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OpenOffice Calc

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 64.101.176.143 (talk) at 17:35, 29 April 2008 (65,536 x 256 for Open Office is not 8 million it is 16,777,216, so corrected this for Mathematical Accuracy). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

OpenOffice.org Calc
Developer(s)Sun Microsystems in association with the community
Stable release
2.4.0 / March 27, 2008 (2008-03-27)
Repository
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeSpreadsheet
LicenseGNU Lesser General Public License
Websitewww.openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package.

Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It 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. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files.

The default file format for OpenOffice.org 2.0 Calc can be set to either Microsoft Excel or the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files.

As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Calc can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Calc is free software.

Specifications

Calc can store a maximum of 65,536 rows with 256 columns in each sheet, with a maximum of 256 sheets.[1] Prior to V2.0, the limit on the number of rows was 32,000.[2]

Program Rows (per sheet) Columns (per sheet) Total Cells (per sheet) Sheets
OpenOffice.org Calc[1][2]
 65,536 256 16,777,216 256
Microsoft Excel 2003
File:Excel 2003.png		 65,536 256 16,777,216 ?[citation needed]
Microsoft Excel 2007[3]
File:Excel2007.PNG		 1,048,576 16,384 17,179,869,184 ?[citation needed]
Gnumeric
 65,536 256 16,777,216 ?
KSpread
File:Koffice-kspread.png		 32,767 32,,767 1,073,676,289 ?
Lotus 1-2-3[4]
 65,536 256 16,777,216 256

Missing features

In some cases, Calc lacks the GUI wizard to access certain advanced features associated with competing products such as statistical capabilities like error bar support on graphs, and polynomial regression analysis, however, many of these calculations can still be performed by manually entering the functions and relationships plus a few macros. Another FOSS application called Gnumeric provides easier access to these statistical analysis features by exposing them to users with a wizard.

DataPilot

The feature DataPilot provides similar functionality to that of Pivot table found in Microsoft Excel. It is used for interactive table layout and dynamic data analysis. Unlike Excel, however, OpenOffice.org does not support Pivot chart yet.

With OpenOffice.org 2.0, the DataPilot feature has added support of Page fields: you can now sort data on their fields.

Criticism

OpenOffice.org Calc has been criticized for:

  • Limited ability to customize charts (this is being addressed)[5]
  • Lack of an integrated multivariate optimiser (solver) (project underway)[6]
  • Calc has problems handling very large spreadsheets (20,000 rows, 100 columns) and can be 100 times slower than Excel.[7] This is in part due to the XML format for handling cell entries. A Novell Linux and GNOME hacker, Federico Mena, has analyzed the cause of the slowdown at his blog and offered some suggestions to improve the situation.[8] This is not considered a critical issue[citation needed] since many users dealing with large datasets will use a database program such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. The OpenOffice.org Base module can be used to connect to external databases. Further work on improving Calc performance is currently being conducted by other OpenOffice.org developers.[9]
  • OpenOffice.org Calc date handling is poor, and date editing is in US date format irrespective of the users Locale[10]. Surprisingly for open software with international aspirations[11], ISO 8601 is not fully supported.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Can I use a spreadsheet file with more than 32,000 rows?". OpenOffice.org FAQ. Retrieved 2008-04-29. Cite error: The named reference "max_cells" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b "What is the maximum number of cells in an OpenOffice.org spreadsheet?". OpenOffice.org FAQ. Retrieved 2008-04-10.
  3. ^ "The "Big Grid" and Increased Limits in Excel 2007". Microsoft.com. Retrieved 2008-04-10. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  4. ^ "Limitations of 1-2-3 for Windows". IBM.com. Retrieved 2008-04-10. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  5. ^ graphics: openoffice.org : graphics : chart project
  6. ^ Optimization Solver - OpenOffice.org Wiki
  7. ^ » Performance analysis of OpenOffice and MS Office | George Ou | ZDNet.com
  8. ^ Federico Mena Quintero - October 2005 Activity Log
  9. ^ Calc/To-Dos/Performance/misc - OpenOffice.org Wiki
  10. ^ Issue 5556
  11. ^ Mission Statement - OpenOffice.org Wiki
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