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Spreadsheet Modes | General Spreadsheet Keyboard Commands | Selecting Cells |
Copying and Pasting Cells | Text Overlapping | Overlapping Precedence | Cloned Frames | AutoGrow & ScrollBars | Open a Frame |
Navigating and working in the spreadsheet environment is a little different than the other environments in the Gobe Productive suite. The following topics describe some of the features and functions of the environment.
There are two modes in a spreadsheet, data entry mode and sheet-navigation mode.
The default mode for a spreadsheet is sheet-navigation mode. The spreadsheet is always in this mode, except when data is being entered into a cell. In this mode, keyboard input navigates the cells in the spreadsheet. You can also select cells in this mode.
In data entry mode, keyboard input is focused on a specific cell in the
spreadsheet. If you select a cell and begin typing, the program automatically
switches from sheet-navigation mode to data entry mode. While in data-entry mode,
what you type is displayed in the data entry field, which is the large white field in the
spreadsheet PartBar.
To exit cell-focus, click elsewhere in the spreadsheet, press [ENTER] or [TAB], or
click the confirm or cancel button . The spreadsheet returns to sheet-navigation mode.
[ENTER] | Accept the data in a cell and move to the next cell below. |
[TAB] | Accept the data in a cell and move to the next cell to the right. |
Arrow Keys | In data entry mode, the arrow keys move the insertion point (blinking bar)
forward or back in the entry field (large white field in the PartBar). In sheet-navigation mode, the arrow keys move the cell-focus in the direction of the key. The up arrow moves the cell focus up one in the column. The left arrow key moves the cell focus to the cell directly to the left. |
You must use the mouse to select cells in the spreadsheet environment.
The diagram below demonstrates how to select entire rows, columns or the entire
spreadsheet.
The cut, copy, and paste commands for the spreadsheet work the same as in the rest of the Gobe Productive suite. Cells must be selected to be copied.
When pasting cells, the entire block of copied or cut cells is pasted as it appeared
when copied. It is only necessary to select the anchor cell where you want to paste
the block of cells. See the diagrams below.
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Important: If you paste a block of cells into an area with existing data, the pasted cells overwrite the existing cells. |
Large amounts of text in a cell overlap to neighboring cells. This allows you to
place descriptive text in your spreadsheet and not have the cell borders cut-off the text.
Cells with number values do not overlap. Only cells with text overlap.
Overlapping can be very useful for designing unique spreadsheet layouts. However, you cannot place anything in the cells where the text overlaps. For example, in the image above, the text "Data" is placed in cell A8. If you placed some text in cell A7, it would cut-off the overlap. Overlapping only occurs into cells where there is no text or numbers.
How text overlaps into neighboring cells is governed by an order of precedence. Normally, this will not affect overlapped cells, unless you place two or more overlapping cells near each other.
If you need an exact duplicate of a spreadsheet frame, cloning is the solution. Cloned frames are "live-linked" to each other. Making edits in one frame duplicates the same changes to the other frame. This can be very useful if you need to have the same cells in different places of a document. Using a series of cloned frames, you can make a change to one frame and all the other frames change as well.
In this example, both frames are identical copies of each other. Edits made in one frame are automatically recorded in the other frame.
Spreadsheet frames can be configured to auto-grow vertically or horizontally and display scroll bars.
AutoGrow Horizontally: The frame automatically resizes horizontally to accommodate text as it is entered.
AutoGrow Vertically: The frame automatically resizes vertically to accommodate text as it is entered.
ScrollBars: The frame displays vertical scroll bars.
The Open Frame feature allows you to select any frame in your document and open the contents of that frame into a separate window. This can be useful if you need to edit the contents of a particularly large frame.
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NOTE: The new document created when you open a frame is only for editing the contents of the frame. You will not be able to add other frames to the document, this includes graphic items. |
When finished editing the contents of the open frame document, close the
window. You can save the contents of the frame to another document file if
necessary.
Copyright © 1999, Gobe Software, Inc |