On Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:09:10 -0600, "Peter Kupfer OOo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > John Kane wrote: > > I am not quite sure how to suggest a change to Getting Started with Calc > > as it is a published chapter and I would like some comments on my > > proposed wording. Therefore I am posting it here and also providing a > > PDF file at http://www.mytempdir.com/322536 since my attempt to send it > > as a formated html message was a fiasco > > > > > > I didn't follow the whole conversation closely, but do we know that the > behavior is as expected, or should an error be filed first?
As far as I am concerned it is clearly an error and potentially a very serious one but then I am the one who brought it up. I have reported it as Issue #: 58903 . It does not seem to be getting a lot of attention. This may be because Excell and Quatro Pro are just as guilty of this type of behaviour. Below is an excerpt from the Calc Help: (this is almost the same as the text in the OOoAuthors' Getting Started with Calc chapter. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can format numbers as text in OpenOffice.org Calc. Open the context menu of a cell or range of cells and choose Format Cells - Numbers, then select "Text" from the Category list. Any numbers subsequently entered into the formatted range are interpreted as text. The display of these "numbers" is left-justified, just as with other text. TIP When numbers are formatted as text, they cannot be used in calculations or formulas. operations will not work on it. It will either be ignored or will produce an error of some kind. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unfortunately this is not true. Some mathematical operations on a text or string value will return an incorrect number with no warning. As a simple example type cat into cell A1 and dog into B1 Let C1 = A1* B1. C1 = 0. Or if A1 is 5 and B1 is fud then if C1 = A1 + B1 then C1=5. Somehow I have a problem believing that cat + dog = 0. You can see my calculations at http://www.mytempdir.com/360489 ----- John Kane Kingston ON Canada [EMAIL PROTECTED] (613)888-2399 -- http://www.fastmail.fm - One of many happy users: http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/quotes.html
