On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:49 AM, Andreas Saeger <[email protected]>wrote:

> Walter Hildebrandt wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 2:56 AM, Andreas Saeger <[email protected]
>> >wrote:
>>
>>  So we have another important hint about what you are doing acutally.
>>> - I guess, you copy HTML-tables out of web-pages.
>>>
>>>
>> I have a software program that does a Data Export to my desktop.  A
>> Microsoft Excel 97-2003 Worksheet appears on my desktop.  When I open the
>> file with OOo I get a indication that it was a .XLS file that is now a OOo
>> Calc file.  There are two columns.  Column A has numbers and Column B has
>> words.
>>
>>
> When you say "I copied from the internet", I assume that you use some
> browser as "internet viewer" and that you select and copy tables out of the
> browser window which may cause a lot of problems, depending on the details
> of your system.
> A downloaded file from the internet is a completely different story. You
> download some file which is very likely an extract of some database.
> The other side distributes database extracts as ".xls files" since they
> assume that virtually everybody has Excel or some program to deal with Excel
> files (Calc for instance).
> But now you suffer from the matter of fact that your database data are no
> longer in a database and spreadsheets are completely different animals
> although you can do quite a few database jobs with Calc.
> The most efficient database tool in Calc is the data pilot. It assumes a
> list like the one you describe: One column of numnbers and another one of
> text with a top row of column labels:
>
> Value  Name <-- labels
> 13.5  Walter
> 12.9  Andreas
> 33.1  Peter
>
> But I still don't understand what exactly you want to extract from the 2
> columns.
>

I get two columns once every week which are your Value and Name columns.
That means in the second week I have four columns.  In the second week, the
first column is a Value column and the second column is a Name column, both
of which are from the first week.  The third column is a Value column and
the forth column is a Name column from the second week.  In the second week,
I want to find out what Names appear in the 4th column and do not appear in
the 2nd column.

I will continuing adding two new columns every week.  In the 4th week I will
have 8 columns and I will want to see how many Names appear in column 8 that
do not appear in column 2.

There will be other weeks when I want to compare a Name column to the Names
in column 2.

Copying and Pasting is working is now working with the data.  I copy both
the Value and the Name for the Name that appears for the first time do a
Paste.  This means I use the Name columns to see what names appear for the
first time and then select both the Value and Name columns and do a Copy  >
Paste.

Can this be done with the data pilot?   I am assuming that the data pilot
would be easier for me to learn than to start from scratch and learn Base.

>
> One thing: The ".xls"-suffix in the file name identifies the file as
> something that can be used with Microsoft Excel and your Windows box will
> feed that file into MS Excel if you tell it to do so (the .xls suffix is
> just a label, a hint about the type of content).
> Your file is not a "OOo Calc file" just because the displayed icon
> indicates that currently Calc is the program to handle the file on
> double-click. In fact you can feed any program with any file. If the program
> can handle the file content is another question. If you have some other
> xls-capable application, call something like menu:File>Open... from that
> application and open the file in that other program. The association between
> some type of documents and the program to handle the contained data is not
> as hard-wired as some companies would like it to be.
>
> The background information was helpful in my understanding of what is going
on

>
>
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