One of my main uses for a spreadsheet package is to produce family trees. What I’ve done for years now in Excel is to set out the details of individuals in cells – so for example a vertically contiguous group might hold forename, surname, date of birth, place of birth, date of death, place of death for a given person, with comments attached to the cells holding details of the sources of each fact. I then draw vertical and horizontal lines connecting family members, their parents / children and so on, using the drawing tools. And if I insert or delete a row or column to change the appearance of the drawing or to add new people Excel simply automatically increases or decreases the line lengths. But Calc does not behave in the same way as Excel – at least as regards attempting to update files originally produced using Excel 2003 (I haven’t tried setting out a tree from scratch in Calc). The biggest problem is with the connecting lines. There are several issues. If I alter the zoom level the lines no longer stay in the same relationship to the cells. Similarly if I insert rows or columns. And if I try to alter the length or position of a line using the keyboard arrow keys the level of control is insufficiently granular to allow me to position the lines as I wish. (In Excel I can get very exact control by first zooming in (to perhaps 200% or more) and then manipulating the lines before zooming back out). Is it possible to exactly replicate the performance of the Excel 2003 drawing function in Calc, and if so how do I do it?
I found these issues with Calc before switching the save file formats – with Calc as now available on my PC the menus are similar to Excel 2007 and I can’t even see how to access the drawing tools. How do I do that?
Which OS and LibreOffice-Version du you use?
Windows 10 (64 bit) and the latest version of LibreOffice (6.5.2 64bit). Part of the problem is also that the Calc Guide is for version 4.3
So in turn.
1- List item
The lines should move with the zoom levels, right?
Here’s an example of a vertical line that moves with the zoom levels:
The important thing is that the line is anchored to a cell (right-click on the line and in the drop-down menu Anchor>To Cell (resize with cell).
2- List item
You can draw with the drawing functions. You can access the Drawing toolbar from the View>Toolbars>Drawing menu.
The toolbar can be placed anywhere or docked sideways (drag and drop with the mouse).
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With me Windows 10 Home; Version 1903; 64-Bit | LibreOffice, Version: 6.3.0.4 (x64).
@Hrbrgr , super, thanks for this little feature Anchor > To Cell (resize with cell). This way Calc acts almost the same way as Excel 2003 (which I happen to have parallel on one machine so that I can compare).
@allmat , “And if I try to alter the length or position of a line using the keyboard arrow keys the level of control is insufficiently granular to allow me to position the lines as I wish.”: maybe you’ll get some benefit from using ALT + Coursor Keys to move objects, since this is more granular.
ebot
Apologies for the delayed response and thanks for such a helpful reply. One further point - I’ve got lots of sheets with lines that I would like to ensure are anchored and resized. Is there a way to apply this attribute to all existing lines in a sheet as a group, and is there a way to make this the default for new sheets?
You ask two separate questions more. It makes sense to ask these questions individually as a new question. Thank you.