OOo Major Annoyance and How to Fix it

[rant]The delete key. Friend of everyone who ever wants to edit and fix everything. Well, in OpenOffice.org's Calc, it's broke. I'm sorry, it's just not right. I cannot even imagine how someone as savvy as the programmer who came up with this could also fail to see the implications of this broken thing for new users. [/rant]

What happens is that when using Calc, if the user hits the Delete key, a dialog shows up asking the user to select what elements of the cell are deleted - contents, style, borders, all, etc. A VERY useful idea. I cannot tell the number of times that little dialog would have been welcome when I was using Excel - don't want the cell border, but do want the contents? Easy to do and so much faster than having to go through the Cell Formating process to do it.

However, as useful as this is, NO ONE WILL EVER USE IT EVERY TIME and that's the real problem I have with it. I am used to using the Delete key to kill a cell and everything in it from my Excel days. Sure, I could use the Backspace key, where this functionality currently resides in OOo, but that takes time to learn and that annoys and frustrates new users. I want it in both places, but still want to be able to get that dialog for those special times when it's really handy.

So, here's how to fix the darn thing and make it work the way it should have from the very start. These come courtesy of "drensink," a user over at OOo's bug forum, though instead of swapping between Delete and Backspace, I use shift-Del to bring up the dialog. Thank you drensink!

NOTE: There are two "Delete Contents" talked about below - make sure you really follow the directions to add the correct one to the correct button.

Part One - Add the Dialog to Shift-Del

1. Click "Tools" in the main menu
2. Click "Customize" in the submenu
3. Click the "Keyboard" Tab
4. Set the radio button to "Calc" which should be the default
5. In the Shortcut keys list scroll to and select "Shift-Delete"
6. In the Functions Lists select "Edit" under Category and the second "Delete Contents" under Function
7. Click the Modify Button

Part Two - Making the Delete key delete everything: still in Customize

1. In the Shortcut keys list scroll to and select "Delete"
2. In the Functions Lists select "Edit" under Category and the first "Delete Contents" under Function
3. Click the Modify Button
4. Click the OK Button

One More Niggle Down

During my efforts to slowly switch my entire computing life over to open source software (read "free" if you don't know what that is), I am constantly having to overcome small obstacles to get my new and pretty open source programs working similarly to how I work in proprietary software. This means I spend a lot of time looking for an answer for how to do something once, but that saves me a lot of time later when I actually have to apply it because it already fits my work style. Sometimes, it's an easy switch and sometimes it a real pain.

Today, I found an answer I was looking for as I convert from using Microsoft Office products to the OpenOffice.org office suite. In Excel, there is a feature that is used with the Fill when you highlight a bunch of cells - if you go to the lower, right-hand corner of the selected you get a little plus sign ("+") and from there if you click and drag you automatically fill. This is almost identical to how it works in OpenOffice.org's Calc, except for one small niggle: Fill Format Only.

I use this ALL the time in Excel when I'm trying to get a table looking really nice for print - creating a line of white and line of light gray makes it much easier to follow data across the table. And in Excel, all I have to do is a Fill drag and then select "Fill Format Only" from the little drop down that appears and PRESTO! it's done, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Well, there is no drop down that appears in OpenOffice.org's Calc. Now, you could do this by selecting each row and applying the cell color to each row, but that takes forever when you have a large table. What I learned today is that there is a way to get the same effect and it only takes one more mouse click than in Excel.

Steps:

1. Select the "reference cells" or the cells whose format you want to copy.
2. Click on the Formating Paintbrush icon on the main tool bar (see Figure 2).
3. Click and drag over the cells where you want the formating applied.

Figure 2.

That's it. The additional mouse click is all it takes. Actually, you can do the exact same thing in Excel using the Format Paintbrush feature - but I had never learned this so for me, it's an additional mouse click.