Change cell border sizes- quickly?

user224 · December 14, 2011, 3:26am

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I upgraded from Oo 3.2 (I think that was the version) to the following
version of LibreOffice;

LibreOffice 3.4.3
OOO340m1 (Build:302)

A spreadsheet I work on had the cell borders set at 1 pt. in Oo. Now
with LibreOffice all of the cell borders on the sheet are .25 pt. A
change was made to the cell border sizes and I didn't do it.

How do I quickly change ALL of the cell borders in the many sheets I'm
working on? I have literally 1,000's of cells to fix IF I have to
change each cell one at a time.

Man, do I need some help!

Thanks.

Dave_Barton · December 14, 2011, 4:19am

I don't know if it's possible to fix multiple sheets at one time, but
for individual sheets follow this procedure:

o Keyboard Ctrl + A to select/highlight all cells on the sheet.
o Right click anywhere in the highlighted area and select "Format Cells"
o In the dialog select the "Borders" tab and make the adjustment.

Recommend you check out the Calc User Guide:
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

Dave

mariosv · December 14, 2011, 10:47am

With F11, select Default format, and change there the border.
If there is another style non vinculated with default, change it also.

Miguel Ángel

user224 · December 14, 2011, 12:27pm

Miguel, I tried it with one of the sheets but it had no effect. I tried
it with a new sheet but no effect either.

Here's what I did;

- opened the ods file I want to work on which has about 90 sheets within it.
- hit F11
- right clicked on Default in Styles and Formatting
- change the Cell Borders to 1 pt. and selected Default under Line
Arrangement

At that point in the process the there's a lot of activity (so to speak)
in the bottom of the Calc window...some progress bar flashing (so
whatever it's called) giving the impression that what I wanted to
change is occurring. However, a check of the cell formatting indicates
that the cell border size wasn't changed.

Any other ideas?

cornouws · December 14, 2011, 12:36pm

Hi Alexander,

. wrote (14-12-11 13:26)

With F11, select Default format, and change there the border.
If there is another style non vinculated with default, change it also.

Miguel, I tried it with one of the sheets but it had no effect. I tried
it with a new sheet but no effect either.

That will be because there is direct formatting on the cells.
Try selecting one/few, and choose Format > Default Formatting.That of course will also change formatting of numbers etc. so doing that for the whole sheet will be impossible, I expect.

At that point in the process the there's a lot of activity (so to speak)
[...]

Recalculating lines probably..

Regards,

NoOp · December 14, 2011, 8:15pm

...

With F11, select Default format, and change there the border.
If there is another style non vinculated with default, change it also.

Miguel Ángel

Miguel, I tried it with one of the sheets but it had no effect. I tried
it with a new sheet but no effect either.

Here's what I did;

- opened the ods file I want to work on which has about 90 sheets within it.
- hit F11
- right clicked on Default in Styles and Formatting
- change the Cell Borders to 1 pt. and selected Default under Line
Arrangement

At that point in the process the there's a lot of activity (so to speak)
in the bottom of the Calc window...some progress bar flashing (so
whatever it's called) giving the impression that what I wanted to
change is occurring. However, a check of the cell formatting indicates
that the cell border size wasn't changed.

Any other ideas?

Works for me:

LibreOffice 3.3.4
OOO330m19 (Build:401)
tag libreoffice-3.3.4.1

and

LibreOffice 3.4.4
OOO340m1 (Build:402)

user224 · December 14, 2011, 10:36pm

...

With F11, select Default format, and change there the border.
If there is another style non vinculated with default, change it also.

Miguel Ángel

Miguel, I tried it with one of the sheets but it had no effect. I tried
it with a new sheet but no effect either.

Here's what I did;

- opened the ods file I want to work on which has about 90 sheets within it.
- hit F11
- right clicked on Default in Styles and Formatting
- change the Cell Borders to 1 pt. and selected Default under Line
Arrangement

At that point in the process the there's a lot of activity (so to speak)
in the bottom of the Calc window...some progress bar flashing (so
whatever it's called) giving the impression that what I wanted to
change is occurring. However, a check of the cell formatting indicates
that the cell border size wasn't changed.

Any other ideas?

Works for me:

LibreOffice 3.3.4
OOO330m19 (Build:401)
tag libreoffice-3.3.4.1

and

LibreOffice 3.4.4
OOO340m1 (Build:402)

What "worked for you" and what did it accomplish?

Here's a rather lengthy and complex cell border fix-

- open the ods file you want to correct all of the cell border sizes in.

