The Format Menu

The Format menu allows users to control the formats of cells, columns, rows, worksheets and the workbook. This menu also gives users access to templates of standard formats.

Figure 4-15 The Format Menu and Its Cells Submenu.

The Format Menu offers these menuitems:

Cells — The Cells... menu item opens a sub-menu with choices to allows the user to modify the formatting of the selected cells.
- Format... — The Format... menu item opens the cell format dialog. This dialog is used to set cell data types and formats. It is explained in Section 5.10 ― Formatting Cells.
- Conditional Formating... — The Conditional Formating... menu item opens the conditional format dialog. This dialog is used to set cell data types and formats that depend on values in the workbook. It is explained in Section 5.11 ― Conditional Formatting of Cells.
- Merge — This menu item combines the current selection into a single large cell.
- Unmerge — This menu item divides a merged selection into the original cells.
- Auto Fit Height — This menu item makes Gnumeric automatically choose the optimal row heights to display all of the text in the current selection.
- Auto Fit Width — This menu item makes Gnumeric automatically choose the optimal column widths to display all of the text in the current selection.
Column — The Column menu item opens a sub-menu with choices to allows the user to modify the view of the selected columns.

Figure 4-16 The Column Submenu.
- Width... — The Width... menu item opens a dialog to enable the user to adjust the size of the columns which hold the current selection. The dialog has a single entry box in which the user can change the current size of the column in points.
- Auto Fit Width — This menu item makes Gnumeric automatically choose the optimal column size to display all of the text in the current selection.
- Hide — The Hide menu item will hide the columns containing the current selection. Gnumeric still holds these columns in memory and will save them to a file but will not display those columns. The only indication that a user has that columns have been hidden is that the column header names are not sequential.
- Unhide — This menu item will show columns which are hidden if the selection spans the two columns on either side of the selection. If columns D, E, and F have been hidden, the selection must span at least across columns C and G for this menu item to unhide columns D, E, and F.
- Standard Width — This menu item allows the user to resize the columns which hold the selection to the standard size. At 100 percent zoom this is 48 points or 64 pixels.
Row — The Row menu item provides the same functions as the Column menu item but operates on rows.
- Height... — This menu item opens a dialog which allows the user to type in a row height in pixels.
- Auto Fit Height — This menu item changes the rows which hold the selection to the optimal height to hold the text in the selection.
- Hide — The Hide menu item will hide the rows in the selection. The workbook still contains the data in the hidden rows but those rows are not shown.
- Unhide — This menu item will make hidden rows visible. The selection must span the rows which are hidden for this menu item to unhide the hidden rows.
- Standard Height — This menu item resizes the rows back to the default height of 12.75 points or 17 pixels (at 100 percent zoom).
Sheet — The Sheet menu item opens a sub-menu with operations to change properties of the worksheet. This submenu has three sections.

Figure 4-17 The Sheet Submenu.
1 Sheet Management Items
The first section contains menu items used to modify sheets indirectly. Note that these items are also available from the context menu which appears by clicking (usually with the right mouse button) on one of the worksheet tabs.
Manage Sheets... —- This opens a dialog with the names and properties of all the sheets. A user can click on one of the names in the dialog and then click on the up and down arrows, as appropriate, to move the selected sheet in front or behind others. The tabs for the sheets will move at the same time. This dialog also allows the user to delete sheets, to rename sheets, and to change many other sheet properties.

Rename — After selecting this item the sheet name in the sheet tab is selected and can now be changed there.
2 Toggle Items
The second section contains various toggle menu items used to switch sheet properties directly.
Display Formulas — This menu item acts as a toggle. By default it is unset and formula results are displayed. If this menu item is clicked, it will display a little check mark on the left. The worksheet will show the actual formulae for all cells with formulae instead of showing the calculated result. This is useful for quickly assessing which cells contain formulae and which contain data.

Use R1C1 Notation — This menu item acts as a toggle. If this menu item is clicked, Gnumeric display a check mark on the left of the menu item. Gnumeric will also use R1C1 style notation to address cells rather than A1 notation.

Hide Zeros — This menu item acts as a toggle. Click on this menu item will cause a check mark to appear on the left. The sheet will then display all the cells which display zeros as empty cells. This is useful in sheets with many zero results, to quickly find cells with data.

Hide Gridlines — This menu item acts as a toggle. If this menu item is clicked, Gnumeric will display a check mark to the left of the menu item. The lines which separate all the cells will then be hidden and Gnumeric will appear to be a blank background. This is useful to make certain data look pretty on screen.

Hide Column Headers — This menu item acts as a toggle. If this menu item is clicked, Gnumeric display a check mark on the left of the menu item. Gnumeric will also hide the boxes with the alphabetical names of the columns.

Hide Row Header — This menu item acts as a toggle. If this menu item is clicked, Gnumeric display a check mark on the left of the menu item. Gnumeric will also hide the boxes with the numeric names of the rows.

Direction — This menu item acts as a toggle. When selected Gnumeric will change from left-to-right sheets to right-to-left sheets.
3 Zoom Menu Item

Zoom... — The Zoom menu item opens a dialog which allows the user to set the magnification of all worksheets in the current workbook. This item is also included in the View menu discussed in Section 4.2.4 ― The View Menu,
Autoformat... — This menu item opens the autoformat dialog to give user access to a list of format templates. Format templates are useful for users who are often filling out tables in a particular format. The user picks an area of the worksheet into which they want to apply the template. Most templates define headers and footers so the selection area must be big enough to fit those template elements and the user's data. The template will not affect data which has already been input into a worksheet.

The dialog has two tabs: Preview and Template Details. The details are simply information about the template. The Preview tab has three main options: a Settings menu, an Edit menu and a category chooser. The settings menu allows a user to pick what parts of the template they want to copy into the worksheet. The edit menu will be used to create new templates. Currently templates are written as text into an extensible markup language (XML) format. The category chooser gives the user access to different groups of templates. Templates in each category are displayed in the middle area of the dialog. Users select the template they want to use by clicking on it. The currently selected template is highlighted with a red boundary which may be hard to see.