Deleting All Types of Contents from Calc Range using Macro

Using macro you can clear everything that contains in a cell or in a range of cells. In this tutorial we will clear every type of contents from a range.

Lets define a sub which would clear the contents of the range.

Sub ClearRangeContents()
End Sub

Lets get a hold of the range in Sheet1. The function getCellRangeByName returns a range object corresponsing to the range that is passed via argument. Read Range Processing using Macro in LibreOffice Calc – Part 1 for range processing basics.


Dim oDoc As Object
Dim oSheet As Object
Dim oCell As Object
Dim oRange As Object

oDoc = ThisComponent
oSheet = oDoc.Sheets(0) ' Refers to Sheet1 as in 0, 1, 2 etc
oRange = oSheet.getCellRangeByName("A3:B10")

Range A3:B10 with different types of values

The range function clearContents(flags) can be used to clear the contents of the range. The flags are nothing but the types of values that can resides in a cell. It can be string, numerics, formulas, styles etc. You can specify which types you want to clear from that range. ClearContents argument flags is of long data type and it can takes multiple flags as input.

The flags are listed on OpenOffice/LibreOffice constant group CellFlags which is part of com.sun.star.sheet.

List of Flags under com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags

Flags	Description	Values
VALUE	selects constant numeric values that are not formatted as dates or times.	1
DATETIME	selects constant numeric values that have a date or time number format.	2
STRING	selects constant strings.	4
ANNOTATION	selects cell annotations.	8
FORMULA	selects formulas.	16
HARDATTR	selects all explicit formatting, but not the formatting which is applied implicitly through style sheets.	32
STYLES	selects cell styles.	64
OBJECTS	selects drawing objects.	128
EDITATTR	selects formatting within parts of the cell contents.	256
FORMATTED	selects cells with formatting within the cells or cells with more than one paragraph within the cells.	512

Put all these constants under a variable and pass it on to clearContents function.

Dim oFlags As Long
oFlags = com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.VALUE + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.DATETIME + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.STRING + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.ANNOTATION + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.FORMULA + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.HARDATTR + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.STYLES + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.OBJECTS + _
    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.EDITATTR

oRange.clearContents(oFlags)

Run

Put below entire code block in a Calc spreadsheet containing various values in a range and run the macro by calling the function. You may see the output is cleared of all values, formatting etc.

Complete Macro

Sub ClearRangeContents()

	Dim oDoc As Object
	Dim oSheet As Object
	Dim oCell As Object
	Dim oRange As Object
	Dim oFlags As Long

	oDoc = ThisComponent
	oSheet = oDoc.Sheets(0) ' Refers to Sheet1 as in 0, 1, 2 etc
	oRange = oSheet.getCellRangeByName("A3:B10")

	oFlags = com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.VALUE + _
    	com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.DATETIME + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.STRING + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.ANNOTATION + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.FORMULA + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.HARDATTR + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.STYLES + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.OBJECTS + _
	    com.sun.star.sheet.CellFlags.EDITATTR

	oRange.clearContents(oFlags)

End Sub

Looking for Something Else?

If you are looking for something else in LibreOffice macro tutorials, Or, wants to learn more about it, please follow below link for complete Macro Tutorials Index:

LibreOffice Macro Tutorial Index

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