Related to changing font color of a large selection of cells in OpenOffice Calc

[Pushpak Dagade <gu...@gmail.com>]

Hello,
I need to explain my problem with the help of an example.

Assume I have a spreadsheet with a column containing 50 cells of text data.
Suppose I change the font colour of only half the text in a particular
cell, say, no. 10, to red (so cell no. 10 now has its contents in 2 colours
- red and black). Everything is as expected till now.

The problem comes when I try to select all the cells and change their font
colour to say, yellow. What I expect is all cells, irrespective of their
prior font colours, should have their font colour yellow. However, what I
get is a different result for cell no. 10. Cell no.10 has half its text
(which was originally black by default) in yellow, but the red coloured
contents are still red in colour.

Manually changing colours for such cells in a big spreadsheet is a tiresome
job. Is there a way to force all cells to have the given font colour
irrespective of their prior font colours?

Quick reply will be appreciated.
Thank you.

Regards,
Pushpak

PS: This small problem was found when we tried to shift from MSOffice to
OpenOffice.
Thanks to OpenOffice, for helping us save lot of money. We have ported all
our 300 machines to OpenOffice from MSOffice; and we are able to do most of
our work on OpenOffice without any difficulty.

Re: Related to changing font color of a large selection of cells in OpenOffice Calc

[johnny smith <ka...@krovatka.su>]

and here's my reply to pushpak given on 8 July 2013 at 21:00:04:

On Mon, 08 Jul 2013 20:03:08 -0000, Pushpak Dagade <gu...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I had cells no. 5 and 10 in bold, rest all normal (ie not bold). I  
> selected all the cells, clicked on 'new style from selection',

 from here it went wrong. the selected cells had different cell style: some
were regular and other bold. so, calc can't have create a single style
 from the entire selection but rather created a style from the first cell
of the selection, which wasn't bold. saving formatting through creation of
a new style works only if all cells are identical in style.

however, that's not a problem. you can just create a backup of the
selection in some spare location in your spreadsheet, maybe on a new
sheet, then clear formatting of the original and restore its cell styles -
but not character styles - from the backup. For that you should copy the
backup, select the original, choose 'edit/paste special' and uncheck
everything but 'formats'.

if sizes of the original and the backup are equal, which is assumed true,
then all cell styles of the backup will be transfered to the original,
after which the backup may be safely disposed of, because it is no longer
needed.

p.s. please don't respond to me personally but rather to the list, viz.
<us...@openoffice.apache.org>. it's meant to be a kind of open help desk,
so that your successor in experiencing a similar problem would find the
solution by just googling it.

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Re: Related to changing font color of a large selection of cells in OpenOffice Calc

[johnny smith <ka...@krovatka.su>]

here is a reply pushpak sent to me personally:

Hello johnny,
Thank you for your quick reply. I truly appreciate it.


I was able to understand what you said here clearly. Thank you. Solved ~25%
of my problems straightaway -

  the solution to the problem is to clear all formatting of the cells in
> question (both cell and character styles) by selecting them and applying
> 'format/default formatting'. after that you can turn them yellow as you
> wish.
>
--------------------------------------------------------------------

However, I couldn't understand what you said here, since when I was trying
to try it myself on Calc, I couldn't get what I expected -


> if you don't want to clear your well adjusted cell style then you can  
> save
> it by selecting a sample cell and clicking 'new style from selection' on
> the 'styles and formatting' panel (which is opened by pressing f11 or
> clicking 'format/styles and formatting'). after applying default  
> formatting
> and deleting all character styling thereby, the newly created style can  
> be
> cast back on the cells.
>

Maybe, I didn't clearly understood what you tried to explain.
I' would like to continue with my previous example to explain what I was
trying to do.
I had cells no. 5 and 10 in bold, rest all normal (ie not bold). I selected
all the cells, clicked on 'new style from selection', cleared up all
formatting, changed the cell font colours as required (got everything
expected till now), and then finally double clicked on the saved style.
However, I didn't get back cells no. 5 and 10 in bold.

Can you please let me know what am I doing wrong here.

Thank you once again.
Sorry for my late reply. Got stuck up with some unavoidable work.

Regards,
Pushpak
 

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Re: Related to changing font color of a large selection of cells in OpenOffice Calc

[johnny smith <ka...@krovatka.su>]

some comments first, the solution follows after an asterisk (*).

On Sat, 06 Jul 2013 07:28:50 -0000, Pushpak Dagade <gu...@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Assume I have a spreadsheet with a column containing 50 cells of text  
> data.
> Suppose I change the font colour of only half the text in a particular
> cell, say, no. 10, to red (so cell no. 10 now has its contents in 2  
> colours
> - red and black). Everything is as expected till now.

here you change the font color of particular characters, i.e. create a new  
character style and apply it to those characters.

> The problem comes when I try to select all the cells and change their  
> font
> colour to say, yellow. What I expect is all cells, irrespective of their
> prior font colours, should have their font colour yellow. However, what I
> get is a different result for cell no. 10. Cell no.10 has half its text
> (which was originally black by default) in yellow, but the red coloured
> contents are still red in colour.

here you change the font color of the entire cells, i.e. create a new cell  
style and apply it to the cells. the previously created character style is  
still applied on top of the cell style because the latter is more common  
an the former is more specific.

cell style may be changed expressly through the 'style and formatting'  
panel or may be implied if you just picked it from a drop-down list on the  
'formatting' panel. character styles are always implied in calc, which is  
not good, as your case shows.

*

the solution to the problem is to clear all formatting of the cells in  
question (both cell and character styles) by selecting them and applying  
'format/default formatting'. after that you can turn them yellow as you  
wish.

if you don't want to clear your well adjusted cell style then you can save  
it by selecting a sample cell and clicking 'new style from selection' on  
the 'styles and formatting' panel (which is opened by pressing f11 or  
clicking 'format/styles and formatting'). after applying default  
formatting and deleting all character styling thereby, the newly created  
style can be cast back on the cells.

p.s. if there were a possibility to expressly create new character styles  
in calc, as it is in writer, then you could perform a simple  
search-and-replace operation to switch from the 'red text' character style  
to the default one.

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