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------- Additional comments from nightcrawle...@openoffice.org Thu Oct 1 04:23:25 +0000 2009 ------- Greetings all, I did not want to open a new bug report for what appears to be a similar issue to this one. I too am having problems with decimal point precision when opening Excel 2007 spreadsheets in OpenOffice. I have concluded that if the decimal precision has not been explicitly set on each cell containing a number when the number was entered in Excel, then OO will only display decimals based on the setting in 'OpenOffice.org Calc->Calculate->Decimal Places controls'. Note that in OpenOffice, if I click on the cell that contains the truncated number, the actual number appears in the formula bar at the top of the window. Apparently if an Excel 2007 user enters a number and does not know enough to set cell formatting, especially to change the decimal places in the numerical cell format settings, Excel will display the number as entered anyway, overriding the default cell format and application settings. I have confirmed this by taking the same Excel file with the cell format problems, opening it in 2007 and OO, and then comparing the cell format settings. OO will override the setting in 'OpenOffice.org Calc->Calculate->Decimal Places controls' if and only if the cell is specifically formatted to use more decimal places. Otherwise it will honor the number of decimal places as specified in the previously mentioned configuration setting. To simplify: Assume both Excel 2007 and OO.o Calc 3.0.1 are installed with their default configuration (which both by default are set to display only two decimal places): If user enters number 1.234 into Excel 2007 and formats the cell appropriately: Open file in Excel 2007 Result: Cell displays 1.234, formula bar displays 1.234 (overriding default) Open file in Calc Result: Cell displays 1.234, formula bar displays 1.234 (overriding default) If user enters number 1.234 into Excel 2007 and does not apply any formatting to the cell: Open file in Excel 2007 Result: Cell displays 1.234, formula bar displays 1.234 (Overriding default and cell format setting) Open file in Calc Result: Cell displays 1.23, formula bar displays 1.234 (Not overriding default, but overriding cell format setting) It is a very interesting problem. I will be honest and say that the user should realize that they need to format their cells to display their data accurately. However I am also a realist and understand not everybody is a computer wiz and may not know all the ins and out of Excel. Ultimately, what will happen is two users that are looking at the same spreadsheet under different applications will see different figures, and neither will understand why they are different. Since OpenOffice is the underdog in the world of Office productivity suites, the blame will be placed on OpenOffice.org. If the OO.o user is running Linux or Solaris, some blame will probably be flung in that direction as well. My temporary solution: Increase the decimal places setting in the OO.o Calc application to the maximum (20) so it catches any possible issue with unformatted cells from a 2007 Excel spreadsheet. My recommended/requested solution: I request that OpenOffice.org Calc be changed so that if a numerical value is stored in a cell and the cell's number format properties have not been changed from the "General" format, that the exact value of the number will be displayed in the cell regardless of cell or application configuration. Rationale: If a user has changed the cell format from "General" to anything else other than "General", then the user has made a conscious effort to specify the format of the number and it should be displayed as specified. By keeping the number format at "General", the user implies that he/she wants the number entered in the cell to be displayed as entered. I hope the OO.o developers concur with my assessment of the situation and accept my requested change. It is a sensible, logical request that will make the product more user friendly and remove something that causes the perception of incompatibility with Microsoft Office documents. Respectfully, Nightcrawler27 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please do not reply to this automatically generated notification from Issue Tracker. Please log onto the website and enter your comments. http://qa.openoffice.org/issue_handling/project_issues.html#notification --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: issues-unsubscr...@sc.openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: issues-h...@sc.openoffice.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: allbugs-unsubscr...@openoffice.org For additional commands, e-mail: allbugs-h...@openoffice.org
