I am coming to LibreOffice from having used Microsoft Excel, Apple Numbers, and Google Sheets. All of them give you a spreadsheet with a manageable number of cells, and allow you to remove and add rows and columns to make the sheet the exact size for the data you need. LibreOffice presents a vast, boundless expanse of empty cells, with no way to remove them. Scrolling to what appears to be the right end or bottom of the document only reveals new empty cells. In fact, it's easy to accidentally scroll past the edge of your known world of data and wind up in terra incognita. No other spreadsheet software I have worked with does this. Presentatiaon matters as much as calculation power. I would really appreciate if LibreOffice Calc behaved in a similar reasonable manner, giving me only the cells I have and want. I can always add more, but it seems I can never take them away.
I think it's more an enhancement. But I disagree Excel has only needed cells. There are the same sheets with many cells there (I have MSO 2016) And I saw Apple Numbers and understand what do you want. I'm not sure if we can have it in Calc...
so, your proposal is to have a limit number of cells by default, let's say 100x100 and extend it if you need more ?
Yes, I would like Calc to only show cells I have created, and never automatically add them just because I scroll (adding because of pasted data is expected of course). Google sheets open with 26 columns and 1000 rows. But 100x100 as a new sheet size also seems reasonable, as long as I can delete unwanted columns and rows. As for how Apple Numbers does things, well that's different again: It allows you to create multiple sheets on a single tab, whereas Excel, Google Sheets, and LibreOFfice Calc all make a tab == a sheet. I would love to have things the way Apple Numbers works, it allows a lot more flexibility in layout and modeling, but for now I just want my sheets to be bounded to the number of columns & rows I want so I can scroll to the end and not get lost.
[Automated Action] NeedInfo-To-Unconfirmed
You can hide (Format > Columns | Rows > Hide) columns and rows to your liking. Use Shift+Ctrl+Arrow right|down to extend the current selection to the end. I believe all other office suites do the same internally. => WF Feel free to reopen if you disagree.
Hiding columns & rows isn't much use when the app just keeps adding new ones as I scroll to the empty columns or rows I want to hide! NO other spreadsheet I have EVER used just keeps adding new rows & columns as I scroll--they stop at the edge of my document, so that I can rely on scrolling to the edge of my document to see the data at the edge, and not a bunch of new empty cells I had no interest in creating just because I wanted to see the edge of my document. (This is not about extending ths selection, this is about just scrolling around.) I really don't care what office suites do internally in this matter; I care about what they do externally that affects my ability to navigate my document. You don't see word processors adding infinite pages or paragraphs as you scroll to the end--including LibreOffice. Spreadsheets should behave similarly.
(In reply to Nik Gervae from comment #6) > Hiding columns & rows isn't much use when the app just keeps adding new ones > as I scroll to the empty columns or rows I want to hide! When I hide col E to AMJ the horizontal scrollbar becomes "disabled" and going further via arrow keys is not possible. Ctrl+end stops at column E. No columns are "added" (actually shown) automatically. Your use case appears to be completely solved to me, perhaps you run an outdated version. Version: 7.1.5.2 / LibreOffice Community Build ID: 10(Build:2) CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.13; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 Locale: de-DE (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US 7.1.5-2 Calc: threaded
This is not about a use case; this is about how the app should just behave by default. Once again, I state that no other spreadsheet app I've used be3haves the way LibreOffice does in this regard, and I see no advantage to it behaving this way. The fact that I can jump through some hoops, every single time I create a spreadsheet, to get it to behave rationally, doesn't mitigate the fact that this is hostile UI. And what if I have some columns that I legitimately need to hide and unhide? I'd have to go and rehide all the empty columns every time too. It's hassle all around when just *not* adding empty cells on scrolling, like every other spreadsheet out there, would avoid all this. I will also note that ctrl+end doesn't work for me, I'm on a laptop and have to use fn to get the arrow keys to act like those keys, and while that works in other apps, in LibreOffice, doing so does nothing (at least page up/down do work). I can't even option+click in the scroll bar to get it to jump to the cursoru, it just scrolls one windowful.
It's all about use cases. You believe in a particular solution, others don't. My take here is that we should not add means to hard-limit the number of columns/rows. Adding Eike for second opinion but WF'ing the request.