- Click---->File--->Save As---> OpenDocument Sheet Flat XML file (.fods)

- Exit Calc

- Open the .fods file you just saved with a simple text editor

- Search for the following line- <style:table-cell-properties
fo:border-bottom="0.0071in solid #000000" fo:background-color="#ffff00"

NOTE- what you're looking for, primarily, is the word "border" which
will have a number near it. In my case the border size was "0.0071in
FORGET that .0071 is essentially 7 thousandths of an inch. In my first
attempt to fix the border I simply replaced the "0.0071in with "1ptin
and it fixed it to just what I wanted. When I opened the .fods file
again, just to look at it, the former "1ptin had been changed to "0.0071in

- Save the edited .fods file

- Open the edited .fods file in Calc

- See if all the cell borders are what you wanted

- If all is well save the .fods as an .ods file

Conclusion- I sure would like to hear of an easy solution to this
problem of easily changing all existing cell borders to a certain size.
The sheets I was working on had so many cells with borders, which were
all the same, that it would've taken at least a week to fix it.

NoOp · December 14, 2011, 11:54pm

The above instructions, changed the border sizes to 1 pt.

Select the entire sheet (clicking upper left corner), open styles
(either F11 or via the icon), right-click Default|Modify|Borders|Line
Width: 1.00pt|Line arrangement: second outline box under 'Default'.
Note: even changed the pt to 2pt and color to green, saved the file,
closed the file, reopened the file & the cell boarders are still 2pt/green.

...

user224 · December 15, 2011, 3:32am

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...

With F11, select Default format, and change there the border.
If there is another style non vinculated with default, change it also.

Miguel Ángel

Miguel, I tried it with one of the sheets but it had no effect. I tried
it with a new sheet but no effect either.

Here's what I did;

- opened the ods file I want to work on which has about 90 sheets

within it.

- hit F11
- right clicked on Default in Styles and Formatting
- change the Cell Borders to 1 pt. and selected Default under Line
Arrangement

At that point in the process the there's a lot of activity (so to speak)
in the bottom of the Calc window...some progress bar flashing (so
whatever it's called) giving the impression that what I wanted to
change is occurring. However, a check of the cell formatting indicates
that the cell border size wasn't changed.

Any other ideas?

Works for me:

LibreOffice 3.3.4
OOO330m19 (Build:401)
tag libreoffice-3.3.4.1

and

LibreOffice 3.4.4
OOO340m1 (Build:402)

What "worked for you" and what did it accomplish?

The above instructions, changed the border sizes to 1 pt.

Select the entire sheet (clicking upper left corner), open styles
(either F11 or via the icon), right-click Default|Modify|Borders|Line
Width: 1.00pt|Line arrangement: second outline box under 'Default'.
Note: even changed the pt to 2pt and color to green, saved the file,
closed the file, reopened the file & the cell boarders are still 2pt/green.

...

No doubt it works perfectly in the simplistic example you're referring

to. In my case not all of the cells have borders on them and by
selecting an entire sheet and applying formatting so that each cell has
a border will not accomplish what I'm trying to do. Though not related
my sheets don't have an option of apply Default Formatting. All I have
is Clear Direct Formatting when I do a right click in any cell.

Tom_Davies · December 15, 2011, 6:32pm

Hi
I think there is a deliberate mistake or tpyo or something? It is Christmas for a lot of us so if the chances for error are not higher than normal then you're not doing it (Xmas) properly. Go out and get stressed in some large group of people doing something crazy lol.

So, document was changed to green borders at 2pt and then saved and when re-opened it had green 2pt borders?

Has anyone seen "Tru Blood" where Jessica's problem is that the dead body she wants to hide has gone missing?
Regards from
Tom

NoOp · December 15, 2011, 7:41pm

...
...

Any other ideas?

Works for me:

LibreOffice 3.3.4
OOO330m19 (Build:401)
tag libreoffice-3.3.4.1

and

LibreOffice 3.4.4
OOO340m1 (Build:402)

What "worked for you" and what did it accomplish?

The above instructions, changed the border sizes to 1 pt.

Select the entire sheet (clicking upper left corner), open styles
(either F11 or via the icon), right-click Default|Modify|Borders|Line
Width: 1.00pt|Line arrangement: second outline box under 'Default'.
Note: even changed the pt to 2pt and color to green, saved the file,
closed the file, reopened the file & the cell boarders are still 2pt/green.

...

No doubt it works perfectly in the simplistic example you're referring

to. In my case not all of the cells have borders on them and by
selecting an entire sheet and applying formatting so that each cell has
a border will not accomplish what I'm trying to do.

