You can select a single cell or a rectangular area of cells in the spreadsheet. The selected cell(s) are displayed with a thick black border .

To select a single cell left click on it or enter the cell reference (for example B5) into the cell reference box at the left end of the Formula toolbar and press Enter, or use the View->Goto Cell... menu option.

You can also steer your way around with the arrow keys. Pressing the Enter key will move the current selection one position up, down, left or right depending on the setting in the Misc page of KSpread's configuration dialog box.

If you hold the Ctrl key down while using the arrow keys the selection will move to the start or end of the block of occupied cells.

To select an area of cells drag the mouse cursor across the wanted area with the left button held down, or enter the references of the top left and bottom right cells separated by a colon into the Formula toolbar cell reference box (for example B7:C14 ) and press Enter, or enter these cell references in a similar format into the dialog box brought up by View->Goto Cell....

You can also select an area of cells by selecting the cell in one corner of the wanted area then holding the Shift key down while using the left mouse button to select the cell in the opposite corner.

To select a complete row or column of cells left click on the row number at the left of the worksheet or on the column letters at the top. To select adjacent rows or columns drag the mouse pointer over the appropriate row numbers or column letters with the left button held down.

Entering data into a cell can be as simple as selecting the cell, typing your data, then pressing Enter or moving the selection to another cell with one of the arrow keys. Depending on how you enter the data, KSpread will interpret it as a number, date, time or text:

The main text entry box in the Formula toolbar provides an easy way of editing the contents of a selected cell. Press Enter or left click on the green tick mark when you are happy with what you have entered, or click on the red cross to cancel your edits.

At first glance, KSpread's Cut, Copy and Paste appear to be similar to these functions in other KDE applications. Having selected a cell or cells, you can choose Copy or Cut from the Edit menu or from the drop down menu you get by holding the right mouse button down on a selected cell, or just use the shortcuts Ctrl+C or Ctrl+X, then you can move the selection to the target cell and choose Paste or use the shortcut Ctrl+V. However there are some subtleties associated with these functions in KSpread and these are discussed below.

If a cell contains a formula then the formula itself is copied rather than the displayed result, and if the formula contains a reference to another cell, then that reference is changed by the Cut or Copy and Paste operation to point to the cell that is in the same relative position as in the original cell. For example if cell A2 contains the formula =B3 and is copied to C4, cell C4 will contain =D5 .

This may seem to be a rather strange way of doing a copy, but 99 percent of the time it is exactly what is wanted (if it is not then see the section about absolute cell references). For example in the simple shopping list shown below, cell D2 should contain =B2 * C2, D3 should be =B3 * C3, D4 should be =B4 * C4 and so on. Instead of having to enter a different formula in each cell, you can just enter the first formula into D2 and then copy it into the cells below, letting KSpread adjust the cell references to suit.

---

---

Use the Delete key or Edit ->Clear->Text to remove the text, value or formula from selected cell(s), row(s) or column(s) without affecting anything else.

To delete everything in the selected cell(s), row(s) or column(s), including comments and special formatting, use Shift+Delete or choose the Delete option from the Edit menu or from the pop up menu you get when you right click on a selection.

To remove selected row(s) or column(s) completely, use the Delete Row(s)... or Delete Column(s)... options from the right mouse button pop up menu.

If you select a cell or cells and choose Remove Cells... from the right mouse button pop up menu, you can then choose whether other cells in the worksheet will be moved up or to the left to fill in the space left by the cell(s) you have chosen to remove.

If you want to insert new, blank, row(s) or column(s) into the sheet, select row(s) or column(s) where you wish the new row(s) or column(s) to be placed and choose the Insert Row(s)..., Insert Column(s)... option from the right mouse button pop up menu.

You can insert new cells into the worksheet by selecting the area where you want them to appear then choosing the Insert Cells... option from the right mouse button pop up menu. You will then be asked whether the existing cell(s) in the selected area should be moved down or to the right to make room for the new ones.

If the first character in a cell is an equals sign (=) KSpread will take the cell contents to be a formula which is to be calculated. The result of the calculation will be displayed in the cell rather than the formula itself. For example, enter =2+3 into a cell and it should display 5.

