Farewell To OpenOffice Spreadsheets Here

Comment #3

johnph77 — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 05:09:59 GMT

With the ribbons, I've found that functions used most often can be added to the top ribbon next to the Office button. I've added icons for several of those, including Close File, Add and Delete Columns and Rows, there - saves me time. I have Vista. Unfortunately, everything that could have gone wrong with the old template, did. There WAS no data in the spreadsheet, only formulas. And the backup was just as corrupt as the original. So be it. I have an external hard dri... [ More ]

Comment #2

Todd — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:18:47 GMT

One thing that might be helpful is not keeping the raw data in Excel. If you keep the raw data in delimited files, or even in a database, that will protect the data in case your spreadsheet fails or you accidentally change something. Also, are you using Windows Vista? If so, be sure you do not have backups of the original spreadsheet available. One of the great features in Vista is that it automatically maintains old versions of all files -- even without your instruction to d... [ More ]

Comment #1

konane — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 03:56:42 GMT

Ewwww, sorry to hear that, sounds like a real pain. Good luck with all you're doing!!!

Original Blog Entry: Farewell To OpenOffice Spreadsheets Here

johnph77 — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:58:44 GMT

While updating the old spreadsheets to cover the new error traps in my current project, I happened to open the OpenOffice spreadsheet I had built for the next part of this project. Trash. Garbage. Landfill. Somehow, during the update I made from OO 3.0 to 3.1, the 3.0 spreadsheets became unusable. Cell addresses in other cells became #NAME rather than the cell address originally entered. And as soon as I typed in the correction, those cell addresses reverted back to #NAME. The spreadsheet has been deleted - totally unusable and uncorrectable. I'll now have to rebuild the entire file in Excel - and, while I find the new ribbon taskbar hard to use and navigate, I have to bite the bullet - and there are about 4 million cells to be formatted. I am not a happy camper.

The OpenOffice word processor is good enough for the ordinary user, inasmuch as neat, ordinary documents can be generated much like that of the processors one used to have to pay for. But specialized functions, such as typesetting (which is a necessity in some of my applications) is missing.

I had a lot of time invested in the creation of the deleted spreadsheet, though. So goes it - back to work. Into each life some rain must fall.

... [ More ]