OpenOffice.org Calc

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OpenOffice.org Calc

Screenshot of OpenOffice.org Calc
Developed by	Sun Microsystems in association with the community
Latest release	2.4.0 / March 27, 2008 (2008-03-27); 77 days ago
OS	Cross-platform
Genre	Spreadsheet
License	GNU Lesser General Public License
Website	www.openoffice.org

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 spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel file format. It provides a number of features not present in Excel, including a system which 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 2.0 Calc can be set to either Microsoft Excel or the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF). Calc also supports a wide range of other file formats, for both opening and saving files.

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.

1 Specifications
2 Special capabilities
3 Missing features
4 DataPilot
5 Criticism
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Specifications

Calc can store a maximum of 65,536 rows with 256 columns in each sheet, with a maximum of 256 sheets.^[1] There is a work-around to increase these limits, but it is only suitable for ODF and text-based formats, as there is a risk of data corruption for binary formats such as Excel's native format.^[2] In V3.0beta, the column limit has been increased to 1024.^[3] Prior to V2.0, the limit on the number of rows was 32,000.^[4]

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

Program	Rows (per sheet)	Columns (per sheet)	Total Cells (per sheet)	Sheets
OpenOffice.org Calc^[1]^[4]	65,536	256	16,777,216	256
Microsoft Excel 2003	65,536	256	16,777,216	Available Memory^[5]
Microsoft Excel 2007^[6]	1,048,576	16,384	17,179,869,184	?^{[citation needed]}
Gnumeric	65,536^[7]	256^[7]	16,777,216	?
KSpread	32,767	32,767	1,073,676,289	?
Lotus 1-2-3^[8]	65,536	256	16,777,216	256

[edit] Special capabilities

Capabilities of Calc include:

Open source software
Available on many platforms, including Windows, MacOS, Linux, Unix, etc.
Ability to read/write OpenDocument, Excel .xls, CSV, and several other formats.
Able to handle dates on or before 1900 correctly (many spreadsheet applications, including Excel, have a year 1900 bug and cannot handle dates before January 1, 1900).
Support for a large number of functions, including those for imaginary numbers, as well as financial statistical functions.

[edit] Missing features

In some cases, Calc lacks the 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 still 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 exposing them to users with a wizard.

[edit] 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 chart yet.

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

[edit] Criticism

OpenOffice.org Calc has been criticized for:

Calc can be slow loading or saving very large spreadsheets (more than 20,000 rows and 100 columns) and can be 100 times slower than Excel.^[9] This is in part due to the XML format for handling cell entries. A Novell Linux and GNOME hacker, Federico Mena, has analyzed the cause of the slowdown at his blog and offered some suggestions to improve the situation.^[10] This is not considered a critical issue^{[citation needed]} since many users dealing with large datasets will use a database program such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. The OpenOffice.org Base module can be used to connect to external databases. Further work on improving Calc performance is currently being conducted by other OpenOffice.org developers.^[11]
When editing a date, the date is displayed in US date format irrespective of the users' Locale^[12], which is surprising given its international aspirations^[13]. Users can enter ISO 8601 dates, but may only edit them in another format. ^[14]