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 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.
Create a new worksheet. This opens a new worksheet in a window.
Open an existing worksheet. A new window is created with the file selected in it.
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 a file with a new name. Save a newly created file or save a file with a different name.
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 the current worksheet.
Close the open worksheets and quit Gnumeric
Remove the content in the currently selected cells and save it.
Make a copy of the current selection to be pasted later.
Paste whatever is in the cut buffer at the cursor.
Paste from the cut buffer, but with more options as to what to paste. Useful for pasting just format, or just values, etc.
Select every cell in the worksheet.
Clear every cell.
Clear the format from selected cells.
Let the user specify a cell to "jump" to.
Zoom in. To show a area of the spreadsheet in more detail.
Insert a new cell.
Insert a Row of cells.
Insert a Column of cells.
Open the cell format dialog. Used to change formatting, color, etc
View the online help for Gnumeric
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.
Create a New file
Open an existing file.
Save the current worksheet to disk.
Copy the cells in the current selection to the cut buffer and delete them.
Copy the cells in the current selection to the cut buffer.
Paste the contents of the cut buffer into the active cell.
Justify the contents of the cell to the left of the cell.
Center the content of the cells.
Justify the content of the cells to the right side of the cells
Change the style of the current cell to be bold, or un bold it if it is already bold.
Change the style of the current cell to be italicized .
Draw a line on the worksheet.
Draw a line with a arrow at one end. A pointer.
Draw a box onto the worksheet.
Draw an ellipse or a circle on the worksheet.
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
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.
While entering data in the entry area, you can confirm the
current cell contents by pressing the green return 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.