Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
In my last article, I discussed setting up styles in LibreOffice Calc. This month, I will show you how to prepare, examine, and print your spreadsheet. We will add headers and footers to our sheet, use the Page Preview to examine how our sheet will look when we print it, and review the print dialog and how it affects the final printed pages.
Renaming Sheets
When you first create a new spreadsheet file, the default workbook starts with three sheets named Sheet1, Sheet2, and Sheet3. You can use these names in other places in your sheet, and we will use them when we create the header and footer for our budget spreadsheet. However, the default names are not very informative, so we will rename them. The names are located on tabs at the bottom program window. To rename a sheet, right-click on the tab and select Rename Sheet from the pop-up menu. The Rename Sheet dialog will display. Type in a meaningful name for the sheet, i.e. “February 24, 2012” and click OK.
Headers and Footers
Headers and footers allow us to create consistency between pages. Doing this on the sheet would mean shuffling cells as the sheet changes and grows. Using the page settings, we can create the same look for multiple pages.
Open the page settings dialog, Format > Page. Click on the Header tab. Here you can adjust the margins, width, and height of the header area. I would recommend checking the Autofit Height checkbox, otherwise your header may get cut off. Click on the Edit button to bring up the header area format dialog. You will notice the header is divided into three areas, left, center, and right. Along the bottom, you will notice a toolbar. The toolbar lets you insert placeholders into the header and format the text. For our budget spreadsheet, we will place something in each of the areas. In the left area type “2012 Budget”. For the center area, we will place our sheet name. To get the sheet name, click in the center area and delete any content that already exists, then click on the third button on the toolbar. This inserts the name you gave the sheet. For the right area, we will insert the current date. Click in the right area and delete any content that already exists. The next-to-last button on the toolbar inserts the current date. To change the font, size, color, etc, of the text, highlight the text in any of the areas and click on the first button on the toolbar. This brings up a font dialog, where you can change the attributes of the text. Click the OK button when you are finished editing your header.
We also might want to separate our header from the rest of the sheet with a border or background color. We can do this by clicking on the More button on the Header tab in the Page dialog. For mine, I just put a 0.50pt line at the bottom.
The Footer tab is the same as the Header tab, but let’s put some different information in the three areas. On the Footer tab, click the Edit button. In the left area, place the sheet name using the third button on the toolbar like we did with the header's center area. In the center area, delete the content that is already there and type the word Page and a space. Click on the fourth button in the toolbar. This creates a placeholder for the page number. This placeholder will increment for each page of the sheet. In the right area, click on the last button on the toolbar to insert a current time placeholder. This will print the time when you print the sheet. Having the current date and time on the sheet can come in handy when you have to do revisions and need to know which one is the most current. As with the header, we can edit the attributes of the text by highlighting the text we want to change and clicking on the first button in the toolbar. Click OK when you are done editing.
To separate the footer from the rest of the document, we can use the More button to create a border or background color. I used a 0.50pt border on the top.
In our setup, we used all the buttons in the header/footer edit dialog except for two. The second button inserts the filename of the workbook, and the fifth inserts the total number of pages.
We are finished editing the page setup. Click OK to close the page-setup dialog.
Page Preview
The page preview allows us to make final adjustments to our sheet before printing. With the preview, we can make sure everything fits on the page the way we want it, and the data shows as we intended.
To open the page preview, go to File > Page Preview. The current window is replaced by the page preview window. You can make several adjustments while in page preview mode.
The slider in the toolbar is the scaling factor. This allows you to make the cells bigger or smaller so they fit on the page the way you want. You can increase the size by clicking on the plus (+) or reduce it by clicking on the minus (-). You can also click and drag the adjustment handle.
The Format Page button displays the Page Style dialog. Here you can change your overall page margins and background color, and make corrections and adjustments to your header and footer. Two things we haven't mentioned yet are the table alignment and the print order. Table alignment is found on the Page tab. It allows you to center the table horizontally, vertically, or both. On the Sheet tab, the page order controls how the cells are printed on the page. This allows you to make your data layout in the order and way you intended. If you have more columns than can fit on a page, you can change it from the default to left-to-right, then down. You can also set the beginning page number should you need something other than 1. You can also specify what prints and what does not. Finally, you can manually adjust the scaling here as well.
The page preview gives you buttons to page forward and backward, and jump to the first page or the last page. There are also zoom in/out buttons for closer examination of the page.
The Margins button gives you the ability to adjust the page, header, footer, and column margins. Click the Margins button to activate margins mode. The dotted lines let you manually adjust the page, header, and footer margins. The black markers at the top allow you to adjust the widths of the columns. Click the Margins button again to exit margins mode.
Close Preview exits the preview mode.
Printing
Finally, we have completed all our preparation and it is time to print our sheet. File > Print brings up the print dialog. On the General tab, you can select your printer. Click on the Properties button for settings specific to your printer. You can choose to print just the selected sheets, all sheets, or just selected cells. You can also specify whether to print all the pages or just selected pages. If you don't feel like ordering your pages after you print, you can also choose to print them in reverse order. You have an option to print multiple copies, and whether or not to collate them.
On the LibreOffice Calc tab, you can choose to print or not print blank pages. The Page Layout tab gives you options for printing more than one page on a sheet of paper, what order to print them, and whether to put a border around the page. On the Options tab, you can choose to print to a postscript file, and, if you are printing multiple copies, whether to do it as one print job or multiple.
Once you have everything set, click Print.
This may seem overkill for a single document, but you need to always consider how often you will use and change the document. If you use the sheet often, as in a budget, once the header and footer is set, you will never have to change them again. By considering the reusability, you decrease the setup time the next time you use it.
Next month, we will look at some quick tips and tricks for working with spreadsheets in Calc.
Quick Opinion Tune out, Drop Out, Get things Done by Allan J Smithie
I turned off the Internet today. I don’t mean the whole thing. I mean my access to it. I unplugged the router from the wall.
I also killed my music player and left the mobile phone in another room.
Something mystical then happened. Concentration.
I love the Internet. I’m probably addicted. It’s a huge resource for information and an unparalleled research, educational and entertainment resource, but every so often I have to shut it all out just to Get Things Done.
Turn off the TV, radio, iPod, Xbox, PSP and Wii. Close the browsers (both of them), kill the chatroom, the IRC, AIM, Facepunch, Twiddle and anything else that’s running. The fact checking can wait. Contrary to contemporary systems of belief, your status doesn’t have to be updated in real time. It will all still be there. After you get something DONE.