Chapter 4. Worksheet overview.

The Worksheet

After opening up gnumeric, you're presented with a view of a worksheet. This is where the majority of the work on the spreadsheet is done, and provides access to all the various sub dialogs of Gnumeric.

The worksheet view is split into several main areas. The menu bar, the button bar, the entry area, the main cell area, and the info area. See Figure 4-1

The Menu bar

The default location of the menu bar is the top of the application window. It provides a quick and organized access to some of the more common operations available.

File

New

Create a new worksheet. This opens a new worksheet in a window.

Open

Open an existing worksheet. A new window is created with the file selected in it.

Save

Save the current worksheet. If the file has been named and saved before, this will silently save the file to the current filename. If it has not been saved before, this will prompt for a filename and path.

Save as..

Save a file with a new name. Save a newly created file or save a file with a different name.

Plugins

Open the plugins dialog. For loading, saving of plugins. This shows the listing of pre loaded plugins and allows the user the user to add more.

Close

Close the current worksheet.

Quit

Close the open worksheets and quit Gnumeric

Edit

Cut

Remove the content in the currently selected cells and save it.

Copy

Make a copy of the current selection to be pasted later.

Paste

Paste whatever is in the cut buffer at the cursor.

Paste Special

Paste from the cut buffer, but with more options as to what to paste. Useful for pasting just format, or just values, etc.

Select All

Select every cell in the worksheet.

Clear ->

All

Clear every cell.

Formats

Clear the format from selected cells.

Goto Cell

Let the user specify a cell to "jump" to.

View

Zoom

Zoom in. To show a area of the spreadsheet in more detail.

Insert

Cells

Insert a new cell.

Rows

Insert a Row of cells.

Columns

Insert a Column of cells.

Format

Cells

Open the cell format dialog. Used to change formatting, color, etc

Help

Cells

View the online help for Gnumeric

The Button Bar

The Button bar contains many icons representative of some the more common operations a user may need to use. It is intended to provide fast access to these tools.

New File.

Create a New file

Open

Open an existing file.

Save

Save the current worksheet to disk.

Cut

Copy the cells in the current selection to the cut buffer and delete them.

Copy

Copy the cells in the current selection to the cut buffer.

Paste

Paste the contents of the cut buffer into the active cell.

Left justify..

Justify the contents of the cell to the left of the cell.

Center

Center the content of the cells.

Right Justify

Justify the content of the cells to the right side of the cells

Bold

Change the style of the current cell to be bold, or un bold it if it is already bold.

Italic

Change the style of the current cell to be italicized .

Line

Draw a line on the worksheet.

Arrow

Draw a line with a arrow at one end. A pointer.

Box

Draw a box onto the worksheet.

Ellipse

Draw an ellipse or a circle on the worksheet.

Data entry area.

Immediately under the button bar is the data entry area. This is a small area, which contains a current cell indicator, a confirm and a cancel button, and an entry area for detailed editing of the cell contents. See Figure 4-2

Current Cell Indicator.

On the far left of the Data Entry area is the current cell indicator area. If a single cell is selected, it will show the address for the cell. If a region is selected, it shows the size of the region in the format:

4Lx5C

Where L is the number of rows and C is the number of columns. In the example above, this would be a selection of 4 rows by 5 columns.

The Confirm Button

While entering data in the entry area, you can confirm the current cell contents by pressing the green return button .

The Cancel Button

If a user decides that the data entered into a cell is not what they want, the Cancel button will cancel the current data and return the cell to the state it was at before. The data being entered into the cell can be canceled by pressing the red X button .

The most common use of this is when overwriting the contents of a cell with new data. If the user decided to revert the change before confirming it, the cancel button is the answer.

The Cell area

Most of the work done on a spreadsheet is done to the main Cell area, the large grid like part of the worksheet. This is where all the formulas and data are entered, and is the center of activity for the spreadsheet.

The sheet is bordered by a column label and a row label. Columns are labeled alphabetically and are labeled horizontally across the top of the sheet. See Figure 4-4. Rows are labeled vertically along size the left side of the sheet and are sorted numerically. See Figure 4-5

The Info Area

The section at the very bottom of the worksheet view is the info area. It contains information about the currently selected cells, and also provides access to buttons for zooming in and out. This is also where the sheet indicator lives.

Sheet indicator

To the left side is the sheet indicator. In workbooks where there are more than one sheet, this indicates how many sheets are there, and also allows the user to move to another sheet by clicking the proper tag. This is not implemented yet.

The Zoom buttons

The Zoom in (Figure 4-7) and Zoom out (Figure 4-8) buttons are also in the info area. Pressing Zoom in enlarges the spreadsheet and shows a more detailed view of the sheet. Zoom out shows a wider area of the spreadsheet with less detail. The view of the sheet can also be changed by using the View menu and the Zoom option.

The running calculation area

In the bottom right hand corner, is an info area that shows some constantly calculated values. The default set is to show the Sum of all the currently selected cells.

There is a right click option that includes a few more options. This can include Sum, Min, Max, Average, Count.