OpenOffice.org Calc Tips : drag & drop in a chart

Björn Milcke from Sun made me discover today a nice feature of the chart module : using drag & drop with charts. Have a look at the following picture : I would like to create a diagram displaying the three ranges A to C. As you may notice, I forgot to select the ranges B and C. So what will I do ? I will just select the two ranges B and C, and then drag & drop them on the chart using the "ctrl key". This will add directly my two ranges to the chart ! Nice, isn't it ? PS : to drag & drop the range, you first need to select it, and then click on it for some time before moving your mouse. This is the same behaviour as to move cells around a sheet. PS 2 : if the ranges do not have the same number of values, the result is... weird. but this will be corrected in some time ;-)

New addon released : OOoMultiDiff

Yesterday, we (StarXpert) released a new Add-on for OpenOffice.org called multidiff. This Add-on simplifies sending OpenOffice.org documents in ODF, PDF or Ms Office format. It is mostly useful for basic users of OpenOffice.org who are not used to the different formats. Features :

• Works with all the OOo modules (Writer, Calc...)

• Send the document by mail (attached under ODF, PDF or MS Office)
• Save document (under ODF, PDF or MS Office)
• Follow modifications
• Translated into French and English
• OOoMultiDiff is licenced under LGPL

You can download OOoMultiDiff on : http://www.starxpert.fr/staroffice/ressources.htm#ooomultidiff And if you have some time, we would appreciate feedbacks.

OpenOffice.org Calc Tips : Modifying borders around a table

Have a look at the screenshot below. As you might notice, this is a really simple invoice designed in Calc. Some of the formating of this array is already done using borders. Now, you would like to add borders around the invoice to make it look better (range B5:E12). By default, if you select the range B5:E12, and try to add borders using the borders icon in the UI, everything will be fine. But this is limited because you can not choose the width and the color of the borders. In order to modify the width and the color, you have to use the borders dialog (format > cells > borders). While using the borders dialog, one may try to add borders using the second icon beginning from the left in the dialog (see sreenshot above). This may be tricky as it deletes the borders around each article in our example above. To avoid it, there is a special feature in the borders dialog . The highlighted button in the screenshot below does exactly the trick : it will add borders but will not delete what you already did.