How wonderful it is to start a new spreadsheet with a new, blank, page in front of you. However, as I have done from an early age onward, I always feel the need to immediately change some basic things. In my Commodore 64 days this used to be: poke 53280,0 / poke 53281,0 to change the background color of my computer screen to black. In spreadsheets I usually change the following:

• I change header and footer information to be able to identify printed pages.
• I change the basic font to Verdana (just a personal preference).
• I add a documentation sheet to my spreadsheet. Since I keep forgetting — I know I’m not the only one — to document my spreadsheets.

The poking of my C64 couldn’t be automated (hence I still remember the codes), but, with the use of spreadsheets, it is very easy to change the defaults in any Calc spreadsheet.

1. Open the Standard spreadsheet template spreadsheet (or a blank one)
2. Make all the changes you like to have
3. go to File -> Templates -> Save
4. Select a name and a category for your template
5. click ok
6. done!

If you want to make the template your default one:

1. go to File -> Templates -> Organize
2. select the template (within the category)
3. right-click the template and select ’set as default template’
4. done!

I’m not trying to emulate Excel when using Calc, but I find certain ingrained habits hard to kick. Two of the shotcuts I constantly used in Excel are fill-down (ctrl-d) and fill-right (ctrl-r).

While fill-down and fill-right can be easily found in Calc (Edit -> Fill -> down / right / up / left) they don’t have the habitual shortcuts attached to them.

However, this can easily be changed:

• Tools -> Customize
• select tab ‘keyboard’
• select shortcut key Ctrl+D
• select category ‘Edit’
• select Function ‘Fill Down’
• click ‘Modify’

repeat for fill-right and any other shortcuts you might be missing.

One great feature of Calc is the possibility to ‘paste-special’ using checkboxes. Excel uses radiobuttons which only gives you the opportunity to select one option at a time. I often found myself wanting to copy the numbers AND the formatting of a cell. This meant I had to paste-special twice. Now in Calc I can simply check the appropriate boxes. Much more effective.