Hello!  I'm running OpenOffice 2.0.1 (English) and having a couple of problems. 
 First, the "Help" within Calc is mostly not there.  When I go to the Index and 
try to display a particular entry, most of the entries, including the initial 
one when I bring up "Help", display a "Record not found" result.  This is not a 
problem with Document, Draw, Etc.

More importantly, Calc doesn't seem to do implicit calculations within a cell.  
This is troublesome for me.  For example, if I have a number in a cell, like 
$100.00, and I want to have Calc figure out the difference between the $100.00 
and a new value that I try to subtract from it, it doesn't work.  Let's say I 
want to subtract $33.17 from the $100.00, and the $100.00 is in Cell "a1".  As 
soon as I click on the "=" sign, the $100.00 is blanked out and then when I 
enter the "-33.17", Calc thinks it's an alphabetic value.  I don't know how to 
have Calc do the implicit calculation (100-33.17) and have the new value, 
"$66.83", show up in Cell "a1".

The work-around I'm using now is to find a blank cell in my spreadsheet, enter 
the value "100.00-33.17" and then click the green check mark.  The result, 
$66.83, appears.  I then type this value into Cell "a1" and delete the contents 
of the originally-blank cell in my spreadsheet.  This seems like a very 
cumbersome way to do things.  There should be a way for Calc to remember the 
original contents of Cell "a1" and let me modify it by adding or subtracting to 
the original value, then clicking the green check mark.

In Microsoft Excel, a pop-up formula bar shows up when one clicks the equal 
sign, and the original cell contents shows in this pop-up formula bar.  One can 
then edit a series of arithmetic operations and the resultant value is 
continually calculated and updated. Finally, upon clicking "OK", the new result 
is stored in the original cell.  This is most convenient, and I hope there is 
something similar in Calc.

I apologize in advance if this is a "dumb question".  I'm new to OpenOffice 
2.0.1 and if I were able to check the various topics in the Calc "Help" Index, 
maybe I could have answered my own question.  Oh, by the way, I'm running 
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 without the included Java Run Time 
Environment because I already had the latest Java RTE 1.5.0_04 installed on my 
system and OpenOffice 2.0.1 seems to recognize it just fine.

Sincerely,

James W. Dening
303 West Grand Avenue
Mount Pleasant, MI  48858-2021

e-mail:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone:  989.772.5343
Fax:      989.779.1131
Cell:      989.330.4077  

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