OpenOffice.org Calc

OpenOffice.org Calc

Screenshot of OpenOffice.org Calc
Developer(s)	Oracle Corporation in association with the Open Source community
Stable release	3.3 / January 25, 2011; 9 months ago (2011-01-25)
Development status	Active
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Spreadsheet
License	GNU Lesser General Public License
Website	www.openoffice.org

OpenOffice.org Calc running on Mac OS X

OpenOffice.org Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice.org software package.

Calc is similar to Microsoft Excel, with a roughly equivalent range of features. Calc is capable of opening and saving most spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system that automatically defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data. Calc is also capable of writing spreadsheets directly as PDF files.

The default file format for OpenOffice.org Calc (versions 2.x and 3.x) can be set to either Microsoft Excel's native file format or the international standard OpenDocument Format (ODF) ISO/IEC 26300:2006. Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files, such as CSV, HTML, SXC, DBF, DIF, UOF, SLK, SDC and others.^[1]

As with the entire OpenOffice.org suite, Calc can be used across a variety of platforms, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris. Available under the GNU Lesser General Public License, Calc is free software.

Special capabilities

Capabilities of Calc include:

• Open source software
• Available on many platforms, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix, etc.
• Ability to read/write OpenDocument (ODF), Excel (XLS), CSV, and several other formats.
• Support for a large number of functions, including those for imaginary numbers, as well as financial and statistical functions.
• Additional capabilities are easily added as extensions, which includes such capabilities as being able to call functions from the R statistical package, calculations based upon textual representations of number, database access, and use of external BI tools

Missing features

In some cases, Calc lacks a GUI wizard to access certain advanced features associated with competing products, such as statistical capabilities like error bar support on graphs, and polynomial regression analysis. However, many of these calculations can be performed by manually entering the functions and relationships, plus a few macros. Another FOSS application called Gnumeric provides easier access to these statistical analysis features by presenting them to users with a wizard.

DataPilot

The feature DataPilot provides similar functionality to that of Pivot table found in Microsoft Excel. It is used for interactive table layout and dynamic data analysis. Unlike Excel, however, OpenOffice.org does not support Pivot charts.

With OpenOffice.org 2.0, the DataPilot feature has added support of Page fields - you can sort data on their fields.

In comparison to Microsoft Excel

See also the Comparison of spreadsheets article.

• Very simple copy a table out of a web site, paste into an empty spreadsheet, and then sum up numbers does not work, as Calc implicitly stores the pasted numbers into text fields not usable for calculation.

• the GUI does not show the very important functions, like SUM, in the default view.

• An advantage of Calc over Excel is that it directly uses metrics when defining the width of a cell or column, or the height of a cell or row. This number can be expressed in either cm, mm, inches, picas or points.

• Calc also has some additional functions, like EASTERSUNDAY, which works most years. Other ones, like DAYS and YEARS (which calculate date differences) can be replaced by Excel's DATEDIF function.^[2]

• Calc fully supports the conditional formatting of Excel 97-2003, but it supports neither the changes implemented from the 2007 version of Microsoft's software, nor the "data bars" that can be associated to specific cells.

• Unlike Microsoft's product (even Excel 2010), Calc offers a more sophisticated function wizard, that lets the user navigate through nested formulas. This feature is particularly useful when working with some complex sheets, to debug nested functions.

• It is possible in Calc to undo the "Delete Sheet" operation, which Excel is incapable of.

• Although Calc offers a feature similar to Excel's PivotTables (called DataPilot), it doesn't have an equivalent for PivotCharts, which somewhat limits the possibility to share spreadsheets between these applications when used for data analysis.

• OpenOffice also allows users to save files in the .dbf (the old dBASE database file) format, support for which has been removed from Excel 2007. Although the .dbf is a legacy format, some programs (e.g. ESRI's ArcGIS) use the .dbf as the basis for handling all spreadsheet data. OpenOffice allows you to directly edit and save changes to GIS spreadsheet files, while Excel only offers import of .dbf files to be saved in a different format.

• Calc does not have any add-ins for real-time stock quotes. However, live streaming financial data can be provided with two commercial packages for Mathematica, CalcLink^[3] and DDFLink.^[4]

• Calc did not have the "Solver" add-in until version 3.0, while Excel has had this since Office 97 as an add-in^[5]. However, the solver function in Calc (3.0) is limited in the types of functions which allow convergance.

• In relation to macros, Calc's BASIC functions are basically like those of its competitor, although it lacks a few of them, like InStrRev (which reversely looks up a substring within a string). Calc's object model however, is rather different from Excel's, and it doesn't support the easy-editing feature of Microsoft's product, via the object.property or object.procedure (object.method) "smart" characteristic (inherited from the Visual Studio programming environment).

• Calc doesn't have XLM macros that are embedded in Excel.

• Calc (unlike Excel) can use Python, JavaScript, C++ and CLI as additional macro languages.

• Calc supports use of regular expressions in find and replace operations, whereas Excel only supports limited wildcard searching.

• Both Calc and Excel support the use of complex numbers.

• Calc will omit native macros when saving in .xls format

See also

Free software portal

• Comparison of office suites
• InrecoLan FuzzyMath
• List of spreadsheets
• Comparison of spreadsheets

References

1. ^ File formats OOo can open, December 1, 2008
2. ^ http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/help/HA011609811033.aspx
3. ^ CalcLink Lauschke Consulting
4. ^ DDFLink Lauschke Consulting
5. ^ "Installing Microsoft Excel's Solver". University of South Carolina. http://hadm.sph.sc.edu/courses/J716/SolverInstall.html. 

External links

• Calc information page
• OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet Project
• Spreadsheet FAQ
• Official OpenOffice Documentation Wiki. Select any of the Calc sections
• Free lessons for OpenOffice.org Calc
• CalcLink (a bi-directional link between Calc and Mathematica)