26 Manage a Table

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Once you're familiar with creating tables and formatting them, you'll still find yourself adjusting them as you work with them. Perhaps you need to add more rows or columns . Perhaps you want to make a quick adjustment to one of the column widths.

Before You Begin

24 Create a Table

25 Format a Table


See Also

29 Add a Chart or Spreadsheet to a Document


Formatting a table and getting data into it is most of the battle, but you also will find that traversing a table differs somewhat from traversing regular text. Table 4.1 shows the keystrokes needed to traverse tables efficiently .

Table 4.1. Writer's Table-Navigating Keystrokes

Press This

To Move the Table's Cursor Here

Shift+Tab and left arrow

The preceding cell

Tab and right arrow

The next cell

Up arrow

The cell above the current cell

Down arrow

The cell below the current cell

Ctrl+Home

The first cell in the table

Ctrl+End

The last cell in the table

Enter

Pressing Enter in the final cell ends the table you're creating


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  1. Resize the Column Size

    Adjusting a column's size is extremely simple. Move your mouse pointer to an edge of the column you want to resize (to either increase or decrease the column width). The mouse pointer changes to a double arrow. Click the edge of the column and drag the column left or right. When you release the mouse, Writer resizes the column to its new size. If you shrink a column's width too narrow, the text may not all fit on one line, and Writer will be forced to double the height of the rows to hold the extra data.

    NOTE

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    You can make a column width adjustment by dragging a column's edge on the horizontal ruler atop the document. Most users are more comfortable dragging the actual column edge to resize a column, though, because a vertical line moves as you drag your mouse to show the new column size.

  2. Delete a Column

    Select a column you want to delete by right-clicking that column. A menu appears. Select Column, Delete to delete the column from the table. The column to the right of the deleted column increases in size to maintain the same table size. If you don't prefer the wide column that results, you can drag its left edge to the right to reduce its size and put the columns back to a uniform size.

    TIP

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    If you want to insert a new row instead of a new column, select Row, Insert from the right-click menu.

  3. Prepare to Insert a Column

    Select an entire column if you want to insert a new column before or after the selected column. If you don't select the entire column, Writer attempts to insert a single cell at the position of the cursor, and you almost never want to do this because, generally , tables should retain a rectangular shape to take advantage of proportional spacing and other formats available to rectangular tables. (Calc is a better tool for creating nonrectangular tables of data.)

    Right-click the selected column and choose Column, Insert from the menu. The Insert Columns dialog box appears.

  4. Insert a Column

    Click Before if you want to insert the column before the selected column and click After if you want the new column to appear after the selected column in your table. You can insert more than one column by adjusting the Amount value. When you click OK , the column appears in your table.

    Once the new column arrives, you'll fill it with data and adjust any column or table widths as necessary.

  5. Adjust the Row Height

    Adjusting a row's height isn't as simple as dragging the row divider up or down. To adjust one or more rows, select the row or rows you want to adjust and then right-click the selection. Select Row, Height from the menu to display the Row Height dialog box. Adjust the Height value to adjust your row height up or down. If you click the Fit to size option, the row adjusts to match the height of the row's data. If, therefore, the row contains a large font, the Fit to size option adjusts the row to handle that large font size well.

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Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org All In One
Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org All In One
ISBN: 0672326183
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 205
Authors: Greg Perry

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