LibreOffice Calc – Creating Charts with Conditional Formatting

Posted on by ryan

I was working on creating a chart in LibreOffice Calc that was kind of weird. Basically, I wanted to show change over time in a dichotomous variable (e.g., political party affiliation in the US – Democrat or Republican). I could, theoretically, make a chart where presence is indicated by “1” and absence is indicated by “0” or “2,” but I didn’t want the chart to suggest that one value was better than the other, which is what such a chart would indicate:

This chart format seems to suggest that Democrats are something and Republicans are not.

I realized, then, that what I needed was a way to tell the software which color to code each bar in the bar chart. Of course, that is possible by clicking on every single bar and customizing the color. But, with my data already indicating whether it should be one color or another and with over 100 cases to code, I was hoping to find a better approach.

I ended up finding a couple of websites (here, here, and here) that discussed a feature in LibreOffice Calc that was introduced in version 4.5 called “property mapping.” That seemed to hold the answer. However, as of LibreOffice 6.0.3 (the version I happened to be using), the “Property Mapping” option in the Data Range window of a chart was gone. Even so, the general process still works. So, here’s how to create the kind of chart I wanted.

First, make sure you’ve got your data entered (obviously). Second, select the data you want to chart:

Select “Insert -> Chart” and then choose “Column” chart:

On the Next page of the Chart Wizard, make sure you’ve got your data selected correctly (I had to select “First column as label”):

The problem with this, of course, is that I have coded everyone in the dataset with a “1” even though, in reality, some of the Governors in this dataset were Republicans and some were Democrats. Right now, it looks like everyone was a Democrat, but this is where the conditional formatting comes on.

In your spreadsheet, you need to set up your conditional coding. This is done with “IF” statements. Here’s the code I used:

=IF(D2="Republican",COLOR(255,0,0),IF(D2="Democrat",COLOR(0,0,255),COLOR(255,255,0)))

Basically, what this code does checks to see whether a cell has “Republican” in it or “Democrat.” If it is Republican, color 255,0,0 is selected (RED, which is reported in the cell as 16711680). If it is Democrat, color 0,0,255 is selected (BLUE, which is reported in the cell as 255). The last part of the formula indicates that everyone else should have a different color (YELLOW = 255,255,0). Dragging that down, I get a color code for every one of the values in my chart. Once I have this in place (which should really be done before you start the chart wizard, but can be done after the fact), now I can use this to adjust the bar fill color in my chart.

Adding this to the chart is done in the “Data Series” step in the Chart Wizard. Alternatively, if you’ve already created your chart, select it, and right-click. Then click on “Data Ranges” and you can adjust this there. In the Data Series window, under “Data ranges:”, select “Fill Color”:

You’ll note that the “Range for Fill Color” box is empty. We’re going to fill that with the values we just generated using our conditional code. You can do this by clicking on the button next to that empty box, then select the corresponding values:

Once you have selected your fill color, your chart will now have the corresponding conditional fill colors:

Of course, this chart still looks pretty crappy. The y-axis needs to be adjusted, the columns shouldn’t have any space between them, and it needs a title. Here’s my finished chart:

The chart provides a graphical representation of a dichotomous variable using color to illustrate shifts between political parties without suggesting that one party is better than the other. Et voila – conditional color formatting in LibreOffice charts.

LibreOffice – Impress Templates and Object Styles

Posted on by ryan

I just upgraded one of my computers to Kubuntu 18.10. With that upgrade came the latest version of LibreOffice (6.1.2.1).


With this new version, when I try to create a new Impress document, I’m now forced to pick a template. The options aren’t terrible, but I am of the opinion that presentations should focus on the content, not the pretty colors, shapes, or designs around the content.

I wanted a plain as can be, black and white template. There wasn’t one to be found. So, I created one.

