Thanks Brian and all who participated in this thread. The problem has now been solved. The little green triangle was a clue. The problem was some values being stored as text instead of number. Theo nly way to correct this was to select 'convert text to number' when the mouse pointer is placed above the little green triangle. The spreadseet now works fine with OO.
Just an after thought. I have no idea why some numbers (and not the others) were stored as text in the first place. Perhaps the next version of OO can be less fussy about the format of the numerical values used in formulas? After all, if Microsoft can do it, why not OO? "Brian Barker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > At 12:27 14/09/2007 -0800, Musomba Noname wrote: > >The spreadsheet is here > > > >http://www.ezziarts.com/mullah.xls > > > >When opened in excel, the 'balance owed' column data ascends nice and > >correctly, see screen cap here:- > > > >http://www.ezziarts.com/excel.jpg > > > >When opened in calc, the 'balance owed' column gets all jumbled up. see > >screen cap here:- > > > >http://www.ezziarts.com/calc.jpg > > > >I and every one else at work uses excel, My Boss has begun to use open > >office on his laptop and wants me to solve this problem. he does not believe > >its an open office problem. > > You seem to be trying everything except the correct solution that you > have already been pointed to! > > The clue is in your screenshot of the Excel display. Note that cells > J49 to J60 have the warning green triangle in the corner, indicating > that something is not as it should be. What is wrong is that the > contents of these cells are actually text strings and not > numbers. The difference between the Excel and Calc displays must be > because the two applications deal differently with the attempt to > incorporate text into a numeric formula. It seems that Excel > automatically interprets the text string as a number - as if the > formula in K49 included VALUE(J49) instead of just J49 - whereas Calc > interprets the text cell as having no value, i.e. as zero. > > There are various ways around this. They all involve first > correcting the cells formats from Text to Number. Only then: > > o As Robert Noname has already said, there are instructions for > correcting text entries to numeric values in the help text at > "formats;changing text/number". These involve using Find & Replace > to copy what is in the cell back there, but this time to be > interpreted as numbers. > > o You could set up a temporary column with a formula such as > =VALUE(J49) and then use Paste Special to copy back the result of > that formula - not the formula itself - into the original cells. > > o Once you have corrected the cell formats, you will see the leading > apostrophe in the input line for each of the rogue values. Just edit > out these apostrophes. > > o Since there are so few values, it is probably simplest just to retype them. > > As a complete alternative, you could modify the formula in column K > to deal with the existing rogue values: just use VALUE(Jnn) in place > of Jnn in the formula. This would work for the entire column, since > although the VALUE function is intended to take text as an argument, > it will also happily accept values that are already numbers. > > I trust this helps. > > Brian Barker --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
