Extension Watch: Speed up Data Entry with DataForm

Productivity Sauce

Let's face it, tabbing through cells in a Calc spreadsheet is not the most efficient way to populate them with data. The DataForm extension provides a faster, and more intuitive way to enter data into cells, and sports a couple of other useful features to boot.

To enable the form in a spreadsheet, you have to add at least two rows in it: one row containing column headers and another one with the actual data. For example:

Now place the cursor in any cell within these three columns, and choose Data -> Form. This opens a form you can use to add a new row. Besides that, you can also use the form to quickly find a specific row in the spreadsheet. For example, if you want to find Wilhelmina Winterbottom's phone number, press the Criteria button, enter the first and last name in the appropriate fields, and press either the Find Next or find Prev buttons to search forward or backward.