More usefully, a formula can contain references to other cells, so that =B4+A3 will calculate the sum of the values in cells B4 and A3, and this calculation will be updated whenever cells B4 or A3 are changed.

As well as addition, a formula can make use of the - symbol for subtraction, * for multiplication, and / to perform division. The round bracket symbols ( and ) can also be used as in normal algebra, so you could enter more complex formulae such as =((B10 + C3) *5 - F11) / 2 .

Cells containing a formula will be marked with a small blue triangle at the bottom left corner if the Show formula indicator checkbox in the Preferences page of KSpread's configuration dialog is checked.

KSpread also includes a large number of built-in functions for applications such as statistical, trigonometrical and financial calculations. Their use will be examined in more depth in a later section of this manual, but if you are interested at this stage choose Function... from the Insert menu and take a look through the Function dialog box that will be displayed..

For the time being, however, the SUM function may be of interest as it calculates the sum of all values in a specified area of cells. For example =SUM(B4:C10) calculates the sum of all values in the cell area B4 to C10.

If KSpread displays a row of # symbols when you have entered your formula this usually means that it cannot understand what you have entered, but if the row of # symbols ends with a small red arrow this just means that the cell is not wide enough to display the complete result, in which case you should either make the cell(s) wider or change their format so that the result does fit properly.

In the simple example shown below, the data consists of the names and countries of a number of mountains together with their height above sea level. KSpread can sort data such as this in different ways.

---

---

We may want the data sorted so that the names are in alphabetical order. To do this select the area containing the data (A2:C7 in this case) and choose Sort Increasing or Sort Decreasing from the Data menu.

Sorting is done alphanumerically, and is case sensitive, numbers coming before upper case letters which come before lower case letters, so that cells containing the entries Cat, bar, 77 and Bat would be sorted into the following order: 77 Bat Cat bar.

The Sort Increasing and Sort Decreasing options from the Data menu options sort the data according to the contents of the cells in the left column of the selected area. For more complex sorting select Data ->Sort... to bring up the Sort dialog box.

Using the Sort criteria page of this dialog box you can choose which column of the data is to be used as a primary sort key and, if you wish, other columns to be used as secondary and tertiary keys. Using the example in the above screenshot, choosing column B as the first key and column C as the second would sort the data by country and, for each country, by height.

The Options page lets you sort by row instead of by column and allows you to sort using the order of items in a custom list such as January, February... instead of alphanumerically.

KSpread can also place the results of a sort into a different area of the sheet, or even into a different worksheet, rather than overwriting the original data. To do this enter the top left cell reference of the target area into the Starting cell: text box in the Options page. The cell formats will also be copied to the new area if you check the Copy layout box. If you check the First row contains header box data in the first row will be copied directly to the first row of the target area without being included in the sort operation.

The left hand end of the Statusbar shows a summary of the values in the selected cell(s). According to the setting of the Method of calc: drop down box in the Misc page of KSpread's configuration dialog the summary can be:

The method of calculation can also be changed by right clicking on the summary calculation result area of the Statusbar and choosing an item from the pop up menu.

KSpread saves the complete workbook, which may include more than one worksheet, as a single document file.

If you have created a new workbook, or want to save an existing one under a different name, use File-> Save As.... This will bring up KDE's common Save Document As dialog box. Choose the directory where you want to save the workbook and enter a suitable file name into the Location: text box. KSpread documents are normally automatically saved with a .ksp extension, you do not need to add this to the filename but do make sure that the Filter: selection is set to KSpread.

To save your workbook without changing its name, just use File->Save.

You can also save a KSpread workbook in a foreign format, see the Import Export section for more information about doing this.

When you save a modified version of an existing workbook KSpread will keep the previous version as a backup file, adding a ~ symbol to the end of the filename.

KSpread can provide some protection against losing your work because of a computer crash or because you have closed KSpread without saving the current workbook. It does this by automatically saving the latest version of the document you are working on every few minutes using a modified file name. The autosaved version is normally removed when you next save your workbook, so that it will only exist if it is more up to date than the version that was saved manually. When you open a workbook KSpread checks to see if an autosaved version exists, and if it finds one will offer to open that instead.

Autosaved workbooks are saved with a file name of the form .yourfilename.autosave, note the leading period (.), so that spread1.ksp woud be autosaved as .spread1.ksp.autosave. The autosave feature is user configurable.

