LibreOffice – How To Change Icons to a Darker Theme

Posted on by rcragun

I prefer darker themes for my desktop environment (Kubuntu 20.04) and browser (Brave). For the most part, this isn’t a problem, but it does cause an issue with some applications, including LibreOffice (6.4.4.2).

One of the first things I do when I install Kubuntu is switch my desktop environment from the default theme (System Settings -> Global Theme), Breeze, which is a lighter theme, to Breeze Dark. You can see the differences in the screenshots below:

This is the Breeze theme that is the default in Kubuntu 20.04
This is the Breeze Dark theme that I typically use in Kubuntu.

The problem is with the icon set in LibreOffice. With the default Breeze theme, the icons are very visible and work great:

These are the default icons in LibreOffice 6.4.4.2 in Kubuntu 20.04 with the default Breeze theme.

The problem comes when I switch the theme to Breeze Dark. Here is how the default Breeze icons look in LibreOffice when I switch the theme:

The default icon set, Breeze, in LibreOffice when the Kubuntu Global Theme is switched to Breeze Dark.

Perhaps it’s just my aging eyes, but those icons are very difficult for me to see. The solution is quite simple, though finding it is always hard for me to remember (thus this tutorial). All you need to do is switch the icon set in LibreOffice. There are several icon sets for dark themes that come pre-packaged with the standard version of LibreOffice that ships with Kubuntu and is in the repositories. It’s just a matter of knowing where to look.

In LibreOffice, go to Tools -> Options:

You’ll get this window. You want the third option down under “LibreOffice”, “View”:

Right at the top of this window you can see “Icon style.” That’s the setting you want to change. If you click on the drop down arrow, you’ll see six or so options. Two are specifically for dark themes, Breeze (SVG + dark) and Breeze (dark). Either of those will work:

I typically choose Breeze (SVG + dark). Select the dark theme you want, then click on OK and you’ll get a new icon set in LibreOffice that works much better for dark themes:

These icons are much more visible to my aging eyes.

Et voila! I can now see the icons in the LibreOffice toolbars.

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LibreOffice – exporting high-resolution TIFF/TIF files

Posted on by rcragun

As a scholar who regularly publishes work with charts and graphs, I’m often confronted with varied requirements from publishers for the format in which they want the charts and graphs. Most often, the format is as a TIFF/TIF file, typically with at least 300 dpi and somewhere around 1500×1500 pixels. I make most of my charts in LibreOffice Calc, though occasionally I make some in R as well.

I have recently been editing several volumes in which I had to manage the charts and graphs of other scholars as well. As the editor, I had to make sure the final images met the criteria detailed above. Since scholars often make charts and graphs in Word, it took a little finagling to come up with a quick and easy way to export the images in the format needed by the publisher. Since I did finally figure this out, I figured I’d post it here so I remember how to do this in the future. Luckily, LibreOffice works extremely well with these formats (for the most part), which makes this quite easy.

LibreOffice Calc

Assuming you have created your chart/graph in LibreOffice Calc, exporting it into a TIF format should be fairly easy, though it requires an unfortunate extra step. Here’s a chart I created in LibreOffice Calc:

The LibreOffice programmers make it so you can just right-click on the graph and select “Export as Image.”

When you do this, you’ll get this pop-up window asking where you want to save the image and, more importantly, the format:

Here’s where you get a problem. If you select TIFF, you’ll get a .tif file, but the resolution will be basically the same as what you see on your screen, like this:

Ideally, LibreOffice would ask you what DPI and resolution you want once you select the TIFF format and would then export the chart in that resolution and you’d be done in one simple step. Alas, that’s not an option when you export from LibreOffice Calc.

What you can do instead is copy your chart, open an empty LibreOffice Writer document, and paste it into the document, like this:

Then, go up to File -> Export, like this:

You’ll get the same prompt as before asking what you want to name the file and format. Name the file and select PNG format then click “Save.” What you’re looking for is the window that pops up next:

In this window, you can change the DPI to 300 (do this first) and then change the width and height (they are typically linked, so, if you change one, the other automatically changes). When you’re done, click “OK.” The file you’ll get will be 300 DPI and whatever pixels you chose:

Now, open that file with any image editing software (I’m using Gwenview on KDE for this example) and simply select File->Save As:

Now select the TIFF format. Once you save it, you’ll have a TIFF file with the proper DPI and resolution per the publisher’s instructions. The resulting TIFF file will be huge, but it will meet the criteria of the publisher:

NOTE:

The other way to do this is to copy your chart into a LibreOffice Draw file that has been modified with a huge area (e.g., 4000×4000 pixels). You can then expand your chart to file the area in the LibreOffice Draw document and then export the image. However, depending on the original format of your chart/graph, you may have to resize the text if you do this, which is a pain. However, this will give you a much larger image file. But the approach above is much easier.

The tutorial above used LibreOffice 6.4.4.2.

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LibreOffice 6.4.3.2 – Not Showing Greek Letters/Symbols

Posted on by rcragun

I ran into an issue the other day that ended up taking me hours to solve, in part because I couldn’t find any other solutions online, which is pretty unusual these days.

