Skip to content

Cell Formatting

In one sentence: Control how cells look — text alignment, bold / italic / underline style, foreground and background colour — without affecting cell values or formulas.

Overview

Workbench: Spreadsheet
Menu: Spreadsheet → Alignment / Styles
Toolbar: Spreadsheet · Shortcut: none

Formatting tools are display-only — they never affect cell values, formulas, or aliases. Formatting is stored in the document and survives save/reload.

Tool group Tools
Horizontal alignment Align Left, Align Center, Align Right
Vertical alignment Align Top, Align VCenter, Align Bottom
Text style Bold, Italic, Underline
Colour Foreground (text) colour, Background colour
Cell Properties dialog All formatting in one dialog, plus display format

Intuition

FreeCAD's spreadsheet formatting is intentionally minimal — it supports the basic presentational needs for an engineering parameter sheet without trying to replicate the full formatting capabilities of a general-purpose spreadsheet application.

The most practical uses:

  • Colour-code parameter categories — blue background for inputs, grey for computed outputs, red for out-of-range warnings.
  • Bold section headers — distinguish parameter group names from their values.
  • Right-align numeric columns — aligning numbers right makes columns of different magnitudes easier to scan.

Horizontal alignment

Menu: Spreadsheet → Alignment → Align Left / Center / Right

Tool Command Behaviour
Align Left Spreadsheet_AlignLeft Text and numbers align to the left edge of the cell
Align Center Spreadsheet_AlignCenter Content centred horizontally
Align Right Spreadsheet_AlignRight Text and numbers align to the right edge

Default alignment

  • Numbers and quantities: right-aligned by default.
  • Text: left-aligned by default.

Select one or more cells, then click the alignment button. The alignment applies to all selected cells.

Vertical alignment

Menu: Spreadsheet → Alignment → Align Top / VCenter / Bottom

Tool Command Behaviour
Align Top Spreadsheet_AlignTop Content at the top of the cell
Align VCenter Spreadsheet_AlignVCenter Content centred vertically
Align Bottom Spreadsheet_AlignBottom Content at the bottom of the cell

Vertical alignment is most visible when row height is increased (by dragging the row header border).

Text style

Menu: Spreadsheet → Styles → Bold / Italic / Underline

Tool Command Shortcut (in cell) Behaviour
Bold Spreadsheet_StyleBold none Toggle bold weight
Italic Spreadsheet_StyleItalic none Toggle italic style
Underline Spreadsheet_StyleUnderline none Toggle underline

Styles are toggles: applying Bold to a bold cell removes the bold. Multiple styles can be combined (bold + italic is valid).

Colour

Toolbar: Foreground colour picker / Background colour picker (toolbar dropdowns)

The two colour pickers are in the Spreadsheet toolbar (not the menu):

Picker Effect
Foreground colour (text icon with coloured bar) Sets the text colour of selected cells
Background colour (paint bucket icon) Sets the cell background fill colour

Using the colour picker

  1. Select the cells to colour.
  2. Click the dropdown arrow on the colour picker button.
  3. Click a colour from the palette, or click Other… for a custom colour.
  4. The colour is applied immediately.

Resetting to default

Click the colour picker dropdown → select the default swatch (usually top-left, labelled "Default" or showing a dotted border).

Cell Properties dialog

Right-click a cell → Properties (or select cells and right-click)

The Properties dialog is the most comprehensive formatting interface. It combines all formatting options in one place and adds one extra feature: display format.

Tabs

Cell tab

Field Description
Alias The cell's alias name (see Aliases)
Display unit Override the unit shown, without changing the stored value (e.g. store in mm, display in cm)

Style tab

All text-style checkboxes (Bold, Italic, Underline) and colour pickers.

Alignment tab

Horizontal and vertical alignment selectors.

Display unit

The Display Unit field is particularly useful for engineering spreadsheets:

  • Store a length as 2540 mm (internal storage is mm).
  • Set Display Unit to in — the cell shows 100 in instead of 2540 mm.
  • Expressions referencing this cell still get the raw value in mm.

Python API

import FreeCAD as App

doc = App.newDocument()
sheet = doc.addObject("Spreadsheet::Sheet", "Sheet")

# Set some values
sheet.set("A1", "Parameter")
sheet.set("B1", "Value")
sheet.set("A2", "Length")
sheet.set("B2", "200 mm")
sheet.set("A3", "Width")
sheet.set("B3", "80 mm")
doc.recompute()

# Bold the header row
sheet.setStyle("A1:B1", "bold")

# Right-align the value column
sheet.setAlignment("B1:B3", "right|vcenter")

# Set background colour for headers (R, G, B as floats 0.0–1.0)
sheet.setBackground("A1:B1", (0.7, 0.85, 1.0))   # light blue

# Set foreground (text) colour
sheet.setForeground("A2:A3", (0.3, 0.3, 0.3))     # dark grey labels

# Style string syntax:  "bold", "italic", "underline", combinations: "bold|italic"
sheet.setStyle("A2:A3", "italic")

doc.recompute()

Alignment string syntax

Token Meaning
left Align left
right Align right
center Align centre (horizontal)
top Align top
bottom Align bottom
vcenter Align centre (vertical)

Combine horizontal and vertical with |: "right|vcenter".

Common mistakes and pitfalls

Formatting does not export to CSV

When you export a spreadsheet to CSV, all formatting (colours, bold, alignment) is lost. Only the cell values are exported. If you need formatted output, use a LibreOffice Calc macro to apply formatting after importing the CSV.

Display unit does not change the stored value

Setting Display Unit to in on a cell containing 200 mm shows 7.87 in but the stored value is still 200 mm. Expressions referencing the cell get 200 mm. This is a display-only override.

See also