OpenOffice.org Help TNT: Tips'n'Tricks that somehow didn't make it to the help (yet).

When you enter text into a Calc cell, the text continues in front of the neighboring cells to the right. Unless there are some contents in one of those cells, in which case the visible text is cut off before it can cover the existing cell contents.

To always be able to see all text contents in a cell, you might want to enable the automatic word wrap feature.

1. Click the cell or select some cells where you want the text to wrap automatically.

2. Choose Format - Cells.

3. Click the Alignment tab.

4. Enable Wrap Text Automatically.

You can also insert line breaks into the cell manually using Ctrl+Return.

1. Double-click a cell to enter text directly into the cell.

2. Press Ctrl+Return to advance the text cursor to the next line in the same cell.

Note that this doesn't work when you enter the text in the Input Line of the Formula Bar.

Often a cell area of your Calc sheet or a table inside a Writer text document needs to be formatted. The first row and/or column should have a different background, the font should look bold or italic, the values should get some numbering formats.

And you have at least three wishes when applying the formatting:

• Fast and easy, with as few clicks as possible.

• Always the same style.

• Looking nice.

The answer is easy: It is called AutoFormat. AutoFormat defines a set of different formatting rules and properties with a distinctive name. Several AutoFormats are already supplied and installed in Calc and Writer.

If you don't like the supplied AutoFormats, you can add your own AutoFormats and give them the names you want. Format a table as you like, select all the formatted cells, then open Format-AutoFormat to add your formatting as a new style. Easy, isn't it?

You can add backgrounds, borders, set automatic cell width and height, use currency formats, and more. You can even apply patterns, which means defining alternating colors for alternating rows or columns.

To apply an AutoFormat

1. Select an area of cells.

2. Choose Format - AutoFormat.

3. Select a name from the left list and watch the preview in the dialog.

4. Click OK to apply the AutoFormat.