Here was the issue: I was evaluating a paper (I’m an academic and read lots of papers) that had a bunch of Greek letters/symbols in it as part of a regression formula. On my computer running Kubuntu 19.10 with LibreOffice 6.3, the Greek letters showed up perfectly fine. On my laptop, which I had just reformatted and on which was a fresh install of Kubuntu 20.04 with Libreoffice 6.4.3.2, the Greek letters were all showing up as something other than Greek letters – odd symbols or dingbats or something. Here’s the version number from a fresh install of Kubuntu 20.04:

And here’s what was being displayed in LibreOffice with the document:

Those familiar with the Greek alphabet will clearly see that these odd dingbats or symbols are definitely not from the Greek alphabet.

I spent about three hours googling for a solution and trying various suggestions. Google is usually a Linux user’s best friend and it’s common that someone else has had the same issue or something similar. Alas, no luck this time. No one, as far as I could tell, had run into this exact issue before. The closest problems seemed to suggest that the problem wasn’t with LibreOffice but with my Linux installation and that I was missing some language packs. Specifically, these semi-related issues suggested I needed to install a language pack with Cyrillic characters. This suggestion seemed reasonable as this version of LibreOffice didn’t seem to ship with support for Cyrillic characters:

Screenshot from LibreOffice for inserting special characters; Greek is not included by default.

I installed a Cyrillic language package from the repositories and restarted my computer. Nothing. I was still getting dingbats instead of Greek letters. I tried about 10 more Cyrillic language packages thinking that maybe I hadn’t found just the right one, searching through the repositories for anything that mentioned Greek or Cyrillic. Haphazardly adding language packages doesn’t seem like a good approach, but I was getting desperate. Even so, it didn’t help. I still couldn’t display the Greek letters in the document.

Next, I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the same version of LibreOffice – 6.4.3.2, which is the version shipping with Kubuntu 20.04. That didn’t work.

After a couple of hours and no solution, I decided that I’d try a different version of LibreOffice. On their website, LibreOffice makes two additional release candidates or development versions available. I could have gone straight to 7.0.0, which was in Alpha, but I opted instead for version 6.4.4.2. To uninstall LibreOffice, I used the following commands (see here):

sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice*
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoremove

To install the new version, you have to untar the files you downloaded then navigate to the DEBS folder you just unpacked, then run the following:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

After installing LibreOffice 6.4.4.2, I opened the file that was having issues and, lo and behold, it worked just fine:

There are my lovely alphas, betas, sigmas, epsilons, and omegas!

I’m assuming this is a bug in LibreOffice 6.4.3.2 or, at a minimum, the folks who packaged that version left something out of it. Either way, I was frustrated enough at the end that I realized I needed to post a solution for others who may run into this. Since Ubuntu/Kubuntu 20.04 is an LTS (long-term support) release, having a serious bug shipping in the included version of LibreOffice is, no doubt, going to frustrate many users.

I spent a solid three hours on something that was working perfectly fine in LibreOffice 6.3 but broken in 6.4.3.2. That’s annoying. I’m a huge fan of LibreOffice and prefer it far and above MS Office. It’s mature enough software now that little regressions like this really shouldn’t happen.

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LibreOffice Calc: Graphs with Two y-axes with Different Scales

Posted on by rcragun

While a bit technical, it’s occasionally useful to plot multiple data series that have very different scales in the same chart. Let me give an example to illustrate. Let’s say I want to see whether the number of Mormon temples being built aligns with the number of Mormon stakes (akin to a Catholic diocese) that are organized over time. (I’m a sociologist who studies religion; you’ll just have to go with my examples.)

However, the number of Mormon temples is in the hundreds while the number of Mormon stakes is in the thousands. If I plot them both on the same chart with the same y-axis (that’s the vertical axis), the number of Mormon temples is going to look really small and I won’t be able to see the variation over time in the number of temples, like this:

The chart shows that stakes have increased, but it looks like the number of temples has barely moved. LibreOffice Calc automatically creates the scale used for the y-axis based on the scale of the larger of the two data series, in this case, the number of stakes. Thus, the maximum value is 4,000 and the minimum is 0. What I want to do in this tutorial is to illustrate how to add a second y-axis on the right side of the chart that uses a different scale that is more appropriate for the number of temples.

To begin with, go ahead and create your chart with at least two data series, as I have shown in other tutorials, like this one. Once you have your chart with two data series complete, now it’s time to add a second y-axis with a different scale.

First, click on your chart then double-click it to open chart editing. Then, select the chart area by clicking on one of the axes (left or right doesn’t matter) and then right-click it. You’ll get a context menu with the option “Insert/Delete axes…” Select that:

In the window that pops up, you’ll see a second column labeled “Secondary Axes.” You want to select “Y axis.”

Click “OK” and you’ll see that a second y-axis has been added to your chart on the right side using the same metric as the left side:

The next steps are pretty straightforward, but before you do them, you should pause and think for a second so you don’t have to go back and undo what you’re about to do. You’re going to change the scale of one of the two y-axes, but which axis do you want to change? There isn’t a right or wrong answer here. Generally speaking, I typically see charts like this with the smaller of the two ranges assigned to the left axis and the larger assigned to the right axis, but, again, it is entirely up to you which way you choose to go. At this point, though, you need to make a decision. Then you can move to the next step.

