Let me try my understanding and perhaps help to calibrate what you are after.
1. Consider a button that would pop out a small calendar in the usual format, with navigation from month to month and the typical 4-5 rows of date numbers against days of the week. There might also be some convenience for navigating to distant months that do not have the current date. Clicking on a date would cause the specified date to inserted into a currently-selected cell. Closing the calendar without clicking would not make an entry. If the calendar pop-out is kept active, other dates could be selected into other cells. 2. Another pop-out might be more like a calculator that works with dates. That is more of a stretch. Some of your examples suggest that kind of activity. Q1. With regard to (1), which might be an interesting exercise for creation of an extension, I wonder how close one can get already by the ways that date-formatted cells accept abbreviated entries. For example, entering a month and day, such as 01-28 (today in my locale settings) can automatically enter a full calendar date in the current year. This is commonplace. I don't know what would happen if I entered just 28 when the cell is already formatted to contain a date. I know this is not the same as being able to look at a calendar and use the orientation that provides to help us determine a past or future date. Is it any saving of effort, so long that you have a calendar handy? Q2. Would a utility that ran outside of OpenOffice Calc that provided (1), and put a full calendar date (and even times converted from the local time) onto the clipboard for pasting into a document of any kind, including Calc cells be a step in the right direction that would give you some of the working efficiency you care about? Note that I have omitted consideration of date calculations since those are easily accomplished with Calc already, just as calculations among other cell entries. It takes some understanding of cell formatting for date-times and for time intervals, but there is extensive support in Calc already. - Dennis PS: For any follow-up, please reply to users @ openoffice.apache.org where other experts may have advice and others can learn the solutions to common problems. The OpenOffice Forums have an extensive knowledge base at https://forum.openoffice.org/, -----Original Message----- From: Vince B. [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2015 14:38 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Drop Down Menu in AOO4.1.1 There are no suggested values; I manually monitor data on a random date (whenever I happen to be close to an elapsed time meter that is connected to my heating system. I write the data on paper, and note also the date. Then, I enter the collected data into my AOO spreadsheet. I am afraid I failed to be clear about what I desire. I am looking for a Calendar-type of dropdown menu to be repeated within a row of spreadsheet cells. I don't know the correct name ! (Might need a macro? Or, perhaps an add-on to AOO.). Thus, I have not been successful searching in AOO's Help file. As I mentioned, I seek an easier way to enter a calendar date; similar to what may be found in a financial s/w (e.g., checkbook register entry) or in a Calendar s/w, where I can quickly select a desired Month, then the Day of that month, all within a preselected Year. It would be great if the DD/MM/YYYY is repeated (unchanged) until I menu-select a new DD/MM/YYYY. Is there such a function in AOO? Once the date is selected, the spreadsheet formula calcs the elapsed number of days between one cell and the immediate next cell. For example: A1 contains the date of, last Thursday; today is Wednesday, which is set in A2. I need to count the number of days; A2-A1, to calc amount of Heating Fuel consumed. .... Counting the number of elapsed days is not the issue; quick selection of revised date data is. Maybe such a dropdown menu is available in AOO Base, and I will need to combine Base and Spreadsheet? Regards, VinceB Sent from my iPad > On Jan 28, 2015, at 11:42, Brian Barker <[email protected]> wrote: > > At 11:19 28/01/2015 -0500, Vince Bonly wrote: >> Can someone point me to info on creating a dropdown menu in a Spreadsheet >> cell, if this is possible? I have created a spreadsheet to calculate Heating >> Fuel consumption, and frequently need to enter a specific date into a cell. >> A dropdown menu, I think, would save me time when needing to do this. > > o Enter the suggested values into cells somewhere in the spreadsheet. (These > can be tucked away somewhere.) > o Potentially select this cell range and use Insert | Names > | Define... to > give the list a name. > o Select the target cell or cell range. > o Go to Data | Validity... . > o On the Criteria tab, for Allow, select Cell Range. > o Click in the Source box and either drag over the list or type its name. > > There are many options you can adjust, such as "Show selection list" (which > you will want), as well as "Allow blank cells", and providing some help text > when the target cell is selected. The Error Alert tab allows you to control > whether values not in the list are permitted (Warning instead of Stop) and an > error message that can be produced. > > I trust this helps. > > Brian Barker > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