Printing a spreadsheet is basically done by selecting File->Print... which brings up KDE's common Print dialog box where you can choose, among other options, the printer to be used, the number of copies and whether all or only selected pages are to be printed.

By default KSpread will print all items in the current worksheet, but you can restrict this by first selecting the area that you want to be printed then choosing Define Print Range from the Format->Print Range sub menu.

KSpread will print as many pages as are necessary to include all items in the current worksheet. You can quickly see how a worksheet will be spilt into separate pages for printing by checking the View->Show Page Borders box. The boundaries of each printed page will then be marked by colored lines in the worksheet.

For a more detailed view of what is to be sent to the printer, including anything you have asked to be included in the page headers and footers (see below), choose File->Print Preview....

To improve the appearance of the printed output , you can change the fonts, colors, borders and sizes of the cells in the worksheet, see the Spreadsheet Formatting section for more details about how to do this.

You can also use the Page Layout dialog box, invoked by selecting Format->Paper Layout..., to change the orientation of the printed pages, the paper size (this should be suitable for your printer) and the size of the page borders.

The Header and Footer page of the Page Layout dialog box also lets you add text, including items such as the filename, date and page number to the header and footer, of each printed page.

The Print Range: section of the Options page of the Page Layout dialog box provides an alternative way of restricting the printed output to just one part of the worksheet. This page also lets you select whether or not to print the grid, comment indicators and formula indicators, and allows you to repeat selected column(s) or row(s) on each printed page.

The Data Format page of the Cell Format dialog box lets you control how the values of cells are displayed.

The top part of this page lets you select the format to be used when displaying numeric values, dates or times.

The lower part of the Data Format page lets you add a Prefix such as a $ symbol at the start of each item or a Postfix such as $HK to the end. You can also control how many digits are displayed after the decimal point for numeric values, whether positive values are displayed with a leading + sign and whether negative values are shown in red.

The Position page in the Cell Format... dialog lets you alter the size of the selected cell(s). Note that changing the height of a single cell will change the height for all cells in that row, similarly changing the width will affect the entire column.

You can also select the row(s) or column(s) to be changed then select Resize Row... or Resize Column... from the right mouse button pop up menu or from the Format->Row or Format-> Column menu.

If you move the mouse cursor so that its tip is over the line between two of the row numbers at the left of KSpread's window the cursor will change to show two parallel lines each with a short arrow headed line coming from it. When the cursor is in this state you can hold the left mouse button down and drag the border between the two rows, changing the height of the upper row. A similar technique can be used to change the width of a column.

Selecting a cell, row or column then choosing Adjust Row , Adjust Column or Adjust Row and Column from the Format or right mouse button menu will set the row height or column width to the minimum needed to properly display the contents.

You can make a number of adjacent rows or columns the same size by selecting them then choosing Format-> Row->Equalize Row or Format->Column->Equalize Column.

It is often convenient to have one cell that spreads across two or more columns or down more than one row. This can be done by merging two or more cells into one. Select the cells to be merged than choose Data->Merge Cells.

To reverse this process, select the merged cell then choose Dissociate Cells from the TData menu.

A finished spreadsheet can often be made to look more attractive by hiding the cells containing intermediate calculations so that only the important data input and result areas are shown.

In KSpread you can hide selected rows or columns by using the Hide Rows and Hide Columns options from the Format->Row, Format ->Column or right mouse button menus. Hidden rows and columns are not displayed on the screen or included in a print out.

Hiding cells in this way also makes them slightly less prone to accidental change.

To un-hide a row or column select Row ->Show Rows... or Column->Show Columns... from the Format menu.

Sometimes you may want to add a single value to a number of cells, or subtract a value from them, or multiply or divide them all by a single value. The Special Paste... option lets you do this quickly and easily.

First, enter the modifier value into any spare cell on your spreadsheet and Copy it. Then select the area of cells you want to change, choose Special Paste... from the Edit or right mouse button menu and select Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication or Division from the Operation section of the dialog box.

