Comment 3 for bug 199448

Open Office Calc has a "feature" that it doesn't treat single cells like multiple cells when dragging and dropping. If I remember correctly, this has been a point of contention in Calc design for years, as it doesn't behave the way that people expect (ie. the way that Excel does it). It has been brought up as a bug in the Open Office forums, and the response has sort of been "we are not going to fix it - that is the way that it was designed to work"

In order to drag and drop, the cell or cells have to be highlighted first. If you are trying to highlight several adjacent cells, just drag the pointer over them and they change background color to indicate that they have been highlighted. Then, use the mouse to drag and drop the highlighted cells in the normal way.

If you are trying to drag and drop a single cell, this doesn't work. Clicking on a single cell doesn't highlight it. In order to get the needed highlight do one of two things:

1) Hold down the CTRL key, and click on the single cell

OR

2) Click on the single cell, and while holding move the mouse cursor into any adjacent cell - this highlights the two cells. Then, without letting go of the mouse button, change your mind and move the pointer back into the original cell. The highlighted area retreats from two cells to the single cell that you wanted to highlight in the first place. Then, go ahead with the drag and drop. I think of this as the "Calc Wiggle".

I would love for someone to write a patch for Calc so that individual users can make it behave the way that Excel does.