I’m going to follow my suggestion above and change the y-axis on the left to a scale that fits with the number of temples (so, a smaller range of values) and keep the y-axis on the right with the larger range for the number of stakes. But before I change the scales of the axes, I need to tell LibreOffice which data series is going to align with which axis. Here’s how. Click on one of your data series lines, then right-click it and select “Format Data Series.”

In the window that pops up, you’ll see on the “Options” tab right at the top an option that says, “Align Data Series to” and then “Primary Y axis” (this is the one on the left of the chart) or “Secondary Y axis” (this is the one on the right of the chart). Since I selected the number of temples first, I’m going to leave that one aligned to the Primary Y axis:

Hit OK. Then select the other line (in my case, the number of stakes), right-click it, and select “Format Data Series.” On the “Options” tab, I’m going to select to align this line with the “Secondary Y axis”:

Once you do that, you’ll see that LibreOffice automatically adjusts the scale of the other axis. Here’s how my chart now looks:

You can see that it changed the scale of the Primary Y-axis (the one on the left) to a maximum of 250 to reflect the smaller range of that data series. If you want to customize the scale used, you can always click on the axis you want to modify and then right-click it and select “Format Axis”:

In the window that pops up, you can modify the scale of the axis by clicking on the “Scale” tab. If you want to change the values, click on the box next to “Automatic” to unselect it so you can put in your own values, then customize the value you add, like this:

When you have modified the scale to your satisfaction, select “OK” and your graph will be updated with the scale you want, like this:

The resulting chart now has two axes with different scales. It would be a good idea at this point to label the axes to reflect the differences. Simply right-click on the chart and select “Insert Titles.” In that window, add appropriate titles. The left y-axis is simply the Axes while the right y-axis is considered the “Secondary Axes”:

And your final graph will look something like this:

That’s how you can create a chart with two axes in LibreOffice Calc.

NOTE: This example was done in LibreOffice Calc version: 6.4.2.2 on a Linux-based operating system (Kubuntu 19.10).

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LibreOffice Calc: Interpolating Missing Values in Graphs

Posted on by rcragun

Here’s my situation. I have some data over time but I’m missing values in specific years. I want to graph that data but would rather not have to estimate all of the missing values. It turns out, LibreOffice Calc can do that for you in your chart. Here’s how…

Imagine I’m plotting the number of congregations in the LDS Church over time (weird example, I’m sure you’re thinking, but I’m a sociologist who studies religion, so, yeah, that’s what I do). I have the number of congregations in 1841, 1849, 1901, etc. Basically, I have the number in certain years, but I’m missing the number of congregations in lots of other years. I could interpolate the missing values (Excel has this function built in; LibreOffice Calc does not, but you can do it following the approach I have detailed here). But, I don’t really need to do that for my project. I just need a chart that shows the growth of congregations over time.

My data are organized into two columns. Column A is years and ranges from 1841 through 2019. Column B is the number of congregations with the values I have and lots of blank cells:

Select the cells you want to plot (A1:B176 in my case) then click on “Insert Chart”:

You’ll get this window:

Since I want a Line chart, I’m going to select “Line” and because I want “points and lines,” I’m going to select that option as well. I also want “Smooth” lines rather than “Straight” lines, so I select that option, too:

Click “Next >” at the bottom. Since you already selected your Data range, you shouldn’t have to change that. However, we do want the “First column as label” for the x-axis of the chart. So, select that option:

Then select “Next >”. You shouldn’t have to change anything on the Data Series tab, so you can hit “Next >” again. On the Chart Elements tab, you’ll want to describe your chart elements. Add a Title and label your x-axis and y-axis. I also didn’t need a legend since I’m only plotting one data series, so I turned that off:

Then click “Finish.” You’ll have a chart, but it only has the points for the years when you have data, like this:

To add a line connecting the points and interpolating the missing data, click on the chart, then double-click it to modify the chart. Once you’re inside the chart, click on one of the points to select the data series, then right-click and select “Format data series”:

On the “Options” tab you’ll see “Plot Options” and just below that, “Plot missing values.” The default is “Leave gap.” Select “Continue line” and it will interpolate the missing values for you:

Select “Ok” and your line chart will now actually have a line, like this:

There you have it. A line chart with interpolated missing values in LibreOffice Calc without you having to calculate all of the missing values.

NOTE: This example was done in LibreOffice Calc version: 6.4.2.2 on a Linux-based operating system (Kubuntu 19.10).

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LibreOffice Calc – Creating Charts with Conditional Formatting

Posted on by rcragun

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 is 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.

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LibreOffice – Impress Templates and Object Styles

Posted on by rcragun

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.)

 1,563 total views,  1 views today

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

Posted on by rcragun

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 select 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.

 3,147 total views,  1 views today

LibreOffice Calc – Comparing and Aligning Two Lists Using VLOOKUP

Posted on by rcragun

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.)

 16,067 total views,  21 views today

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

Posted on by rcragun

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:

 

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