Plain TemplateDownload

I’m not going to go into the process of how to create a template in this post, but I do want to note one thing that I learned while creating my template. There is a quick way to change the characteristics of drawing objects in LibreOffice as well. I have always hated the default color when I create a box or circle in Impress (usually it’s some ugly blue color). It is possible to change the defaults for those, but doing so also seems to affect the defaults for outline boxes (not sure why). But it’s also possible to simply create a new style for objects and then apply that style once you’ve created your object, just like can be done with text. Here’s how you do that.

First, make sure you have your right side panel open in Impress and click on the Styles tab.

I initially tried changing the Default option in the list of styles, but that ended up changing the characteristics of the outline boxes, which I didn’t want to do. So, instead, what you need to do is create a new style (or modify one of the existing ones). You can create a new style by right-clicking on one of the existing styles and selecting “New” (my mouse was on “Modify” in the screenshot below). 

In the window that pops up, you can change the fill color under the “Area” tab and the line color under the “Line” tab. 

Since I like super plain, I changed mine to a grey fill with a black outline. Now, when I create a new drawing object, I can simply select it and double-click the style and it is how I like it:

I also saved this as part of my template. So, now, when I create a new Impress presentation, I load my template, and all of the settings I like are already in place.

(NOTE: How to save this as a template. Click on “File -> Templates -> Save as Template.” You’ll get a new window. Name your template and pick your folder. It will then be saved as a template for you that you can use when you create a new Impress file.)

LibreOffice – animating elements or series in a chart/graph in Impress

Posted on by ryan

I really like LibreOffice. It’s not just my default office suite because it’s free. I like it because of the control it gives over so many elements of what I do in my day-to-day work. However, this post is one of those where I lament the fact that it is missing a feature that other similar software has had for over a decade: the ability to animate a series or element in a chart or graph. There is a way to do this, but it is extremely clunky and should really be a feature that is added to the software.

Assuming you want to use LibreOffice to animate a series in a graph or chart, here’s the process.

First, create your graph. I created mine in LibreOffice Calc.

Now, copy and paste that into a slide in Impress. 

Check to be sure the chart looks exactly how you want it to look, because this next step is going to make it so any future changes to your chart will be really time consuming. What you’re going to do is right-click on the chart and select “Break”.

What the “Break” command does is separate every element of your chart into individual pieces. You can test this once it’s done by clicking on any one piece of the chart and you’ll see that it doesn’t select the chart anymore. It just the single piece of the chart, as shown in this next image.

So, after “breaking” your chart, you have all the same elements, but they are all broken into individual pieces. What that means is you can now animate every single piece of your chart.

Of course, if your goal is like mine and you want to show change over time by animating a series from left to right, there are a couple more steps. 

To animate an entire series, you have to select the whole series. You really need to do this by dragging a selection square around the relevant elements, since there are is an outline of each marker in an element, the fill component, and then the line. Selecting each component individually is basically impossible. So, drag a square around the elements you want to link together like this:

Then right-click on them and select “Group”. Once you’ve got the elements grouped together, you can then “Animate” the group using a Wipe animation from left to right.

Here was my result once you play the slideshow:

LibreOffice programmers, if you’re listening out there. I love the software. But this is a feature that should be included and not require this length of work. Please add it.

LibreOffice Calc – Comparing and Aligning Two Lists Using VLOOKUP

Posted on by ryan

One of the tasks I have to do regularly as part of my job is to compare two lists to see which items are missing on one list but not the other. I have been doing this by hand but figured there had to be a way to do this in Excel. I finally figured it out but don’t want to forget how to do it. So, I’m documenting it here so I can draw on this whenever I need to do it again.

Here’s the scenario. I have a list of “items” but every month or so I receive an updated list of “items” from someone else. During that month, some of the items on my list have been taken off and some have been added to it. Likewise, the same has happened to the other list that this other person sends me (I’m being really vague here because I work at a university and there are laws that govern academic records).

My list and the other list have to be kept synchronized but we have two separate databases that are used for this because… (argh, yeah). Anyway, what that means is that I have to compare the two lists and quickly find the items on one list but not the other and vice versa. Here’s how to do it quickly in LibreOffice Calc.

Here are two lists:

(NOTE: You can actually do this in two separate Calc sheets or within the same one.)

