Topic: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

"Starting with OpenOffice.org 3.0 and StarOffice 9, the handling of empty cells got changed."

This simple statement from the writers of openoffice v3 has had an effect on the shipyard. Some data validity and value lookups will not work.
First noticed on the Wardogs spreadsheet, if either encounter an empty cell or value of 0 (i.e. fighter defence value 0), they stop and look no further. Given time some can be worked around but I do not think all things can.

I got a serious headache trying to figure out what was going wrong.
I can only suggest keeping a copy or Open office 2.4 which is more in line with excel.

Paul

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

Heh...I'm still running 2.0.3.

Not that I use it THAT much....Thanks for the heads up!

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

Your signature says:

OpenOffice should be compulsory, It's FREE!

...and worth what you paid for it.

(Not an Open Office Calc fan.)

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

Ken_Burnside wrote:

Your signature says:

OpenOffice should be compulsory, It's FREE!

...and worth what you paid for it.

(Not an Open Office Calc fan.)

REALLY?
smile

I think that it's a fine piece of software, just has the same problems that every piece of Open Source Software has. Too many cooks....

Considering the problems that I've had with most (okay - all) Micro$oft products, I can put up with a glitch or two. Just wait and don't try the "latest and greatest" first - let some other schmuck do it.

....just like we do with Micro$erf Operating system upgrades....

...and yes, Jim, we all know that Apple is perfect. Well, it's adherents seem to THINK so...
lol

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

I had intended to change the signature, no idea how.

It was true until version 3.

Just cannot understand, why make it incompatible with excel?

Paul

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

thedugan wrote:
Ken_Burnside wrote:

Your signature says:

OpenOffice should be compulsory, It's FREE!

...and worth what you paid for it.

(Not an Open Office Calc fan.)

REALLY?
smile

I think that it's a fine piece of software, just has the same problems that every piece of Open Source Software has. Too many cooks....

Nah.  It's better than most OSS out there in that it actually has a user interface designed for end users.  Sorta kinda.

I generally agree about uSoft's software being bloated and annoying.  Excel is the major exception to this.  Excel is probably THE best piece of consumer software Microsoft makes, in large part because A) it came out of trying to beat Lotus 1-2-3, and B) because the Excel dev team mostly gets left alone inside Microsoft.  Nobody's trying to make them marketroid compatible.

Open Office Calc has never been very compatible with Excel; any use of Data-Validation (drop down lists, the ability to restrict the range of numbers going into a cell) makes its memory usage go through the roof. 

I routinely use functions that don't work in OO Calc in Excel.

However, as Dan can attest, what I do with Excel makes Baby Jesus cry.

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

OldnGrey wrote:

I had intended to change the signature, no idea how.

It was true until version 3.

Just cannot understand, why make it incompatible with excel?

Paul

Because someone out there found a "better way" to do it, convinced the people maintaining that part of the project that it was, indeed, better, and that nobody would notice the change.

I have a laundry list of things Calc doesn't do as well as Excel, or handles differently.

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

Ken_Burnside wrote:
OldnGrey wrote:

I had intended to change the signature, no idea how.

It was true until version 3.

Just cannot understand, why make it incompatible with excel?

Paul

Because someone out there found a "better way" to do it, convinced the people maintaining that part of the project that it was, indeed, better, and that nobody would notice the change.

I have a laundry list of things Calc doesn't do as well as Excel, or handles differently.

You might get together with OldnGrey, and try to come up with some work-arounds.


If OO opens most of the spreadsheets I need, I'm happy.

And it does not surprise me that you use way more excel-fu than I care to learn.  lol

Re: Shipyard and Open Office v3 Health Warning!

thedugan wrote:

You might get together with OldnGrey, and try to come up with some work-arounds.

Offered to look at Shipyard 16 if he'll email it to me.

If OO opens most of the spreadsheets I need, I'm happy.

Oh, improvements are being made.  Used to be, Calc puked opening up my sheets.   Now it takes 10 minutes, and 2 minutes for a screen refresh when you use a drop-down menu.

And it does not surprise me that you use way more excel-fu than I care to learn.  lol

*grin*  I suppose it wouldn't. smile

I try to keep my Excel-fu within certain bounds.  I don't use macros.  At all.  I try to stick with functions defined within Excel.

What happens with Calc is that the people doing the coding don't actually USE all the functions in Excel, so, sometimes they're implemented via strange, strange misperceptions of how things work.