[Solved] Font Color Change

[tsfrance]

Hello. I have been using open office for a long time but now I am doing a spreadsheet in Calc. It's very simple. I am a musician and it's a way to track my song practice. All my songs are listed and then I have a lot of columns. So whatever songs I practice on Monday I would enter a M and T for Tuesday and so forth. My problem I am having is that I want to use a different font color for each day of the week but no matter what I change the color to, it will revert back to what was there for the next entry.

I have looked around in settings and can't seem to find it. Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

[FJCC]

You don't say how you are setting the font color, but I suggest you set up a cell style for each day of the week so it's easy to consistently set the color. Here are abbreviated instructions for doing that. Choose the menu item Format -> Styles and Formatting. A small window will open showing the cell styles. Right click on the Default style and choose new. Name the style for the day of the week on the Organizer tab and set the font color on the Font Effects tab. Click OK when you are done and repeat this for each day. You can then apply the style to a cell by clicking on the cell and then double clicking on the style in the Styles and Formatting window.
If you later decide to change the appearance of a day of the week, you can edit the style and all the cells with that style will automatically update.

[tsfrance]

Thanks. I am not sure if i can do that. All my songs are listed on the left and then on the right are many columns about 1.75 inches wide each. Each column will cover a whole week from Monday through Sunday. So If I work on 15 songs on Monday in the first column I would want to place a Blue M for each song. The next day if I work on 10 other songs I would want to place a orange Tu in the same column and if I worked on the same song two days in a row there would be a M and a Tu in the same column. I wont move to a new column until the following week.

It's not a big deal if I can't do it and I appreciate you trying to help. I can do it but each time I enter a M today I had to go up to font and change it to blue and it will let me use blue on time and then it reverts back to the other color.

I also Googled it and found a post on the forum here with the same issues but when I follow the steps to correct it, the boxes I need to uncheck are already unchecked!

Hope I made some sense.

[Hagar Delest]

Have just skimmed the discussion but basically we need a file showing how your data are laid out (see How to attach a document here).

[MrProgrammer]

… and if I worked on the same song two days in a row there would be a M and a Tu in the same column.

Does that mean that M and Tu are in the same cell? If so, I will tell you that it is impractical to use different font colors in the same cell. If you want to use different colors for M and Tu, you should do that by applying styles. However, a cell can only have one style. You may need to redesign your data layout.

… no matter what I change the color to, it will revert back to what was there for the next entry.

I recall this lengthy discussion about changing font color and (their words) having it lock in. They were advised multiple times to use styles but refused to do so. It appears that after 38 posts they gave up and never found the solution. That topic was for Writer, but seems to share some of the difficulty you have.
Change font color

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit ✏️ button and add [Solved] to the start of the Subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[tsfrance]

… and if I worked on the same song two days in a row there would be a M and a Tu in the same column.

Does that mean that M and Tu are in the same cell? If so, I will tell you that it is impractical to use different font colors in the same cell. If you want to use different colors for M and Tu, you should do that by applying styles. However, a cell can only have one style. You may need to redesign your data layout.

… no matter what I change the color to, it will revert back to what was there for the next entry.

I recall this lengthy discussion about changing font color and (their words) having it lock in. They were advised multiple times to use styles but refused to do so. It appears that after 38 posts they gave up and never found the solution. That topic was for Writer, but seems to share some of the difficulty you have.
Change font color

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the Subject field. Select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

Yes it is in the same cell and I actually found a simple work around. I am not a power user by any means and my first time at using any type of spreadsheet but what works out for me is this, so today is Tuesday and I will be using a orange Tu in the cells. I just type on orange Tu and then I highlight it and copy it and then no matter what font color is showing in the box i can just paste it into the cell and it works. Easy and fast.

I really appreciate the help!

[tsfrance]

For some unknown reason the paste does not appear anymore after I copy a letter so I have just given up on the idea of more than one entry per cell as like stated here it is not practical and I have done this. Much easier.

Thanks again.

[MrProgrammer]

I have just given up on the idea of more than one entry per cell …

Now that you have separate cells for each day you can apply styles to the day's column of cells with the colors that you want. Create a Monday style with a blue font and apply that to cells B2:B33, I2:I33, …. Create a Tuesday style with an orange font and apply that to cells C2:C33, J2:J33, …. You only have to apply the styles once. After that, you can just enter the data each day and it will appear in the correct color.

Using a style instead of direct formatting ensures that the colors are consistent. It looks to me as if B5 in your picture is a different color than B4 and B6.

[tsfrance]

Thanks and that is helpful and yes there are two different types of blue there. I will do the styles for sure.

Thanks again.

[Alex1]

If you use conditional formatting the colour will follow the cell contents.
Attached is an example. I created it in LibreOffice, because I needed 7 conditions and OpenOffice can handle only 3,
but once they are created it seems to work fine in OpenOffice.

[tsfrance]

Thank You Alex!