where this is particularly powerful and something that in a business environment in particular I think you're going to see a lot of use for.
Generally you see this abbreviated as OLE and you'll see that a lot which is Object Linking and Embedding.
That's a technology that was developed by Microsoft but has spread to the free software world as well.
What it means is that you can use data from two different programs together and make changes that are automatically changes in one place will flow to the other.
That's one of the meanings. The other meaning is that as we've already seen with Libra Office is that if you're working with a type of object like a spreadsheet object you can work on it in Impress but work on it using all of the Calc tools that are available.
It's the software module is basically being called and brought in.
That's two different levels. We're going to talk about both of them but the really interesting one is when you have something linked.
Let's say you create a spreadsheet in a program like Calc and then you take a table that's in Calc and you put it on a slide.
So that first level of OLE utility says the object is in a slide but it's recognized as a spreadsheet object and you can edit it on the slide using the Calc editing capabilities and get it to do spreadsheet functions.
So instead of just being a static object it is alive in the slide.
You could for instance have a group of cells and use them to calculate a result.
If what you had on the slide was nothing more than a static picture of the spreadsheet table you couldn't do that you couldn't edit it.
But with OLE it retains its nature as a spreadsheet so you could change one of the numbers on the slide and have to calculate a result change just as if you did it in Calc.
Now that's definitely cool but we can do further.
If you do it right you can link the slide to the original spreadsheet file so that any change to the spreadsheet would automatically update the slide.
Now this really illustrates the power of OLE and makes it an extremely useful feature of modern office suites.
But as wonderful as that is there is something you need to keep in mind.
The link between the spreadsheet and the impressed slide can be easily broken particularly if you save the slide show and send it to someone else.
If the spreadsheet is on your machine and the slide show is now on the other person's machine you've probably broken the link.
Of course within a corporate environment you might be able to get around that by using a shared network resource if both of you have identical access to it.
But keep in mind that if you send this slide show outside your corporate network or to someone who does not access the same resources in the same way the link will be broken.
Now in that case the object in the slide show will then display whatever data it had last received but it would not update again until the link was restored.
Finally I'm going to mention that OLE applies to more than just adding spreadsheets to slides though that is very popular.
You could add spreadsheets to documents or add charts to either slides or documents or you could be adding draw objects to documents or spreadsheets or slides.
There's a lot of different ways you can connect these things.
For the purposes of impressed here are the things you can add as OLE objects.
LibreOffice spreadsheets coming from Calc.
LibreOffice charts coming from Calc.
LibreOffice drawings coming from the draw program.
LibreOffice formulas coming from the formula program in older versions that was called math but that's a little confusing.
And finally LibreOffice text which of course would come from the writer program.
But I would say the largest use of this is to bring spreadsheets and charts from Calc.
Presentations are a major tool of business and things like financial and sales data just lend themselves naturally to this technique.
Now you can just create a Calc object without starting with a spreadsheet in Calc.
Now that would be unlinked so you're not going to get that automatic updating feature but maybe you don't need it.
Maybe there's no reason to create the spreadsheet.
The linking is usually because the spreadsheet already exists and already has everything you need.
And it's like well why reinvent the wheel? Why can't I just grab that data from where it already exists?
If it didn't already exist there what you could do is create a little Calc spreadsheet object on a slide.
And that's not hard.
To do this just go to the slide and then insert, go to the insert menu object and then OLE object.
And you get a window that will pop up and up top there's two radio buttons create new or create from file.
Create new means just create the object right here. It doesn't already exist anywhere.
And the other one is create from file and what that means is no it already exists somewhere else go grab it.
And then underneath you're going to see object type and it's the five things that we've already mentioned so spreadsheet chart drawing formula text.
So select one and click OK.
Now we want to add a spreadsheet object we would select object type Libra Office spreadsheet make the selection click OK.
And this will insert a spreadsheet object onto the slide.
And when you look at it it should look very familiar. It's going to look like a little spreadsheet.
So the columns will all be ABCD the rows one two three four you're going to have sheet tabs on the bottom.
Really what you have is a calc spreadsheet has all of the calc controls.
You can move it around you can add a sheet if you want so you can have two different sheets.
You can make it larger to display more rows or columns you can even split the window if you want.
And you can add or delete columns or rows is needed it's really very impressive.
Then when you've got this thing selected on your slide and this is one of the things that you want to start watching for.
When you have objects that come from different modules like this.
When you look up to the top of your window what you're going to see is it's not the same as it was when you were creating a presentation previously.
Now that you've selected this calc object you're going to see calc things up top.
Calc buttons on the toolbars and stuff like that.
You'll see the calc formula bar displayed.
So you can go ahead and do everything you need to do here.
