Excel Experts

Why does your data have to start in row one? If the column headings aren?t part of the table where are they supposed to get stored?

Tim

You can't.

It's possible to make some text (plus page numbers) appear above Row 1, by means of a header or "Heading" (and similarly at the bottom of a page by means of a footer).

But assuming you want individual column labels all to be descriptive of the data in each column, the above won't be enough and you're going to have to put them - that is, the column labels - in Row 1.

Then (if required and necessary), you will have to use column A to denote the row numbers, putting a "1" in A2, a "2" in A3, and so on.

There's no such thing as "above row 1" in a spreadsheet.

For your table, put your own row names in their own column, then you can put them where you want.

That's the way everyone does it.

Thank you both. I rather thought it would not be possible.

Only required for neatness in that Column A is a list of numbers, 1, 2,

in LibreOffice calc, you can turn off the row and column headers altogether (View/view headers)

How big is the table, in rows. You could always put the 'Headings' at the bottom of the table. If there are more rows than the screen depth then you can use 'split the screen' function to keep them in view.

Can't speak for LibreOffice.

Excel 365 changed a lot compared to Office 2016, with confusing changes to graphs when you first move to it. Once you figure it out, you have far more options to customise graphs. And it has just had some tweaks that changed a couple of things. The "wizards" sometimes get it wrong and fail to recognise a row that you want to use as labels. But it is comparatively easy to edit the initial "automatic" graph so that it plots exactly what you want plotted.

For stand-alone work, the shareware versions of Word and Excel are OK so far as they go. If you are sharing anything complicated with a MS user, or doing "paid" work with it, it is worth investing in the real thing, IMHO.

You can hide the row numbers...

If you want to keep a row ( or rows) visible as you scroll down etc, select the row(s) then click Window > Freeze.

The part about ?above row 1? isn?t clear. Perhaps this will help:

If you have an existing sheet and you want to add an extra row above the existing row 1 you can.

Click on row 1 ( the 1 on the left).

Then right click, select insert row above.

You should see an empty new row above.

Libre Calc (office) will adjust the cell references elsewhere - no need to change them.

A quick workaround for your OCDness: View > View Headers (Uncheck this) That gets rid of column and row headers.

In column A, which will now have no header, type in your Heading in the top row eg. "Index" Type 1 into whichever row you choose to be the first row of your data in column A. Click the bottom right corner of that cell and drag it down for how many numbers you want.

Doing it this way, you will no longer see Row nn with Index nn-1

May not be what you want, but, hey.

In message <sp5alg$raf$ snipped-for-privacy@gioia.aioe.org>, Richard snipped-for-privacy@btinternet.com.invalid> writes

Thank you both. Trying to use a spreadsheet like that is too scary. It just doesn't look 'right' without ABC 123 etc. :-)

I have found that doing sheets that way for other users who find spreadsheets intimidating is easier on them. If someone is just entering data into a table that has headings, they don't need to know what column number or row number they're in.

Obviously, you have some experience. Another approach could be to insert the heading in a text box in row 1 and adjust that row height to be somewhat larger than the text box. If you format all your data cells so that they are unprotected and then protect the sheet, the text box should be unselectable but data can be entered in that cell.

What's wrong with having the data in row 2? If your data has to be associated with a particular row number, make column 1 show numbers equal to the Excel row number -1, and freeze it as well as row 1. Make the number style different from the Excel row numbers to avoid confusion.