New user looking for old features

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#1

I recently discovered that I needed to ditch Apache Open Office & start using LibreOffice. I mostly use spreadsheets & most things seem about the same between the two software packages. But I have a couple of things I’d like to ask about that don’t seem to be in LibreOffice. I suppose I should add that I am using Windows 11 Pro 64-bit version 24H2 build 26100.4946

In Open Office, I used to be able to hit Ctrl+d in a cell & it would drop down a list of values that occur in that column. I could then scroll the list & hit Enter on an entry to cause the current cell to take on that value. Ctrl+d doesn’t seem to do that in LibreOffice. It makes the screen flicker but doesn’t appear to do anything useful. I’ve looked at the documentation on keyboard shortcuts & I don’t see anything for Ctrl+d. So I guess I have a two-pronged question here. What does Ctrl+d do? How do I get the equivalent of Open Office Ctrl+d in LibreOffice?

My next question is actually not something that is new with LibreOffice. Open Office used to do this to me, too. Sometimes when I open a CSV file, intending to eventually make it an ODS, certain columns get this annoying character shoved into the first character of every cell in a column. Once this happens, you can't do a mass find/replace to remove it. I have found that I have to fiddle with the column types in the dialog you get when you first try to open the CSV file. Sometimes I have to try 3 or 4 times before I get the spreadsheet open without the annoying characters. This has bothered me for several years & I’m finally getting around to asking about it. I can’t even search on the issue because ` as a search string is rejected as being too short. Plus I don’t know what to call this issue. If you can answer me with directions to just search for a certain topic in the help, that would be good enough.

I did find that autocompleting a cell, something that used to happen with a simple Tab, is now Ctrl+Tab. I’m glad to have found that. But that does seem like a change that really didn’t need to be made. Why is this different between the two software packages?

#2

Try Alt + ↓ (as in Excel)

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#3

Alt+DownArrow . . . That is not particularly intuitive but your answer is particularly welcome! Thank you @sokol92! The old one used Ctrl so I would never have thought to use some key combination with Alt. This does seems like another thing that changed for no reason without improving anything.

Do you know what Ctrl+d does in LO? It does seem to do something but I can’t tell what.

#4

I went back to the list of keyboard shortcuts & I did find Alt+DownArrow. It says that when you are in Open Office compatibility mode, that increases the height of the current row. Now that I read that, I do remember that was something that did happen. But it does NOT also say what that shortcut does when you’re not in compatibility mode. I feel better that I didn’t just miss something in the documentation. It’s not in the documentation. As for comparing with Excel, I can’t. I’ve never used it. I’ve always had some free alternative to MS Office.

#5

My other issue is with the character. This forum seems to not like the character. I typed in my post above but it's getting removed . . . sometimes. So I've typed a few times here. The character is on the key to the left of the 1 key on the top row of my keyboard, below the F keys. On the same key, shift gives you the tilde: ~. So I'm talking about the little tick mark on the lower case of that key. Let’s see how many of the ` I’ve typed persist in this post.

#6

I typed ` several times in that post but only the last one seems to have persisted. I’ve typed it only once in this post. Let’s see if it persists.

#7 
`

Let’s see what pre-formatted text does. Here. I’ll try it again.

`
#8

Aha! The character is handled in a special way by this forum. Let’s see what this does.

`

#10

Despite my inability to make the tick character show up in my posts, I do still hope somebody can answer my question about the unwanted tick characters appearing sometimes in CSV files.

#11

The backtick is used in this forum for unaltered text especially useful to avoid typographic “quotes” as shown around the first "quotes"

#12

See the following thread - there is even a FAQ entry for this.

#14

Sigh. Every time I read such things, I imagine a user thinking that developers just do random things. The things may be controversial; but they are always created to help some users, so they are always user-driven. It happens, that it was some vocal (or paying) minority who pushed a change; but even then - it wasn’t “for no reason without improving anything” - it had a reason, and improved some users’ workflow.


Specifically here, it was commit 2be03e2ec720cbe9aa04f7e463c7e19944347d96 that initially changed to Ctrl+Shift+D; and later it changed again. The initial reason was clash with fill down.

1 Like
#15

Here it’s assigned to Alt + Down, but nothing happens.
Screenshot from 2025-08-29 16-51-04
Screenshot from 2025-08-29 16-52-24

#17

Thank you @Wanderer! I have bookmarked that FAQ. I’ll have to use it a few times before I have it ingrained in my muscle memory. Text to numerics . . . I didn’t even know what to search for. Thanks again.

#18

This command shows only strings, not numbers (in Excel the same)

1 Like
#19

:ok: and yes: it works.
Didn’t know this resource.
Thank you!

#20

I’ve already memorized this after 30 years of using Excel. :slight_smile:

#13

Start OpenOffice Calc and use ‘Customize’. Look which command is assigned to Ctrl+d. I see ‘Selection List’. Now start LibreOffice Calc and use ‘Customize’. Enter the command ‘Selection List’ in the search field. You will find, that it is assigned to Alt+Down. You can either learn the new short cut or customize LibreOffice to us the shortcut you know from OpenOffice.

2 Likes
#16

Customize . . . Thank you @Regina! I have a way to go before I’m as comfortable with this as I’d like. I don’t mind learning Alt+DownArrow. I just didn’t know about it. Now I have a place to look for other such things. That is, another place to look besides the documentation. Thanks again.

#21

Thanks again to you @Regina. Scrounging around in the Customize dialog, I came across an assignment for Ctrl+d. It is the shortcut for Fill Down. I didn’t know what that meant. It’s not a function I have ever used. But taking an educated guess, I entered some junk into a cell. I then highlighted that cell & a few empty cells below it in the same column. Ctrl+d duplicated the one filled in cell in the other empty highlighted cells. A little experimenting shows that if the cells you highlight have values, Ctrl+d will obliterate that data. Also, you can’t Ctrl+d on discontiguous highlighted cells; it works only on blocks of cells.

It’s good to learn something new every day . . . or so they say.

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