Appearance of hyperlinks in Calc spreadsheets

philj · October 22, 2019, 11:43am

LO 6.0.7.3 in UbuntuStudio 18.04 LTS

In a Calc spreadsheet, I have a column consisting only of hyperlinks to websites. They are correctly formed and work fine with Ctrl-click.

My problem is the appearance of the column. Each link is in black text backed by a dark gray background colour (like indications of 'fields' in Writer). That makes it difficult for me to read. My preference would be black or even blue text on a plain white background like the rest of the spreadsheet.

The Help file provides the same information for formatting hyperlinks under Calc as it does for Writer. Essentially it suggests changing the attributes via character styles > internet links. I can't find any access to character styles in Calc let alone internet links styles. Nor is there anything applicable to hyperlinks in cell formatting.

(And in any case, the Help text doesn't apply even to my version of Writer either - but in Writer, I can at least change paragraph styles to get the effect I would like).

I think I have searched thoroughly but I know it's easy to miss some details so I'm appealing for any useful tips that you may be able to provide to help me modify these attributes.

Philip

daveb · October 22, 2019, 1:27pm

Philip Jackson [mailto:philip-jackson@gmx.com]
Sent:</b>
Tuesday, October 22, 2019, 11:43 UTC
spreadsheets

LO 6.0.7.3
      in UbuntuStudio 18.04 LTSIn a Calc spreadsheet, I have a column consisting only of
      hyperlinks to websites. They are correctly formed and work fine
      with Ctrl-click.My problem is the appearance of the column. Each link is in black
      text backed by a dark gray background colour (like indications of
      'fields' in Writer).� That makes it difficult for me to read. My
      preference would be black or even blue text on a plain white
      background like the rest of the spreadsheet.The Help file provides the same information for formatting
      hyperlinks under Calc as it does for Writer. Essentially it
      suggests changing the attributes via character stylesinternet links. I can't find any access to character styles in
      Calc let alone internet links styles. Nor is there anything
      applicable to hyperlinks in cell formatting.(And in any case, the Help text doesn't apply even to my version
      of Writer either - but in Writer, I can at least change paragraph
      styles to get the effect I would like).I think I have searched thoroughly but I know it's easy to miss
      some details so I'm appealing for any useful tips that you may be
      able to provide to help me modify these attributes.Philip
What happens if you tap the F11 function key or select the menu
      option View -Styles ? Either one should open the the StylesFormatting panel, where you should see Hyperlink in the list
      of cell styles. Right click on Hyperlink and select modify. In the
      Cell Style: hyperlink dialog there are options to set font and
      background colors.

Note your existing cells with hyperlinks in them will have the
default style and you will have to select those cells and apply
the Hyperlink style to them.

I don't have access to the Ubuntu edition of LibreOffice at the
moment, but the above procedure works perfectly for me using the
standard edition downloaded from TDF mirror servers.

Hope that helps.

Dave

philj · October 22, 2019, 7:40pm

F11 and 'Manage Styles' from View and Format menus were my first port of call. But they only produce Default, Heading and Result styles under Cell Styles and Default and Report under Page styles. There are no other options and no Hyperlink style.

You are correct that my cells are Default style and attempt to modify this style opens the usual Cell Format dialogue which has no mention of hyperlink. I thought there could be such a mention under the Font Effects tab - but no.

However, a PM from another list member suggested where I could find Field Shadings and this lead to a solution for me.

Under Tools | Options | LibreOffice | Application Colours | Custom Colours. Then scroll down to find Text Document and Field Shadings where I set the field shadings to a custom light grey colour. This improved the readability of my hyperlinks in Calc without, I hope, eliminating the usefulness of field shadings in Writer documents.

Thanks to all.

Philip

philj · October 23, 2019, 1:09pm

Hi Dave - yes I did go down to this list at the bottom of the Styles and Formatting panel and I did try all the options there including 'All Styles'. And what I reported in my previous post was all that I see when using Calc.

I am, and have been for many years, a regular and fervent user of styles in Writer and quite used to making myself some extra styles to suit my own use but in Calc, the choice is regretfully rather bare. I have never, over the years, had any reason until now to want to change default settings on styles in Calc.

However, I do have a Windows10 box kept for applications which will either not run on linux or not run well under Wine and that box has LO 6.1.5.2 installed from the LO website but never generally used. When I check Calc in that version on the W10 box, it displays the 18 styles shown in your image above.

I had not considered that Ubuntu might have stripped out some functionality but I suppose it might be so. I cannot see why they might have felt that it should be stripped out of Calc while maintaining it in Writer. If the reduced number of styles is not down to the difference between Calc 6.0.7.3 and Calc 6.1.5.2, then it must be down to Ubuntu - perhaps they built on an older, more restricted version without due care ?

Philip

philj · October 23, 2019, 6:19pm

The file with the column of web links that was the subject of my initial readability issues was a new Calc file that I made myself by copy and paste from the original file which I had made using a text editor. My list of useful links was getting rather large so I decided it would be more useful in the longer run to convert it to a spreadsheet with clickable links.

However, I've just had a quick look back at some 8 other spreadsheets which I've made over the past 7-10 years and they all have the same limited set of cell styles. Some of these spreadsheets are in almost daily use.

And I've also just tried making a couple of new blank spreadsheets and they also come with exactly the same limited set of cell styles on my Ubuntu box. On the Windows 10 box, they show an available 'All' list of 18 cell styles.

I've been using whatever version of LO came with UbuntuStudio distros for years. Current version info is :

Version: 6.0.7.3 Build ID: 1:6.0.7-0ubuntu0.18.04.10
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk2;
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); Calc: group

But as I said in a previous post, I have now improved the readability by using a light gray custom background in the cell so the underlying problem is of purely academic interest now.

Philip