Talk:OpenOffice.org Calc

=Important software product, but not so great WikiPedia article=

Untitled
I just happened to check this page looking for some information on Calc, hoping to find more information and less antagonism from Microsoft fan-boys. This page is supposed to be about OOo (or Libre Office Calc), which it has scant info. The comparison w/ Excel should be removed, and anything approximating information in that section put into the page comparing spreadsheets.

This article should be about Calc, its feature set, its history, how it is extended/integrated with other applications. Far too much screen space taken up by a commercial detractor. This page serious needs to be rewritten from scratch following WikiPedia's guidelines. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKC MD (talk • contribs) 01:18, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

1900 bug
I deleted a sentence which claimed that handling year 1900 is a unique feature of Calc and even Excel does not handle it correctly. This is simply false (check yourself what is 1904 date system in Excel). Not saying that it's not a bug but a compatibility feature (with Lotus 1-2-3), indeed. --Ondrejsv (talk) 22:57, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Calc vs. Excel
Calc provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which automatically defines series for graphing, based on the layout of the user's data.

Explain? Excel defines series automatically.

OpenOffice is free. For me that's a pretty good reason... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.95.249.62 (talk) 10:25, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Calc lacks several unfortunate features which Microsoft Excel has

Petty insult or typo?

Tried to clean up Calc v. Excel, move to delete section if the authors cannot clean up their own mess

 * I spent a good deal of time trying to remove the Microsoft hyperbole and nitpicking, with the over the top tone of the OOo fan.
 * I gave up, it was taking more and more time to disentangle
 * Since the area was marked two years ago for non-neutral POV I vote to delete the comparison in this area, particularly since the Microsoft person is referring to a rather old version of OOo. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKC MD (talk • contribs) 01:09, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Critique on performance
Lately there is a lot of input on Performance of OpenOffice.org Calc based on a single blog on the web. Right now it is moved to this article under the above topic. But since this is a comparison article, I suggest contributors should try to write it in an article with a title like Comparison of office suites or Comparison of office performance. However, due to the highly disputable nature of benchmarking, I suggest writers perform their due duty to do some independent verification of those benchmark results on their systems using George's samples from his blog, like these from Slashdot.org. Also other sample files can be tested, like this one - which focuses on smaller files for daily use. In addition, I would suggest testing the same set of samples using Gnumeric as well if it to be a comparison of general office suite.

Keep in mind, however, this is unprecedented in Wikipedia as we have no articles in Category:Software_comparison that has focused on benchmarking results, not even for database comparison which is rather performance sensitive in nature. --Zero0w Feb 16 00:44


 * PJTraill 10:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC) I'm sorry to say that my experience with a 65,000 x 40 spreadsheet conforms to the Ou article. My spreadsheet is a sort of diary/time log with a lot of running totals, long chains of references and lookup functions. OO is almost unusably slow, and saves the file at 2 to 3 times the size of M$. Suggested Options/Memory tweaks (http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=27292) do not help much. One observation is that inserting a value into an unreferenced cell costs 9 or 10 CPU seconds on a 3GHz CPU, which suggests that recalculation takes little account of dependencies. I would love to see OO work better on such big sheets, but it is unfortunate that people disparage Ou for his factual report.

Apologetic
Ummm, a lot of this article reads as an apology for Open Office. By and large, it should state the facts and not opinions such as "this is not considered a problem". Not considered by who? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.89.169.22 (talk) 15:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Agree and the problem works both ways. Comments such as "surprisingly" don't belong here. BroMonque (talk) 13:46, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Keyboard Shortcuts
Though customizable, Calc doesn't have the exact same Keyboard shortcuts as Excel. This makes it harder for people to convert to Calc. Also see dealmaven.com's FastTrack add-in's for corporate functionality. 165.230.46.146 (talk) 22:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
 * And Excel don't have the same keyboard shortcuts as Excel. Try a US english version and for instance the Swedish one and you'll notice that the keyboard shortcuts have moved, in a way that makes the Microsoft Office suite programs act differently from other programs such as Notepad. Ex. CTRL-F is "Find" in Notepad and US English versions of Excel, but makes the text Bold in Swedish Excel (where CTRL-B is search). Besides, can't the same problem be said about Excel not having the same shortcuts as Calc? 83.253.143.103 (talk) 16:59, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Maximum number of characters per cell?
Please would someone expand the capabilities table to compare the maximum number of characters per cell (for cells that contain text). DFH (talk) 17:25, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Lotus 1-2-3 9.8 icon.png
The image File:Lotus 1-2-3 9.8 icon.png is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check


 * That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
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This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Media copyright questions. --00:15, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Comparison with Excel
This section has a number of issues in that it appears to be a mix of incomplete comparison of specific features plus some pros and cons that sound a bit like advocacy. The bottom line is that Calc is not a substitute for Excel in a mixed environment, unlike Writer and Impress which are reaching the point where they are largely equivalent.

If this section is supposed to be a comparison then it should be that, rather than "'my features are better than your features, oh but I make up for that with another unrelated feature". 59.167.40.111 (talk) 06:43, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

It isn't a comparison, it is a cat fight
Also, what is that about using Calc in a mixed environment? I have used it for years that way and have never noted any problems. Calc isn't a "substitute" is a open source Spreadsheet with a somewhat different feature set. Whether or not it is a "substitute" (or perhaps, "a welcome replacement for product with a long history of security problems and calculation inaccuracies") is up to the end user and is out of scope. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DrKC MD (talk • contribs) 01:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Release versions and capabilities
For reasons of my own, I came here looking for a tabulation of the maximum number of rows in different versions of OOo. The article indicates that version 3.0 can handle up to 64Ki rows, which is true, but omits the significant fact that version 3.2 can handle up to 104000 (approx ; I've modified the formula now and lost the number ; I only have version 3.0 on my work machine).

If I can find the data, I'll amend this and try to put in a bit more detail from home tonight. Mention of the INFO("release") function should be appropriate, for building sheets that are release-tolerant.

Aidan Karley (talk) 11:50, 2 June 2010 (UTC)3

calc has a new file icon and has had it since verson 3.2, the previous icon was far out of date

screenshot os
once apache relases aoo 3.4 i think we should change the openoffice screenshots from apache-open-office (aoo) running in ubuntu to aoo running in windows.

my rationale is that aoo is soon to become primarily a windows app. all linux distros have abandoned it and moved to libreoffice, therfore the article should not show aoo running ubuntu because this is misleading and not the most repsentative example of the aoo interface.

what do you think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123465421jhytwretpo98721654 (talk • contribs) 02:54, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Converting Spreadsheets Into Tables
How do I convert OpenOffice.org Calc (not Microsoft Excel) spreadsheets into Wikipedia format? I have a spreadsheet that I want to present, while preserving as much formatting (font family, font color, font size, etc.) as possible. How is this done? Allen (talk) 21:08, 10 March 2012 (UTC)