How to quickly get the cursor down and to the beginning of the next row, in OpenOffice Calc

I posted a blog here about how to modify OpenOffice.org Calc to make the Delete key just delete, and another key like the Backspace key bring up that little delete window.

Here's another little modification. A lot of folks who use Excel are used to pressing Enter or Return to go down one row and all the way to the beginning of the row. If you're on E4 and press Enter, then you are suddenly at F1.

When you press Enter in Calc, however, you just go down one, like from E4 to F4. You can go under Tools > Options > Calc > General and change what the Enter key does, but you can't change it there to doing it the Excel Way.

However, to go to the first cell of the next row almost as quickly in Calc as in Excel, you can press Enter, then Home. On my keyboard they're pretty close together. Enter takes you down one cell, and Home takes you all the way to the left of that row.

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Comments

[Al]

I read this and thought: wait... That could be a macro!

So, the steps to making the Enter key, all by itself, go to the next row, first column:

1. Go to the Tools menu -> Macros -> Record Macro

2. Press Enter on the keyboard, press Home on the keyboard, then click the little "Stop Recording" button in the window that has come up.

3. A window titled "OpenOffice.org Basic Macros" will come up. Change the Macro Name to something (I called mine NextRowFirstColumn) and click the Save button

4. Go to the Tools menu -> Customize...

5. Select Enter under Shortcut Keys

6. Go to bottom of the Category list under Functions and click the plus sign by OpenOffice.org Macros, then find the folder your macro is in

7. Select the macro you just recorded in the Function list

8. Click Modify

et voila! Enter should now take you down and all the way to the left.

I wouldn't have thought of the idea of a macro if I hadn't seen this blog post, and I've been wanting to do this for a LONG time. Thanks for the inspiration!

[Thomas]

Thank you Al!