hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1715.txt

Episode: 1715
Title: HPR1715: 48 - LibreOffice Calc - Cell Styles
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1715/hpr1715.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 08:08:51

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It's Friday 27th on February 2015, this in HBR episode 1,715 entitled 48 Libra Office
Hulk, Cell Style, and in part on the series, Libra Office, it is hosted by a hukka and in
about 15 minutes long. Feedback can be sent to Wilnicat and Wilnic.com or by leaving a comment
on this episode. The summary is how to use Cell Style to control the appearance of yourself.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honesthost.com. Get 15% discount on all shared
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Hello, this is a hukka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio and another exciting episode
in our ongoing series on Libra Office, Calc. And today, the topic is Cell Style.
Now if you are already familiar with styles from Libra Office Writer, and Lord knows,
we spent enough time talking about them, you should be, I think Cell Style is the equivalent
of Writer's paragraph styles. Just as a single writer document can have a variety of paragraph
styles applied to different paragraphs, for instance, headings, lists, actual paragraphs.
A single spreadsheet can have multiple cell styles. And the same arguments for using
styles also apply. If you have consistently used cell styles in your spreadsheet, you
can update the appearance easily, just by changing the style, instead of needing to go through
the file looking for every cell that needs to be adjusted. And by using styles, you can
apply a large number of formatting choices to many cells with just a few mouse clicks. So
it really does pay to learn how to use cell styles. Now, Calc comes with a minimum of five
built in styles. Not a lot. We'll add to them. All right, first one is the default. As you
might guess, from the name, when you just start typing in a cell in a new spreadsheet without
doing anything else, you get the default cell style. The next one is heading, and then there's
a heading one, result, and result two. Now, you can apply any of these styles by first opening
the styles and formatting window, assuming you don't already have it opened and angered to
the left as I suggested, selecting the cell or group of cells to which you wish to apply the
style, then double clicking on the style in the styles and formatting window. This is much
the same as applying a style and writer. If you do that in a new spreadsheet with each of the
built in styles, you can see what they would look like. Now, the default should be pretty
straightforward, because that is just your basic sans serif font, you know, what you're
used to seeing. Heading looks like it's larger, bold, and italic. Heading one is also larger, bold,
and italic, but it's rotated 90 degrees, so it reads sideways. So that's an interesting thing.
Result and result two look the same and appear to be bold and italic, but the same size font is
the default. There's another way to apply styles, though, that you have to dig for as it is not
visible out of the box, and that is the apply style button. To make this visible, you first need
to go to a blank spot on the formatting toolbar. This is the toolbar that has the font selector.
Right-click to bring up a context-sensitive menu, and then select visible buttons, and then go to
apply styles. This will add a drop-down style button, just like the one that is the default in
writer, which will appear on the left side of the formatting toolbar. To use this, just highlight or
select the cells you want to apply the style to, and select the style from the drop-down. It is
handy enough that I keep mine on the toolbar, but it does not show all of the styles in my experience,
so I always keep my styles in formatting window open and docked on the left.
Finally, there is the fill format mode, which can be very handy when applying a style to
widely scattered cells. To use this, have your styles in Format Window open. Click on the style you
want to apply, then click the fill format button. This is located on the top of the styles in
formatting window right next to the new style from selection button. This will turn your
cursor into a graphic of a bucket pouring out the liquid of your imagination. When it looks like
this, every cell you click on will have the selected cell style applied. When you're done,
clicking the fill format button again turns it off. Now, as with page styles, there is a properties
window for each cell style, and you can set a lot of options here. To get this properties window for
an existing style, right click on it in the styles in formatting window to select it,
and in the pop-up menu select modify. You get surprise surprise, a window with a bunch of tabs.
It will look very familiar. In fact, it's very similar to the one we saw with page styles,
it's very similar to the ones we saw with LibreOfficeRider.