You can also apply different modifier values to different rows or columns of the target area by copying an area containing the wanted modifiers before selecting the target area and doing Special Paste... . For example, if you enter 5 into cell A1, 10 into B1, select both cells and do a Copy then Special Paste... Addition into cells A10 to D15, 5 will be added to A10:A15 and C5:C15, and 10 to B10:B15 and D10:D15.

Note that a modifier value can be a formula as well as a simple numeric value. If it is a formula then KSpread will adjust the cell references as for a normal Paste operation.

KSpread can be used to solve algebraic expressions such as x + x^2 = 4 or For what value of x does x + x squared equal 4 ?.

For this example you could enter =A2+A2*A2 into A1 then either try different values in A2 until the result in A1 is as close as you wish to 4 or, preferably, use KSpread's Goal Seek feature which automatically adjusts the value in one cell to try to make the value in another cell as close as possible to a target value.

It is invoked by selecting Goal Seek from the Data menu. This brings up a dialog box in which you should enter the reference of the target value cell (A1 in this case) into the Set cell box, the target value itself (4) into the to value box and the reference of the cell that is to be changed (A2) into the by changing cell box. Note that you need to have entered some initial value into the cell that is to be changed before starting Goal Seek.

Pressing the Start button in the Goal Seek menu will start the calulation. When it finishes and if it has found a solution press the OK button to accept the result or Cancel to keep the original value.

When you start a new, empty, document with KSpread it will create a number of blank worksheets. The number of sheets it creates is determined by the Number of pages open at the beginning setting in the Interface page of KSpread's configuration dialog box.

Insert->Sheet will add another sheet to the workbook.

If the Show tabs box in the Interface page of KSpread's configuration dialog box is checked a small tab will be shown near the bottom left of KSpread's window for each sheet. Left click on one of these tabs to see that sheet.

You can also switch between worksheets by using the Ctrl+PageDown to move to the next sheet, Ctrl+PageUp to move to the previous one.

Worksheets are given the default names of Sheet1, Sheet2... You can give a sheet a different name by right clicking on the tab and selecting Rename Sheet....

To remove a sheet from the workbook use the Remove Sheet option in the Format-> Sheet submenu or in the little menu that pops up when you right click on the tab for the sheet you want to remove.

Other entries in the Format-> Sheet submenu allow you to show or hide a sheet in much the same way as rows and columns can be hidden.

If you want a formula in one sheet to refer to a cell in another sheet, the cell reference must start with the table name followed by an exclamation mark (!). For example if you enter =Sheet2!A2 into a cell in Sheet 1, that cell will take the value from A2 of Sheet2. Note that sheet names are case sensitive.

You can insert a chart into a sheet to give a graphical view of your data.

First select the area of cells containing the data and choose Insert->Chart. The cursor will change to a small cross shape which you should drag across the sheet while holding the left mouse button held down to define the area where you want the chart to appear, there is no need to be too accurate at this stage as the chart size can easily be changed at any time. When you release the mouse button a chart wizard dialog box will appear.

The wizard allows you to define the type of chart, labels and legend that you need. You may wish to refer to the KChart Handbook at this stage, but again if you make a wrong choice you can correct it later. When you press the Finish button the wizard will vanish and you will see the chart embedded into the worksheet.

---

---

To move, resize or even delete the embedded chart click anywhere within the chart area. It should now appear with a diagonal hatch border and with a small black square at each corner and in the middle of each edge.

If you move the cursor over any of the black squares it should change to a double headed arrow. You can resize the chart by dragging one of these squares with the left mouse button pressed. To delete the chart right click on one of the squares and select Delete embedded document.

To move the chart move the cursor so that it is over one of the hatched borders. The cursor should then change to a hand, press the left mouse button and you will be able to drag the chart to where you want it to be.

To restore the chart to its normal appearance simply click anywhere outside of the chart area.

To change the format of the chart itself left click twice within the chart area. It should then appear with a diagonal hatch border without any small black squares and KChart's Chart Toolbar should appear in KSpread's window. You can then use these KChart tools or a selection from the menu that pops up when you right click in the chart area to change the chart.

You can insert data from a text file or from the clipboard into a worksheet by first selecting the cell where you want the top left item of the inserted data to appear, then choosing From Text File... or From Clipboard... from the Insert->External Data sub menu.

