Calc: background color in cells invisible

users
#1

Hi,
In Calc the background color feature of cells is not working.
Who can give me any advice in which LO version the background formating is
working properly.
LO V5.0.4.2 on Win7.
Thanks for any ideas,
mars

#2

What is it doing that's wrong? I have seen no problem with it on LO 4.4.7.2 on Windows XP. Likewise on LO 5.0.3.2 on Ubuntu but maybe I'm not doing exactly what you're trying to do.

#3

1124mars wrote:

> Hi,
> In Calc the background color feature of cells is not working.
> Who can give me any advice in which LO version the background formating is
> working properly.
> LO V5.0.4.2 on Win7.
> Thanks for any ideas,
> mars

LO 5.1 on Mac OX S 10.10.5 just works.

#4

Hi,

Hi,
In Calc the background color feature of cells is not working.
Who can give me any advice in which LO version the background formating is
working properly.

It works since LO 3.3 and before that, since StarOffice 5. :wink:

That said,
- what do you do exactly to set the background color in a cell ?
- what is the format of your file, .ods or one of MSO ?
- Do you use cell styles in your spreadsheet, for example for
conditional formatting ?

Best regards.
JBF

#5

THX for your reply+see my comments
      below
      Regards,
      mars

#6

In Calc the background color feature of cells is not working.

Er, in exactly what way?

Who can give me any advice in which LO version the background formatting is working properly.

It's probably worth realising that if the whole idea of cell background colouring had failed, someone would have noticed. So, whatever problem you are finding, it is unlikely to be solved simply by using another version of the application itself.

LO V5.0.4.2 on Win7.

therefore I do not understand why this basic feature is not working.

It very probably is.

Do I have to select some specific options?

I think you may have to *deselect* them.

select a cell or row/column
Format cells
Background
select a color + ok

the selected cell/row/column remain white=without the selected color
File/browser preview -> in the browser preview the selected color is visible!

This is an important clue, of course - so I wonder why you kept it a secret in your original query.

But why not on my screen?

I'm guessing here, and I don't have the set-up to test my suggestions. Operating systems can have a "high contrast" setting; your Windows does, and you can find it in Control Panel. The idea of these is that you can modify the appearance of your work *on your display* to make it easier to work, whilst preserving the final appearance of your document when it is printed or whatever. This is not so different from the row number, column letters, and indeed the grid - all of which appear in the screen display but not (at least by default) in the real document. As you say, these screen readability changes do not show up in Page Preview - which instead demonstrates the true appearance of your document.

The exact screen appearance as you work depends on a combination of the high-contrast settings in Windows and your choices in LibreOffice at Tools | Options... | LibreOffice | Accessibility. You may want to experiment with these to see what you prefer.

Alternatively, since you now admit that your actual document behaves as you want, you may choose to do nothing.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker

#7

THX for your reply; see my comments
      below
      Regards
      mars

#8

THX Brian,
      can you give me any advice which WIN7/LO settings/parameters I
      have to change+see below
      Regards,
      mars

#9

I'm surprised you didn't see I had already done this.

o The Windows setting is in Control Panel. See
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows7/turn-on-high-contrast .

o The LibreOffice settings are at Tools | Options... | LibreOffice | Accessibility | Options for high contrast appearance.

I recommend you experiment with these settings to see what you prefer.

Brian Barker

#10

I had to adjust the window colors and now everything is FINE!!!
Thank you so much,
mars

#11

I wonder if you're referring to an issue that I've discovered, which affects
4.5 and 5.1 under Windows 7 and Windows 7 - I haven't tried my Unbuntu
version yet.

I created a file in Excel, filling the background of the whole sheet with a
colour. I opened it in LibreOffice, and it looked like this:
http://virnuls.co.uk/documents/factorisation.xlsx
<http://virnuls.co.uk/documents/factorisation.xlsx> - i.e. some of the
cells were not coloured. I then coloured the background of all cells in
LibreOffice and saved the file again. Excel shows the background as being
all green (other than the boxes for the answers), whereas LibreOffice has
additional white areas.

Our users have a mixture of versions of Excel and LibreOffice, and I wanted
to use the Excel file format because I want to password-protect the sheet
(and Calc told me that I can't do that with an ODS file).

#12

...

Our users have a mixture of versions of Excel and LibreOffice, and I wanted
to use the Excel file format because I want to password-protect the sheet
(and Calc told me that I can't do that with an ODS file).

Are you sure about that? 5.1.3.2 (linux) has two protection options under the Tools menu. IIRC it used to be in a different place though.