So, let's go through the tabs. First one, organizer. Now, as with page styles,
anytime you're looking at a built-in style, you cannot change anything on the organizer tab.
But if you're creating a new style, you can name it, you can link it, and so forth.
As before, I advise against linking styles if you're not an expert on it.
Second, numbers. This sets the cell format as number, percent, currency, date, time,
scientific, fraction, boolean value, and text. Now, we covered all of these options in one of our
first tutorials, LibreOfficeCalcCells. So, refer back to that if you need a refresher on the subject.
Font. This is where you choose the font family, for instance, aerial,
helvetica, etc., the font style, bold, italic, and the font size for yourself.
Font effects. You can make your font be a color,
underlined, or any of several other effects.
Alignment. You can set right aligned, center, and left aligned here. But with spreadsheet
shells, you have an additional option to set the vertical alignment to top, bottom, or middle.
You can also set the option to automatically wrap text here, which is handy when you're using
a spreadsheet for a text heavy use. I do that a lot in my work, actually, where I might keep a
running issue list going in a spreadsheet. Borders. This lets you set borders for the cells.
You can set them to one side, or several, or all four. And you can choose a line style, weight,
and color. Background. You can put a background cover in any cell. Cell protection.
If you first apply protection to the current sheet, you can then protect a cell, or a group of
cells, which will stop people from changing the contents. You can also hide your formulas,
or prevent cells from being printed. Now, many of these tabs have other options that are rarely
used, and I don't plan to cover them in this tutorial, or it would get even longer.
Now, what about creating styles? You know, if you really want to take advantage of the
power of cell styles, you're probably going to want to create some. The built-in styles are few
and rudimentary and won't get you far. But when you do this, remember the rule we have discussed
so often before, that styles only persist if they are saved in a template. If you're working on a
spreadsheet and get the idea for a style, you can certainly create it. And it will stay in that
spreadsheet forever. But if you want to use it again, you need to save it inside of a template
for future use. I plan to do an example of creating a template with various styles,
to demonstrate the proper approach as my next tutorial in this series.
But for now, I just want to run through your alternatives.
First of all, you do have the option of creating a new style in the styles and formatting window.
With the window open, make sure you have selected cell styles by clicking the very first button.
Then, right-click in the window, select new, and your cell style properties window will open.
Go through each tab, make your settings as necessary, then click OK to save it.
Then, create a new style from a selection. If you find it easier to set up your style in the
spreadsheet, get a cell to look the way you want it. Add a background color, if you like,
set the font size, font style effects, alignment, and so on. You'll want to have some text in the
cell to see the full results, but this won't matter. When it looks the way you like, click the
new style from selection button, which is right next to the fill format button. You should get a
window for entering a name. Just give your new style a name and it will appear in your styles
in formatting window. Note that it will not pick up any of the actual text you used, just the settings.
Modify an existing style. The last approach is to modify one. There's a couple of ways to do that.
Open your styles in formatting window. Click on cell styles, then right-click on an existing
style and select modify. This will open the cell style properties window. Go through each tab
and make the necessary changes to create the style you need.
Or select a cell that is using the style you want to modify. Make your changes in the cell itself
until you like how it looks, then click the update style button, which is on the other side of
the new style from selection button. Again, it will not pick up the text, just the settings.
Finally, copying a style. Sometimes you just want to copy a style from one cell to another,
even a one that is in a different spreadsheet file altogether. To do this,
select the cell and copy it to the clipboard. Go to the cell where you want this style to be copied,
select it and go to edit, paste special. The selection you want to make here is formats and
nothing else should be selected. This will copy all of the style definition without affecting the
contents. You need to make sure that the destination cell is selected and has a black line around it.
This will also add the style to your styles and formatting window. This is a good way to copy a
style you have created to a template in case you forgot to do this in a template. Just open the
template, do this type of copy operation, then save the template. So, that rounds off this
episode of Hacker Public Radio. This is Ahuka signing off reminding you as always to support
free software. Bye-bye.
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