Chuck wrote:
Ross Johnson wrote:
Chuck wrote:
I just discovered an incompatibility between Calc and Excel and it's
causing me headaches. Anyone have a solution for this?
It seems that a file created with Excel where the column headings are
formatted with "center across selection" is treated as "merge cells" in
Calc. Those two format options look the same when displayed but are NOT
the same in reality. I have not yet found a "center across selection"
horizontal alignment option in Calc yet. Can anyone point me to where it
is? Otherwise if I save the spreadsheet in Calc and pass it on to
someone with Excel, the formatting gets changed.
I'm still not sure what "center across selection" is exactly, but if you
want (say) to centre a single heading over a number of columns without
using merge-cells, then another thing to try is pick a column in the
centre (or possibly add one very narrow central column) and centre align
the text in the cell on the heading row in that column. Text will then
extend equally beyond the left and right cell borders (provided there is
nothing in the adjacent cells of course). That should work in both Calc
and Excel.
I'm not sure what it is either, but I know it's treated differently than
"merge cells" in both Excel and Calc even though visually it looks the
same. Maybe someone else can explain the difference.
The problem it's causing is that I receive a spreadsheet from someone
else created in Excel. I update a few cells with Calc, save it and pass
it back to the original person. At that point, Calc has messed up the
formatting and it looks screwed up in Excel.
I see two problems with your suggestion. First it will only truly center
the text across the columns if both columns are the same width. They
aren't. Second, it changes the way the spreadsheet works. Currently I
can tab or right arrow from column A to B. With this solution I will
need to tab twice or right arrow twice. The creator of the spreadsheet
will not be happy and start asking "Why don't you just use Excel
instead?", and that's not good PR for OOo. I think the real solution is
to get Calc to understand that "center across selection" is not the same
as "merge cells".
'Twas just a suggestion, and not entirely expected to hold water.
Thanks for your suggestion though. If I am developing a spreadsheet just
for my own use, I will do that for now. I guess I'm going to need to
enter a bugzilla for this.
Ah - well, if OOo was meant to be an Excel clone then it would be a bug,
but it isn't. Unless you mean to put in a request for enhancement, which
is always a fair thing to do. OOo is sufficiently close to allow people
to migrate, but this problem of importing from MSO and then exporting
back to MSO is not necessarily supposed to always work.
This is, of course, just IMO.
Ross
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