Spreadsheet tips for Corel Quattro
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Users of Corel Quattro, included in the company's Word Perfect office suite, can enjoy some capabilities not even found in Microsoft Excel.
Microsoft Excel is not the only spreadsheet in town, of course.
Users of Corel Quattro, included in the company's Word Perfect
office suite, can enjoy some capabilities not even found in
Microsoft Excel. Greg Wood, a Corel senior communications manager,
rounded up some easy trick and tips that can enliven any Quattro
spreadsheet, or notebooks, as Corel calls them.
Use variables: A lot of data entered into
spreadsheets will change from time to time, such as dates or a
version number of a particular document. Quattro includes a
Variable Editor, which allows you to define and assign editors. It
resides under the "Insert" menu item. It lets you name a variable,
enter its current value, and specify whether it is a number, text
or image. When you need to insert a variable somewhere in the
notebook, just go to the "variable" item under the "Insert"
top-level menu.
Compare Notebooks: In the newest release of Quattro,
Quattro Pro X4, users can compare two spreadsheets, or notebooks.
"This feature lets you look at the differences between similar
notebooks when you are editing the data," Wood writes. Open one of
the notebooks you want to compare, and then choose the "Compare
Notebooks" function within the Tools>Workgroup menu, and locate
the other notebook. A third notebook will be created in which the
alterations will be highlighted in red.
Change calculation options: Sometimes your notebooks will
get so hefty with formulas that every time you enter a new piece of
data, the recalculation takes a while to complete, slowing you down
from finishing your appointed task. By default, Quattro executes
formulas each time new data is entered. But you can delay the
calculation until you designate manually when it should take place.
Look for the "Recalc" setting tab under Notebook>Properties menu
item. Switch to the "Manual" option. There is also the "Background"
option, which recalculates the worksheet only when you are not
typing.
Be aware, however, of when you have your notebook in manual
mode. You could be working with outdated numbers if you forgot to
do that one last calculation.
Import data from text files:
Sometimes you might have a lot of data you need to get into a
notebook, but cutting and pasting one cell at a time takes too
long. Instead, separate each item with a comma, and save the file
as a plain ASCII text file, making it in effect a "comma separated
values" or CSV file. Quattro will import the data, placing each
piece of data in between two commas in its own cell. Click Tools
> Data tools > QuickColumns function.
For more tips, visit the Corel WordPerfect "Tips and Tricks"
Web site.
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