opinion is the capability to select multiple cells and see immediately the total and average of the range. You will find these figures in the bottom-right status bar. This has saved us numerous times when we have needed to get this information quickly!
Getting back to our example, it looks a little basic at the moment as there is no formatting involved. For instance, what's the billing currency? You can also see that some of the cells have text that does not fit, which is highlighted by a small right arrow in the cell. We should also add some labels and titles to our spreadsheet to make it a bit more visually appealing.
To start off, all the revenue figures can be changed into currency figures. To do this, select all the cells containing revenue information and click the small icon shown in Figure 6.8. This immediately formats the cells so that they display the dollar sign and also puts in a thousands separator to make the numbers easier to read.
Now you need to space all the cells so that you can read all the information. A quick and easy way to do this is to click the area immediately to the left of column A and immediately above row 1 to select the entire spreadsheet. Now all you have to do is double-click the dividing lines and each column resizes according to its longest entry.
Next you can add a little color to the worksheet by using the Paint Can icon in the toolbar. Select the range B3 to E3 with the mouse cursor and click the background fill icon to bring up the color window shown in Figure 6.9. Now select the color you want to use and Calc fills the cells with that color. You can also change the font color by using the icon immediately to the right in the same way.
FIGURE 6.8 Make numbers more meaningful with the currency and percentage icons.
FIGURE 6.9 Add a touch of color to an otherwise dull spreadsheet with the Fill Background icon.
Finally, you need a couple more finishing touches. The first one is to enlarge the font for the column headers. Select the range B3 to E3 again and click the font size in the toolbar to change it to something a little larger. You might also want to use the bold and italic options to emphasize the headers and also the totals some more.
If you have followed the steps as described, you should end up with a spreadsheet similar to the one in Figure 6.10.
FIGURE 6.10 The finished article, looking a lot better than before!
Calc includes a powerful tool that lets you summarize large groups of data to help you when you need to carry out any analysis. This tool is called a
The previous section featured a spreadsheet that showed salespeople, customers, date of invoice, and revenue. At the foot of the spreadsheet were a couple of formulas that enabled you to quickly see the total revenue earned and the average order value.
Now you want to find out how much sales people have earned individually. Of course, you could add this up manually with a calculator, but that would defeat the point of using Calc. So, you need to create a Data Pilot to summarize the information.
First, you need to select all the cells from B3 to E42 as they contain the data you want to analyze. After these are selected, click the Data menu and select Data Pilot, Start to open the Data Pilot Wizard. The first screen is shown in Figure 6.11 and is defaulted to current selection. Make sure that you choose this one to use the data in the selected range and click OK to continue.
FIGURE 6.11 Use either the current selection or an external data source to provide the Data Pilot with information.
The next screen enables you to lay out your Data Pilot as you want it. In this example, you want to have Salesperson in the left column marked Row Fields, so click and drag the Salesperson option from the list on the right and drop it onto the Row Fields area. Next, drag out Revenue and drop it into the Data Fields area; it will automatically know to give you a sum of the revenue. We also want to know the average or mean price per unit, so drag Price per Unit onto the Data Fields area and double-click it. Select Average in the dialog box that appears and click OK. You should end up with something like Figure 6.12, and you are almost ready to display your Data Pilot.
FIGURE 6.12 Lay out your Data Pilot as you want it.
The final piece in the puzzle is to tell Calc where you want it to place the finished Data Pilot. To do this, click the More button to drop down some extra options and then, to choose a new sheet, select the drop-down box next to Results To. When you click OK now, Calc builds the Data Pilot and displays it on a new sheet in your workbook. Figure 6.13 shows the new Data Pilot.
FIGURE 6.13 Summarize large volumes of numeric data with ease, using Calc's Data Pilot function.
Office Suites for Fedora
As mentioned earlier, OpenOffice.org is the default application suite for Fedora. However, with all things open source, there are plenty of alternatives should you find that OpenOffice.org does not meet your specific requirements. These include the popular Gnome Office and also KOffice, the default KDE productivity suite. You are more likely to hear more about OpenOffice.org, especially as more and more people wake up to the fact that it is compatible with Microsoft Office file formats. In fact, the state of Massachusetts recently elected to standardize on two file formats for use in government: the Adobe Acrobat PDF format and the OASIS OpenDocument format, both of which are supported natively in OpenOffice.org.
The decision by the state of Massachusetts to standardize on PDF and OpenDocument has huge ramifications for the open source world. It is the first time that OpenDocument, an already-agreed open standard, has been specified in this way. What it means is that anyone who wants to do business with the state government must use OpenDocument-based file formats, and not the proprietary formats in use by Microsoft. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it does not have support for OpenDocument in any of its applications, making them useless to anyone wanting to work with the state government. This is despite Microsoft being a founding member of OASIS, who developed and ratified the OpenDocument standard!
Working with Gnome Office
The other office suite available for GNOME is Gnome Office, which is a collection of individual applications. Unlike OpenOffice.org, Gnome Office does not have a coherent suite of applications, meaning that you have to get used to using a word processor that offers no integration with a spreadsheet, and that cannot work directly with a presentation package. However, if you need only one or two components, it is worthwhile investigating Gnome
