Openoffice.org Calc Article Index for
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Information About

Openoffice.org Calc




  Caption OpenOfficeorg Calc under Ubuntu
  Developer Sun Microsystems in association with the community
  Latest Release Version 221
  Latest Release Date June 12 2007
  Operating System Cross-platform
  Genre Spreadsheet
  License GNU Lesser General Public License
  Website http://wwwopenofficeorg/


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 .


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 on these Statistical Analysis features by exposing them to users with 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 Chart yet.

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


CRITICISM

OpenOffice.org Calc has been criticized for:
  • Limited ability to customize charts (this is being addressed)http://graphics.openoffice.org/chart/chart.html

  • Lack of an integrated multivariate optimiser (solver) (project underway)http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Optimization_Solver

  • Calc has problems handling very large spreadsheets (20,000 rows, 100 columns) and can be 100 times slower than Excel.http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=120 This is in part due to the 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.http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Calc_Performance



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