Conditional formatting in LibreOffice spreadsheets
Sparklines
Integrate graphical information alongside the data it represents with conditional formatting and sparklines.
Spreadsheets are all about detailed data and its manipulation. Sometimes, though, you need a summary for gathering general impressions and discerning trends. That is where conditional formatting becomes useful in LibreOffice Calc – as a graphical summary for interpreting general trends in data at a glance, rather than studying the figures closely.
Contrary to first impressions, Conditional Formatting in Calc shares only part of its name with Conditional Fields or Conditional Styles in Writer. All the three features have in common is that their appearance changes depending on context. In the case of conditional formatting, for instance, the format changes when the content of the involved cells changes.
Conditional formatting is an extension of the idea of sparklines, a concept named and popularized by data visualization theorist Edward Tufte, who devoted 20 pages to the concept in his book, Beautiful Evidence [1]. Sparklines are small line graphs that fit on a line of text or in a single spreadsheet cell. They contain no figures, but from their shape, you can see the general trends in the data they map.
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