At first glance, KSpread's
,
and
appear
to be similar to these functions in other KDE applications. Having selected
a cell or cells, you can choose
or
from the
menu or from
the drop down menu you get by holding the right
mouse button down on a selected cell. You can also use the shortcuts
Ctrl
+
C
or
Ctrl
+
X
, then move the selection to the target cell and choose
or press
Ctrl
+
V
. However there are some
subtleties associated with these functions in KSpread and these are discussed
below.
If a cell contains a formula then the formula itself is copied rather
than the displayed result, and if the formula contains a reference to another
cell, then that reference is changed by the
or
and
operation to point to the cell that is in the same relative position as in
the original cell. For example if cell A2 contains the formula
=B3
and is copied to C4, cell C4 will contain
=D5
.
This may seem to be a rather strange way of doing a copy, but
99 percent of the time it is exactly what is wanted (if it is not then see the
section about absolute cell references).
For example in the simple shopping list shown below, cell D2 should contain
=B2 * C2
, D3 should be
=B3 * C3
,
D4 should be
=B4 * C4
and so on. Instead of having to
enter a different formula in each cell, you can just enter the first formula
into D2 and then copy it into the cells below, letting KSpread adjust the
cell references to suit.
Copying and Pasting Cell Areas
In the above example D2 can be copied into all three cells D3 to D5 at
once by just copying D2 then selecting the complete cell area D3:D5 before
doing the paste.
A rectangular area of cells can be cut or copied in one operation by
selecting the area before doing the cut or copy. Then select the top left
corner cell of the area you want to paste into before doing the paste.
If you cut or copy a rectangular area of cells, say B2:C3, and paste it
into a larger area such as A10:D13 the original pattern of cells will be
repeated to fill the target area.
KSpread also provides a “Drag and Copy” method for
copying cells down into other cells immediately below or to the
right of the original cell(s). To use this method select the cell(s) to be
copied then position the mouse pointer over the small black square at the
bottom right corner of the selected cell(s) so the cursor changes to a double
headed arrow. Then hold the left mouse button down
while you drag the selected cell(s) as far as you wish. Note that cell
references in formulae are incremented according to the
relative position change. Absolute references are not changed.
A cell may contain text, a value, or a formula, and may also contain
special font, border or background formatting
information. KSpread has special versions of Paste that let
you handle these items in different ways.
->
brings up the
Special
Paste
dialog box. By selecting the appropriate item from
the top part of this dialog you can choose to paste just
Text
, the cell
Format
, any
Comment
in the cell(s) or
Everything
without border
. The items in the bottom part of this dialog
box allow you to do simple arithmetic
on an area of cells.
inserts the copied
cell(s) into the sheet by moving the cells that would otherwise be overwritten
a suitable number of rows of columns down or to the right. It can also be used
to insert complete copied row(s) or column(s) into the worksheet.