In both cases KSpread will assume that the data is in CSV form and will open a dialog box allowing you to control how the data is extracted from the file or clipboard and placed into the worksheet cells.

If support for it has been included in your system, KSpread can also insert data from a SQL database into a worksheet. This is done by using the Insert-> External Data->From Database... option.

A spreadsheet cell can be linked to an action so that left clicking on the cell will, for example, open your browser. To make a cell act in this way select it and choose Insert->Link.... This will bring up the Insert Link dialog box, which lets you choose between four types of link:

All four types of link cell need some suitable text to be entered into the Comment: field of the Insert Link dialog. This is the text that appears in the cell, you can set its style to Bold or Italic if you wish.

KSpread can automatically check the validity of entered data against a number of criteria, and pop up a message box if the data is invalid.

To enable this feature, select the cell(s) to be monitored and choose Edit->Validity.... This will bring up KSpread's Validity dialog box which has two tabbed pages.

In the Values page select what type of data is to be considered valid from the Allow: drop down list then define the valid range of values by choosing one of the options in the Data: drop down list and entering suitable value(s) into ont or both of the edit box(es).

When you have done this change to the Error Alert tab page. Here you can choose the type of message box (Stop , Warning or Information ) that will appear when an invalid value is entered, and define the message box title and message text.

Note that this feature only checks data that you enter into the cell, for a way of checking the results from formulae cells see the Conditional Cell Attributes section of this Handbook.

KSpread has five toolbars; File, Edit, Math, Format and Color/Border, each of which may or may not be shown depending on the choices made in the Settings menu.

You can choose whether a toolbar appears at the top, left, right or bottom of KSpread's window by right clicking on the toolbar, which brings up the Toolbar Menu, and making a selection from the Orientation sub menu. This Toolbar Menu also has sub menus for choosing whether the toolbar displays icons, text or both, and the size of the icons.

Another way of moving a toolbar is by positioning the mouse pointer over the two vertical bars at the left end of each toolbar and holding the left mouse button down while you drag the toolbar to the wanted position. When you drag the toolbar in this way you can release the mouse button when it is some distance from any of KSpread's window sides, and then you will get a floating toolbar, which is not locked to any particular part of KSpread's window and can in fact be moved outside of the window. To put a floating toolbar back into one of the traditional positions right click on the its title bar to bring up the Toolbar Menu then choose one of the options in the Orientation sub menu.

You can also “flatten” a toolbar by left clicking on the two vertical bars at the left end of the toolbar or by selecting Orientation->Flat from the Toolbar Menu. A “flattened” toolbar appears as a small rectangle containing two horizontal bars just under KSpread's Menubar. It can be restored to normal by left clicking on it.

Selecting Configure Toolbars... from the Settings menu will bring up a dialog box which lets you add buttons to or remove them from KSpread's toolbars.

To use this Configure Toolbars dialog box first select a toolbar from the Toolbar: drop down list. The right hand Current actions: window will then show the buttons currently present on the toolbar. You can remove a button by selecting it in this window then pressing the left arrow button, or move it around by pressing the up and down arrow buttons. To add a new button to the toolbar select it in the Available actions: list then press the right arrow button.

This page of KSpread's configuration dialog box shows how items such as numbers, date, time and money are displayed.

If you have loaded a spreadsheet that was generated using a different locale, then pressing the Update to Locale System button on this page will update it to conform to your locale settings.

This page of KSpread's configuration dialog box (obtained by selecting Configure Kspread... from the Settings menu) controls some more KSpread features:

The Misc page of KSpread's configuration dialog box contains the following items;

This page of KSpread's configuration dialog box lets you choose the color of the sheet grid. If you do not want the grid to appear at all uncheck the Show grid box in the Preferences configuration page.

This page also lets you select the color of the lines used to indicate the printed page borders when the Show Page Borders box in the View menu is checked.

This page of KSpread's configuration dialog box lets you set up the default page size, orientation and units used by the printer and by the Page Layout dialog box (obtained by selecting Paper Layout... from the Format menu.

This page lets you configure the behavior of KSpread's spelling checker.

This section describes the items in the pop up menu obtained by right clicking on a selected cell or cells, row(s) or column(s).

This section describes those KSpread shortcut keys used for operations that do not appear in any of the menues.