Fireworkz merging/straddling

Have a couple of queries, probably things I’m doing wrong given I had to use Excel before RISC OS spreadsheets:

Merging cells:

Fireworkz manual section 7, Merging two cells, step 3 says “Press the Ctrl key and the left mouse button and drag the column width marker to the edge of the righthand of the two cells.”

When I do this the whole sheet goes blank – no column headings and anything you type in you can’t see.

Straddling cells:

How would I unstraddle cells? I can’t find mention in the manual of undoing the effect.

thanks
Chris

Hi Chris

Just make the test and end up with the same blank sheet :/

Regards

François

With Fireworkz 2.32.02 (12 Dec 2022) attempting a merge of two cells does get the apparently blank sheet. It is a bit misleading, all the column widths are zero, the data is still present. To retrieve the situation move the mouse pointer to the left hand edge of the column width bar and the double vertical bar cursor appears which can be dragged right. It is a bit fiddly but works here.

RPi4B RISC OS 5.31 (28 Jan 2025).

When I first started using Fireworkz I created a lot of sheetz with all sorts of layout changes, but I’m damned if I can remember how to do that now, I either end up changing the whole sheet, or resizing every column.

As a diagnostic the sheet can saved as a before and after a collapsed merge to see what happens to the width values.

Before :-

{Imp:;;;;;;;;1;1;36;1000;1;20;{StyleHandle:Number}}
{R:0;;;;1;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:1;;;;2;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:2;;;;3;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:3;;;;4;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:4;;;;5;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:5;;;;6;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}
{R:6;;;;7;;;;1;0;{ColWidth:1474}}

After :-

{Imp:;;;;;;;;1;1;36;1000;1;20;{StyleHandle:Number}}
{R:;;;;;;;;1;1;{ColWidth:0}}

Yup – ‘tis an ancient latent bugette that’s now being triggered by some tidying-up that I did in 2014.

Workaround is to select the two cells that you’re trying to merge.

Now that the menus have been re-ordered somewhat, I think it would be easier for users if I added a Edit > Columns > Merge option.

You can access the now zero-width columns by moving to the right edge of the merged columns and the cursor will change to a one-sided arrow that you can drag rightwards.

Thanks all. I’d not spotted the slight difference double sided arrow / one sided arrow pointer shape when hovering over the column, most likely not a steady enough hand on my part.

@Stuart: A menu option would be perfect, is it possible for it to work as a tick for the current selection if the cells are merged/straddled, with the ability to untick to unmerge/unstraddle?