On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 13:47, Daniel Carrera wrote:
[snip]
> You're also ignoring what they use spreadsheets for. Though Excel has a 
> lot taht Calc doesn't, there is no guarantee that a business that uses a 
> lot of spread sheets, has to necessarily use functions that Calc doesn't 
> have.
> 
> Having said that, can you provide a short list of "top" missing 
> functions in Calc? I would be interested. Especially those that could be 
> implemented as a Python add-on.

I would be interested about anything that I have missed in the
Spreadsheet Differences document:
http://oooauthors.org/en/authors/userguide2/migration/draft_pub/SpreadsheetDifferences.sxw

In summary:
* Excel allows range lists in a wider range of functions, Calc only in
the index function.
* Excel has maximum number of sheets of 32,768 v Calc's 256. (However,
in my opinion, managing more than 256 sheets in Excel would be a bit of
a nightmare)
* Excel has two modes for multi-selection in list boxes, Calc only has
one.
* Excel can have the same range name used on different sheets, Calc
cannot. But, Calc can have relative sheet addressing including in names,
Excel cannot.
* Excel can have array constants in a formula, Calc requires an add-in
to do this.
* Excel can have optional parameters before the last parameter, Calc can
not.
* Only Excel functions not supported in Calc are INFO and GETPIVOTDATA,
but Excel doesn't have Calc's ARABIC function (maybe others).
* There is more ability for grouping data in Excel's Pivot Table than
Calc's DataPilot, but this is easily worked around.
* DataPilot fields in Calc can't have different formats.
* Autofilter - can't select on error values in Calc. But, can have more
than one autofilter on a sheet by using database range names, which
Excel cannot do.
* Chart types that Excel provides that Calc doesn't:
  - Bar of pie converts to a 2D - columns - normal
  - Pie of pie converts to a 2D - columns - normal
  - Radar filled converts to line radar
  - Radar with markers – converts to 2D – net – normal but counter
clockwise rather than Excel's clockwise
  - Bubble charts converts to XY charts
  - Surface Charts converts to Deep 3D bar charts

* Other charting issues include:
  - Charts are slower to update in Calc than in Excel.
  - There are fewer axis options such as no option for having an
inverted y axis (negative at top towards positive at bottom).
  - The data must be contiguous with the labels in the first row or
column.

* Some settings, such as Gridlines, are document based in Calc rather
than sheet based as they are in Excel.

* Some functionality like solver, and some statistical analysis tools
require extensions to be downloaded and installed.

* Other 3rd party extensions specifically written for Excel.

To summarise the summary, to me, there is no significant functionality
lacking in Calc when compared with Excel

Given that, to me, Excel is the best of the Microsoft Office suite and
Calc is OpenOffice.org's weakest - I think that this says a lot!

Writing macros in Calc was difficult due to lack of documentation, but
this is being overcome:
http://ext.openoffice.org.nz
http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html (bottom of page).

While the language is very similar the underlying object model is very
different. However, I think that I (or be part of a community team)
could write a converter. But this would be a major project.

Thanks, Ian


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