Inserting more than one row at a time in OpenOffice.org Calc

Inserting a row in OpenOffice.org Calc is easy. Let's say you've made this schedule and you need another row  because you need more slots for night life.

Right-click on the row below where you want the new row to appear, and choose Insert Rows.

Bam, you get a new row. Now you have two blank ones so if you decide you need even more new rows, you can select two rows, choose Insert Rows again....

and then you get two more new blank rows.

That's the way I've always done it.

But then I had a brainwave -- you don't have to select blank rows in order to insert rows. That is, if you want to insert three new rows, just select three rows, period, whether they have content in them or not. Then as usual right-click on the row headings and choose Insert Rows.

and you get your three new rows, above the rows that you selected.

I'm not sure how I got stuck on the idea that you have to select blank rows if you want to insert multiple rows at a time. But you don't. So here's the summary.

If you want to insert multiple rows, just select that number of rows, right-click on the row headings, and choose Insert Rows. Doesn't matter if there's content in the rows that you select;  the content won't be affected by the Insert Rows action.

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Comments

[Elaine]

I've always thought I had to select blank rows too. Thanks for the tip.

[Bob E.]

Thanks Solveig!

This has long been a pet peeve of mine, as I have to insert rows all the time. I even put in a feature request a long time ago to allow one to choose the number of rows one wanted to insert. Out of curiosity, I just checked the help files to see what they said. Somewhere along the line the help has been updated to say: "The number of rows inserted correspond to the number of rows selected.", but no one has the time to keep going back to read through the help to find out what has changed. So thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

BTW, I check your blog often and never fail to come away without learning something new. Keep up the great work.

Bob

[Solveig]

Thanks Bob! I'm glad it helped.

Solveig

[befana]

Hi there!
I have a sheet in OpenOffice.org Calc with more than 4000 rows with data and I want to insert a row between every data row. How to make that?

[Chalapathi Rao (Chalam)]

in OOo calc I found that when two or more cells are merged at top it does not allow to insert some other columns in between them. And also it does allow to insert one by one row or columns i.e. suppose if we select columns B, D, E .... by holding ctrl key and trying to insert columns alternately it does not allow that. This is same for the rows also. Why it is occurred. Please clarify this problem for me.
ThanQ

[vijay]

thanks to give solution ,its realy help us to do fast work.

[Brian]

Solveig,
Thank you for addressing a topic which has bothered me ever since I made the switch to OO back in 2007. Problem solved.

Thanks

[vijay]

please define shorcut keys to color text in spread sheet ???