You can do a calculation.
You know, do a formula that's going to do a calculation based on the contents of these cells just like you would in a ordinary spreadsheet.
You've got all of these capabilities.
With multiple sheets you could even do something where you have background data on sheet two that you call into sheet one for a summary.
So once you have finished editing this object, if you click on the slide away from the object itself, click outside of the object.
It's not selected anymore.
And it's going to look, you know, by default you're going to see all of your data, all of your cell contents there, but there's no grid lines, you know, everything looks identical and stuff like that.
So this is where maybe you want to go back and say, okay, we can do better than this.
So anytime you have these objects, what you do on the slide is you have to select it before you can edit or format it.
And select means, you know, click on it until you see the border around it with the eight handles.
And when you see the border in the eight handles, there is a object selected and you can then do things with it.
So in this case, we'll select our spreadsheet. We'll see it again in the Calt spreadsheet view.
Click on a row marker to select a row, and then right click to bring up a menu of actions and select format cells.
So let's say the first row was your header row.
And generally what I want to do on header rows is I'm going to make the font larger, I'm going to make it bold, I'm going to make it stand out a little bit so that people realize it's a header row.
So select the row, right click, format cells, make the changes that I need to make.
And then if I want to have the grid lines in there, those are borders.
And so if you look up top, you're going to see a borders button.
And you can put them in and that will, you know, then have the borders.
You'll see the cells individually with borders around them.
And you can make it look the way you want.
But OLE, the real fun is linking a file.
So how do we do that?
Well, similarly you go to insert object OLE object, but this time you want to insert from a file.
So instead of putting your radio button on create new, you put it on create from file and then go search for the file.
Now, if you want it to update right under the place where you've created from file, there's a little check box that says link to file.
So you want to put a check mark there, right?
Otherwise, why did you do this?
Well, I suppose if you just wanted to grab the data and you never wanted update, then you could leave it out.
But this is assuming you wanted to be able to update automatically, you want to put that check mark there.
And then when you've done all that, click OK.
And your spreadsheet will be inserted into the slide.
And then if you then go back to the spreadsheet, the couch spreadsheet file, you can make changes there that will automatically reflect in the slide.
But you got to do it the right way.
So go to the spreadsheet and make a change.
So I did an example and said, let's add a new row.
So I went to the spreadsheet and made the change.
The next thing I need to do is save the spreadsheet because the link you created is to the file on the disk, right?
And until you save the changes you made, you have not changed the file on the disk, have you, right?
Then go to the slide that has the spreadsheet.
Double click on the spreadsheet to put it in couch editing mode.
And now you should see the change you made reflected in the slide and now save the presentation to save the new data.
So this is one of those things you probably want to try it once or twice to get the hang of how that works.
Now, the other thing you will often want to do is bring in a chart or a graph from KELK.
In fact, I would imagine that this is even more common than spreadsheets since they are graphical and impressed is at heart a graphical program.
But KELK is where all the chart and graph tools reside.
So that's where you would want to go, particularly if you wanted, again, to have this automatic updating feature.
Actually, in the next tutorial, I'll tell you how you can just create a chart directly and impress.
But here, let's say we're doing it from a spreadsheet.
So I took the same data that I had.
I create a simple bar chart.
If I wanted to create it directly and impress, I say we'll talk about that next time.
But with an OLE linked file, it's not too hard.
I would create the chart in KELK as usual.
Save the KELK file.
Go to impress, double-click on the OLE object, and it will update to include the chart.
Now, this is not entirely perfect since both the chart and the cells are all on the same sheet,
and it can take a little work to get it to display properly.
But here is the trick to show you the chart alone in a reasonable manner.
Cut the chart from sheet 1 in the KELK file, place it on sheet 2, and then save the KELK file.
Then go to impress, double-click the spreadsheet object to update it in edit mode.
And if it is not already selected, make sure you select sheet 2.
In this time, when you click away from that, all that is left will be the chart in all of its glory.
And if you update the underlying data in the KELK spreadsheet, the chart will update,
and then your presentation will update if you follow these steps.
That's what OLE is all about.
Final note.
KELK spreadsheets are not exactly the same thing as tables,
and the documentation for impress warns about this.
It says, you may be tempted to use spreadsheets in impress for creating complex tables,
or presenting data in a tabular format.
However, the table design feature in impress is often more suitable and faster,
depending on the complexity of your data.
And that is a topic we will get to.
But first, I want to explore charts created directly in impress,
since that's a little bit tricky, and there are some interesting issues there.
But it's worth mastering that technique.
So, this is Ahuka signing off for Hacker Public Radio,
and reminding you, as always, to support Free Software.
Bye-bye!
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