Appendix A – Introduction and Tutorial to StarOffice Spreadsheets Appendix A contains a quick introduction to using StarOffice spreadsheets. It assumes that you have no knowledge of spreadsheets and little knowledge of computers. Many people, if not most people, can safely skim these sections, or skip them altogether. Part One – Getting Around Lets begin by opening a spreadsheet. Start by launching StarOffice. On your JDS (Java Desktop System ) desktop, click on the “LAUNCH” button. This will bring up a menu with a list of options. Click on the “StarOffice” menu item. This will bring up a window with a title of “Templates and Documents – New Documents”. The “New Document” icon should be highlighted. Double click on the spreadsheet icon . This will bring up a blank, new spreadsheet. Across the top of the spreadsheet you will find the Title Bar. When you open a new spreadsheet the title bar will probably has the word “Untitled” written across the top. After you give your spreadsheet a title, by saving it, the word “Untitled” will be replaced with the title that you gave the spreadsheet. Just below the Title Bar, you will see the Menu Bar. The Menu Bar consists of menus. The menus on the Menu Bar are File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Window, and Help. Lets go ahead and give our spreadsheet a title and save it. To accomplish this click on the word File. This will bring up a menu of commands. Click on “Save As ...” This will bring up a window titled “Save as”. Just below the Title Bar on the left hand side, you will the name of the directory where the spreadsheet will be saved. It may read something like: /root/Documents. If you want to save the spreadsheet in another directory, use the three icons to the right. The first icon is to go up one level, the second icon is to start a new directory and the third icon is to chose the default directory. Lets save our spreadsheet as spreadsheet1.sxc in a new directory named /root/documents/my_dir/ . Start by clicking on the second icon which creates a new directory. Enter the name my_dir into the space provided and click okay. Now in the large data box in the center of the “save as” window, you will see the folder named “my_dir” listed. This data box shows the Title, Type, Size, and Date Modified of the files and directories in the present directory. Click on the directory that you just created named “my_dir”. Notice that the present working directory listed at the top left is now /root/Documents/my_dir. Now in the data box labeled “File name:”. Enter the name for the new spreadsheet: spreadsheet1. You do not need to enter the extension. It will take the extension of the file type listed in the File Type data box. Make sure that the File Type is spreadsheet (.sxc) and press “Save”. If you know look at the title bar, it should read spreadsheet1.sxc. So far we have talked about the title bar and the menu bar. Just below the menu bar there may be one or more toolbars. The toolbars, as the name suggest, provide tools for use in the spreadsheet. The toolbars are made visible through the View menu on the menu bar. Click on the View menu and then click on toolbars. The toolbars listed Function, Object, Main, and Formula. The toolbars toggle on and off by clicking on them. A check mark next to the toolbar means that it will be visible. The function toolbar has a pull down list of files that have been active. The pull down list window shows the name of the active spreadsheet. The pull down list is useful for switching between and loading recently used files. Next to this pull down list are icons for creating a new file, open a file, save a file, edit a file, write a file out as a PDF document, print, cut, copy, paste, undo, redo, and more. The object toolbar starts with a pull down list for font type and font size. The next four icons are for formatting text in a cell. They are icons for bold, italics, underline, and a font color. The next four icons are for align left, align center horizontally, align right, and justified. The next five icons are for formatting numbers in a cell. The first is for currency, the second for percentages, the next for standard format, the final two are to add and subtract decimal places. The two remaining toolbars will be discussed later. Menu Bar Function Toolbar Object Toolbar Formula Toolbar Main Toolbar If you look at the main area of the spreadsheet, you will notice that it is divided into rectangles called cells. This is where your data will go. The cells are referenced by the column and row they are in. The columns are labeled by capital letters and the rows are labeled by numbers. The columns are labeled A to Z for the first twenty-six columns, The twenty-seventh column is labeled as AA, next is AB, and so on. The cell is referenced by the column letter and the row number. You can move around the spreadsheet by using the scrollbars on the bottom and side. Pressing the <Home> key on your keyboard will return you to cell A1. Data can be placed in the cell or existing data can be modified when the cell is active. One way for the cell to become active is by taking your mouse and placing it over the cell and clicking on it. The active cell shown is cell C3. You may notice that the C column label and the 3 row label are highlighted. Also notice that there is a highlighted border around the cell C3. And “C3” appears in the Sheet Area pull down dialog box at the beginning of the Formula Toolbar. Data can be placed in the cell by making it active and typing in the value. The data placed in the cell can be text (also called strings) or numerical data. Lets place the value of 7 in cell C3. Click on the cell, type 7, press enter. Notice that after pressing enter cell C4 became the active cell. Enter the value of 19 into cell C4. Notice that when the cell is active, the the cell reference appears in the “sheet area pull down box” on the Formula Toolbar. The data the cell contains appears in the Input Line on the Formula Toolbar. You can edit the value of the cell by making it active and either editing inside the cell or on the Input Line. Now lets add these two numbers together. Cell will not only accept strings and numerical data, but also will accept formulas. To enter a formula, first enter an equal sign. Make cell F5 active by clicking on it. Enter =7+19 and press <Enter>. Notice that the cell F5 now contains the number 26. Notice that while the cell is active, the Input Line on the Formula Toolbar contains the formula =7+19. You can also enter formulas using cell references. For example, lets add the value in cell C3 to the value in cell C4. Lets put the answer in cell C5. Move to cell C5 and click on it to make it active. Type in the formula =C3+C4 and press <Enter>. You will now notice that the cell C5 contains the value 26 and while cell C5 is active, the formula =C3+C5 appears on the Input Line of the Formula Toolbar. Let's go ahead and delete the contents of cell C5. Click on cell C5 and then click on the Edit menu on the Menu Bar. Click on the line Delete Contents ... This will bring up a dialog box with choices on what to delete. For now click on the Delete all option. This will delete the contents of the cell C5. If you accidentally edit something or change you mind about the editing, you can often undo the editing by using the Undo option under the Edit Menu on the Menu Bar. Let's add the values of cells C3 and C4 again. This time instead of typing the cell references (i.e. C3 and C4) we will reference cells C3 and C4 by selecting them with the mouse. Click on cell C5 and to make it active. As always, start a formula with an equals sign. In cell C5 enter the formula = <click on cell C3 with the mouse> + <click on cell C4 with the mouse> <Enter>. The resultant should be 26 visible in cell C5. When cell C5 is active, you will see the formula =C3+C4 on the Input Line on the Format Toolbar. Now you know how to enter and edit numerical values and formulas in the cells. You can also enter text data or strings in the cells. Next we will add some text in cell B5 to remind us what cell C5 contains. If you remember, cell C5 contains the sum of cells C3 and C4. Make cell B5 the active cell by moving the mouse over it and clicking on it. Enter the string “ SUM =” and press return. You do not need to type in the quotes. Now you have seen that cells can hold numerical values and text. You can change the formatting of any cell by making the cell active and using the icons on the Object Toolbar. Make B5 the active cell and change the formatting of the cell by clicking on the icon for Bold on the Object Toolbar and the icon for Italics on the Object Toolbar.