Make up your mind:

<quote>
Now
with LibreOffice all of the cell borders on the sheet are .25 pt. A
change was made to the cell border sizes and I didn't do it.

How do I quickly change ALL of the cell borders in the many sheets I'm
working on?
</quote>

Though not related

my sheets don't have an option of apply Default Formatting. All I have
is Clear Direct Formatting when I do a right click in any cell.

3.3.4 has that option. For 3.4.4: ensure that the Text toolbar is
showing (View|Toolbars|Text Formatting. Click the down arrow bar at the
end of the toolbar and select Visble Buttons|Apply Style. That will add
the style selection box on the toolbar. From there you can select Default.
... snip unnecessary pgp sig.

Tom_Davies · December 15, 2011, 8:04pm

Hi
There is an in-between option between selct all and selecting specific areas. Ctrl click&drag allows you to select quite a few areas even if they are not joined together.
Regards from
Tom

user224 · December 15, 2011, 8:46pm

I've found it easier to simply edit an FODS file and alter the cell
border point size there.

Tom_Davies · December 15, 2011, 11:09pm

Hi
Brilliant! I was wondering if that would be possible and had a bit of a dig around but couldn't find an easy single point to edit. Did you use find&replace? Which file did you edit?
Anyway, congrats, thanks and regards from
Tom

user224 · December 16, 2011, 2:16am

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Hi
Brilliant! I was wondering if that would be possible and had a bit of a

dig around but couldn't find an easy single point to edit. Did you use
find&replace? Which file did you edit?

Anyway, congrats, thanks and regards from
Tom

Yes, I used the find & replace with Gedit in Ubuntu. See my earlier
posts on this topic to see how I did it.

I edited only the .fods file and then saved it. Then, opened the .fods
file, check to make sure all borders were changed to the size wanted and
finally saved the .fods file as an .ods file.

Worked perfectly.

From: . <peace@AleksandrSolzhenitsyn.net>
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Change cell border sizes- quickly?
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Date: Thursday, 15 December, 2011, 20:46

I've found it easier to simply edit an FODS file and alter the cell
border point size there.

Hi
There is an in-between option between selct all and selecting specific

areas. Ctrl click&drag allows you to select quite a few areas even if
they are not joined together.

Tom_Davies · December 16, 2011, 11:19am

Hi
Ahh, so saved as flat-xml. The ods file itself can be opened with an archive manager.

Right-click on the file and choose "Open With ...". Then in Gnu&Linux choose "Archive manager" or in Windows choose "WinRar" or "WinZip" or something like that. you can change the file-ending from .ods to .zip if that makes it easier. As a .zip just double-click on the file and then you'll find out which archive manager your system uses.

You will see the ods is really a folder containing a number of xml files and sometimes folders for pictures and things.

I didn't understand about the flat-xml option so thanks for letting me know about it.
Thanks, congrats and regards from
Tom

user224 · December 16, 2011, 1:28pm

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Hi
Ahh, so saved as flat-xml. The ods file itself can be opened with an

archive manager.

Right-click on the file and choose "Open With ...". Then in Gnu&Linux

choose "Archive manager" or in Windows choose "WinRar" or "WinZip" or
something like that. you can change the file-ending from .ods to .zip if
that makes it easier. As a .zip just double-click on the file and then
you'll find out which archive manager your system uses.

You will see the ods is really a folder containing a number of xml

files and sometimes folders for pictures and things.

I didn't understand about the flat-xml option so thanks for letting me

know about it.

Thanks, congrats and regards from
Tom

Please don't get the wrong idea- I had NO idea what I was doing. It was
more like "The 3 Stooges learn programming". Yes, I figured out how to
unzip the .ods with Archive Manager but couldn't figure out how to put
it back to its original format.

Thanks for the enthusiasm.

Tom_Davies · December 16, 2011, 4:50pm

Hi
Thanks :) The problem i then had was finding out which of those files was the right one to edit. Btw to edit them i would drag them out of the archive folder and into "normal space" such as "My Documents" or something and then when it's ready to go back in just drag and drop it back into the archive and then rename the file-ending of the archive from .zip back to .ods. I would only do that with a copy of the file just in case (=jic) it all went horribly wrong.

It's meant to be that easy (i think) but it's very possible that there are extra things to watch out for. Always keep a back-up and/or a previous version jic.
Regards from
Tom

Tom_Davies · December 16, 2011, 4:54pm

HI
Well, not quite because what you did worked. My way is a little more complicated but really ends up being very much the same, ie cheating by hacking the xml ;)
Regards from
Tom