LIST 1 is in Column A and List 2 is in Column C.

In Column B I am going to create a function that allows me to search all of Column C to see which of the items in LIST 1 show up in LIST 2. Click in Row 2 of Column B then click on the Function Wizard (or start typing):

In the Function Wizard dialogue box, you’ll see this:

Search for VLOOKUP then double-click it and you’ll see this:

You now need to build the function. This is where I got confused, so I’m going to try to explain this carefully.

The first box is the “Search criterion.” Basically, this is what you want to find. In our example, let’s say that we want to see which items in List 1 are in List 2 (Hint: It’s apples and grapes.). So, we are going to put in the Search criterion that we want the software to search the items in column A or LIST 1. We do this by simply selecting cell A2 (you can do this by typing it in or by selecting it by clicking the button to the right of the box and then selecting A2 like I did below):

Next is the “Array” box. This is the content through which you want the software to search to find the items in LIST 1. Again, you can type this in or select it using the button to the right. However, there is an important change that you need to make here. If you select the array with your mouse and leave it as is, the values will change as you drag this formula down in Column B as it will assume you want to adjust the array as well. Since we don’t want to adjust the array but rather want to search through the same items in LIST 2, we need to put dollar signs before the letters and numbers in the Array which will lock the boundaries of the array into place so they don’t change when we copy the formula to other cells, as shown below:

The next part is the part that threw me off for a long time in figuring this out. The “Index” is the column in the Array you want to compare to the Search Criterion. In this case, all you need to do is specify “1” since there is only one column. But, presumably, you could have an array made up of multiple columns and want to choose just the 4th column (so you would enter 4 in the Index). Here’s how this looks:

Finally, the last box that is part of our function is the “Sort order” box. This tells the software whether the lists are ordered alphabetically or not. If they are not, enter zero (“0”). If they are, enter “1.” If you leave this blank, LibreOffice Calc thinks the lists are ordered. So, make sure you fill this out.

Once you’ve got that all entered, your formula should look like what I have above. Hit “OK” and it will search the Array C2:C7 for “bananas.” If it finds it, it will return “bananas.” If it doesn’t, it will return “#N/A” as shown below:

You can then, of course, drag this formula down. When it finds the item from LIST 1 in LIST 2 it returns that item. When it doesn’t, you get #N/A.

And there you have it. A LibreOffice Calc function for searching a list for a target and returning an indicator.

(NOTE: What I typically do after I have run this function is sort by the column where the function is located so I know which items are missing from LIST 1 and which are missing from LIST 2.)

LibreOffice Calc – splitting contents of cells into multiple columns (e.g., splitting commas)

Posted on by ryan

I periodically have to take a column of text in LibreOffice calc that has names like this “Lastname, Firstname” and split them into two columns. I figure it out every time, but then I forget how I did. So, here’s a quick tutorial on how this is done.

Open your spreadsheet with the cells that need to be split, like this:

Select the column that you want to split:

Then go up to Data -> Text to Columns:

You’ll get the following window:

This window gives you several options for splitting the cells, using commas, spaces, semicolons, tabs, other, etc. I selected just “Tab” and “Comma” but could also select “Space” to get rid of the extra space. However, I’m going to leave the extra space and show you one more function that can be useful in more complex situations. Once you’re done, hit “OK” and you’ll see your single columns split into two:

If you want to get rid of the extra space, there is a LibreOffice Calc function for that. Click in cell C1 and then go up to Insert -> Function. You’ll see this window:

The function you want is in the Text Category (use the dropdown menu) and is called TRIM. Simple TRIM the text in B1 and it will get rid of the extra spaces:

When you’re done with your function, select “OK” and you’ve got your spaces removed. Drag that function down and it will remove all of the spaces:

You can then copy the new column without the spaces and do a “Paste Special” into the old column, overwriting the text with the spaces. Just make sure you turn off the “Formulas” when you do the “Paste Special” and you’ll get just the new text:

Delete the column with formulas and you’re good to go: