If I enter a minus sign and then I press an arrow key, I get a cell address in my active cell which remains when I then press Enter.
I.e., I get a value like -M8.
Is there some way that I can turn this feature off?
What are you trying to do when you press the arrow? Move to the next cell? Press TAB. Want to move the cursor away from the minus sign and print the text? Press spacebar
This is not a “minus sign’s behavior” but a “formula-being-entered-behavior”. The same thing happens, if you start to type = or +. You cannot turn off the Calc functionality recognizing a user being about to enter a formula.
I have a macro that saves the value, i.e. -, and then moves to the next cell based on the distance between the current cell and the previous cell with data. Very useful when our data are being entered on every fourth row. Our fix is to add '- in those cases where the data is just a minus sign. I was hoping there was a way to turn off the formula function.
I have a macro that saves the value, i.e. -, and then moves to the next cell based on the distance between the current cell and the previous cell with data.
Your macro simulates a keystroke to move to next cell? That sounds strange to me.
It sounds strange, but we import an image into Calc. The Calc grid lines up with the data grid on the image. We enter that data from the image into Calc and save the data in an XML format. Sometimes the data are recorded only every four hours, and sometimes it is very repetitive. So, we enter the value at 0400 and activate the macro with a shortcut key. We are taken to hour 0800. Activate the macro and it copies the value at 0400 into the cell for 0800 and we are taken to 1200, etc.
I don’t know if this knowledge will help you in solving your problem, but the F2 key in the cell text editing mode enables and disables the substitution of cell addresses
Why doesn’t your macro immediately after starting look at the computer clock and independently move to the line with the required time, along the way putting minuses in all the missing cells?
See also: tdf#131638 (related to cells formatted as text still creating/validating formulas at entry).
Interpreting input as formula changes the function of arrow keys from cell selection navigation to formula parameter navigation.
There are two ways to insist that the input not be interpreted as formula:
-
At setup time: Format cells with
Number format=Text -
At input time: Start input with an apostrophe
'. The apostrophe will show in the formula bar when cell is selected, but not in the cell grid. It will not constitute part of the cell content.
- At setup time: Format cells with
Number format=Text
And this does not help the issue here - see comment 3 in tdf#131638 mentioned above.
But as the ‘-’ not really has any function they could try to use another character like # or maybe * from the numeric keypad instead of -
(Only = + and - are named in the issue).
As as they already use a macro this can even change the character back to - for the used look)