This is what your spreadsheet should look like apart from the two values input at A3 and B3

The reason it looks so bare is that, firstly we have not put any values into it 

and secondly the formulae are keeping it blank, until the values are put in. 

By the way, did you remember to copy the formula from F4 to all the cells 

down to F20?  Use the little black box technique now to get that done before

continuing.  Note  that we do NOT want the formula in cell F3. That cell 

must be left blank.

OK, now to test it.  Put the following values in the cells marked by the cell 

in the [   ].  For example 3.4 [A10] means put 3.4 in cell A10.  

Get the idea (for those of you who have not followed this through).

26/07 [A3]

32096 [B3]

31/07 [A4]

32288 [B4]

1.19 [C4]

38.8 [D4]

Saturday [A5]

19844 [B5]

1.18 [C5]

40.9 [D5]

Have a good look at your spreadsheet and see if it matches the picture above.

You can see a normal line on row 4 (that is A4 to H4), but row 5 is 

completely messed up

The formatting does not stop the input of  'Saturday', the mileage value in B5

 has thrown everything upside down beyond E5. 

C5,D5 and E5 are OK as the values are in the accepted range. 

You can see that the formula we dealt with in the last post is doing its job 

and warning the user that the value put into B5 is too small.  G5 and H5 rely 

on the values elsewhere to be with an acceptable range, which in this 

case they clearly are not! 

We will see what can be done with this next time

That's all for now

Thank You for your attention

Prometheus1618

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Your First Open Office Spreadsheet - Part 1

Hi People

Now you have got your OpenOffice.org program up and running (You haven't, see last post on this blog), we can get our first file created. A spreadsheet is what I have chosen to start.

Sometime soon, we will be adding video clips to give a little more information , but for now its just the text and snapshots.

Open your OpenOffice program. Select 'Spreadsheet' (Very similar to Excel in look isn't it?).
The spread sheet will be centred around getting you Mileage calculated and costed for you, so we will call it "Car Mileage" OK.

Firstly nearly the whole screen is covered in little blocks, these are called cells. Cells are the basic blocks (no pun intended) of the spreadsheet. A spreadsheet contains a number of these cells. Each cell is called by its Column Letter and Row Number. So if you wanted to put the word 'Miles' into D5. First find the column headed with D and follow it down until you come to row 5. Left click in this cell. This would place the cursor in that cell. Now you can type Miles into that cell.

Headings for Columns:

We will need the following headings (initially)
Date [A2]
Mileage [B2]
Cost per litre [C2]
Number of litres [D2]
Total Cost [E2]
Miles [F2]
Cost per mile [G2]
miles per litre [H2]
litres per 100km [I2]



If you put these headings in the cells in the [ ], so that for example Miles will go into cell [F2].  You may need to widen some columns (we will do that next time if you cannot figure out how to do it).

Now we need to save the the spreadsheet, left click on File (top left of screen ) and find and left click on Save in the the menu list.  The 'Filename' box should have 'Untitled 1' highlighted in blue, just type Mileage (you don't have to clear the box first).  Under the 'Filenname' box, you will see a box with 'Save as type' to the left of it and 'ODF Spreadsheet  (.ods)' in the box.  Left click on the blue 'V' to the right of the box and select 'Microsoft Excel 97/2000/XP (.xls)'.  Now left click on the 'Save' button. Job done - you will find the spreadsheet in your 'My documents' folder.
That will be all for this time, people, but I will leave you to think on what columns we are going to put our dates, and figures into and what columns are going to be worked out by the spreadsheet.

See you next time
Prometheus1618


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