Ways to Enter Data

You can enter constant values and formulas into worksheet cells in several ways.

Using the Formula Bar

The formula bar is an empty text box at the top of the workbook. You can enter data into the active cell on a worksheet by typing the data into the formula bar and pressing ENTER.

The cell reference indicator, a gray box to the left of the formula bar, shows the address of the active cell. The data entered in the formula bar will go in this cell.

The formula bar appears by default in the Workbook Designer. You can display or hide the formula bar and cell reference indicator.

To control the display of the formula bar and cell reference indicator:

Using Edit Mode

If you click on a cell with data in it, or navigate to a cell with the ENTER, TAB, or arrow keys, anything you type in that cell will replace the current cell contents.

If you don't want to replace data that was previously entered, you may use Formula One for Java's edit mode.

To enter edit mode:

  1. Make the cell you want to edit active.
  2. Use any of the following three ways to enter edit mode:
    Click in the Formula Bar.
    Double-click on the cell.
    Press F2.

Once you are in edit mode, you may use the arrow keys to move around in the text just as you would in a word processing program.

Entering Multi-Line Data

A single cell can contain multiple lines of data and up to 255 characters. To enter more than one line of data, you need to specify carriage return/line feeds to indicate line breaks.

To enter multi-line data:

  1. When the cursor is displayed in a cell, press F2 to enter edit mode.
  2. Press F2 again. The Cell Text dialog box is displayed for cell data entry, as shown below.


  3. Enter a line of data.
  4. To enter a line feed, press RETURN.
  5. Click OK to accept the entry and return to normal worksheet editing.

The following illustration shows the results of a multi-line entry.

You can also enter multi-line row and column headings. See Setting Row and Column Heading Text for more information.