Creating a sheet to get the difference between 2 lists

[chematt]

Hello. I’m trying to adopt LibreOffice for work, particularly Calc. I want to create a sheet for comparing the difference between 2 lists. I would like to ask for assistance regarding the following:

For questions 1-2, please refer to the following image:

1. I accidentally clicked on Page Break view and when I reverted back to Normal view, I have these weird broken borders in some cells; how do I get rid of these?

2. I split the view of my sheet. I want to put the lists I will be comparing in each of these split partitions.

Is there a way to freeze the top row for each split (rows 1 and 201)?

3. Is there a way to increase the distance of text (Left, Bottom align) from the cell border?

[Album] imgur.com

I like the way it looks better in G sheets and would like to set it like this:

[Album] imgur.com

(Image comparisons are both 10 pt size, Lib sans for LibreOffice, Arial for G sheets)

That’s it for now. Advance thanks.

[keme1]

1

If you perform an operation which divides the spreadsheet to “print chunks” (like actual printing, File - Print preview or View - Page break), Calc will remember where the page breaks occurred. The dashed lines mark those breaks. They are only visual clues, and not part of cell formatting.

You can switch off those clues:

• Select menu item Tools - Options
• In left pane, expand branch LibreOffice Calc - View
• Untick Page breaks

2

Split window is for alternate/synchronized views of the same sheet. For viewing multiple files (or multiple sheets of one file) in parallel, you need to open multiple windows.

The freeze option is applied to the sheet (underlying grid) not to the “viewport” (separating frame around the grid).

To achieve what you are asking, I suggest you use a separate sheet for each list (to enable freeze for headings of both lists) and then Window - New to open an independent view of the file.

Note that there is the menu option Edit - Track changes - Compare which is sometimes useful in identifying differences between two similar files. This works best if most content is identical in the two files (e.g. one is an edited version of the other).

3

Cell “padding” is adjusted in cell format, the Borders tab.

• This is best done using a cell style, to achieve consistent and easily repeatable result.
  • See menu item Styles - Manage styles. This will focus on the styles pane in the left right sidebar.
  • Select the leftmost tool icon above the styles pane to work with cell styles.
  • Right click an existing style to modify it or create a new style based on it
• If you want this as a general setting for the spreadsheet, you should make the adjustment in the default cell style.
• If you want this as a general setting for all new spreadsheets, you should create a template with such an adjustment to the default cell style.

[EarnestAl]

Having two spreadsheet windows above each other will double the space given to toolbars.

You might like to change from the Tabbed interface to a single toolbar such as Contextual Single. You can do this by clicking View > User interface… and selecting one of the options that suits you. This will free up vertical space for your data.

[rpbcacueaiibh]

• Answer for 1st question: There’s no Page Break view, that must have been Print View, those weird lines only show where the page ends if you wanna print it. (Close and re-open your document to get rid of them.)
• I don’t know the answer to 2nd question, I’ve never used split view… (Sorry… :-/)
• For 3rd question: Left click on any of the horizontal align buttons (which are visible by default in calc). A menu appears, go to Visible Buttons, and check the Align Top, Center Vertical, and Align Bottom buttons to be visible, then you can use them to align the text in the cells to your liking.
• I don’t know howu it looks in G sheets, the last 2 images doesn’t appear to me… (Sorry… :-/)