OpenOffice Calc Tips

If the various OOo Calc forums are an indicator of what gives Calc users the most grief, then importing data into Calc via CSV (coma separated values) files is up there with charting as one of the most error prone tasks.

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An array is a linked range of cells on a spreadsheet containing values. A formula in which the individual values in a

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First time spreadsheet users tend to encounter these functions first - as they are the most frequently used and the easiest to understand. Updated.

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In this example, we consider a more complex accumulation - wherein we are making regular payments as well as earning interest on our initial investment.

Here, we define names for the cells containing the main variables - so that the formulas are more readable.

The purpose of the month-by-month breakdown of the account also serves to confirm the accuracy of our original formula.

As a follow on from the mortgage example earlier, we now consider a small amount of money invested over a number of years at a fixed rate of interest.

The function we will use will be FV(rate, nper. pmt, pv)

This particular exercise in developing formulas for each of the major US holidays is a good way to develop expertise in OOo Calc date manipulation.

US holidays follow simple guidelines for the dates on which they fall. Some holidays fall on specific dates , such as New year’s day on January 1st and independence day on July 4th. Other holidays fall on specific days within the month. For example, Memorial Day is the last Monday in May and Thanksgiving Day is the fourth Thursday in November.

The OOo Calc functions that will feature prominently in this exercise are

• DATE(year; month; day) Returns formatted date corresponding to specified year, month, and day values.
• WEEKDAY(dateValue; type) Returns a decimal value corresponding to the day of the week for the input date.

Before we tackle the US holidays problem, let us become more familar with the above functions and how they are used in OOo Calc formulas.

The DATE function allows us to define and manipulate a dates components - year, month, and day - independently. We have already seen this in an earlier tip

The WEEKDAY function returns a decimal value between 1 & 7 corresponding to the day of the week for the specified date. By invoking the TEXT with the appropriate formmating, we can convert the output of the WEEKDAY function to something more meaningful. In the example below, both formats are shown. The last two formulas show one approach to determining the first day-of-week after a specified date.

The table below generates the 10 major US holidays for a specified year - in cell C2

• New Year’s Day
  =DATE(C2;1;1)

• Martin Luther King Jr. DayThis is the third Monday in January.
  =DATE(C2;1;IF(2<WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;1;1));10-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;1;1));3-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;1;1)))+14)

• President’s Day This is the third Monday in February.

  =DATE(C2;2;IF(2<WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;2;1));10-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;2;1));3-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;2;1)))+14)

• Memorial Day The last Monday in May, we subract 7 days from the first Monday in June.
  =DATE(C2;6;IF(2<WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;6;1));10-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;6;1));3-WEEKDAY(DATE(C2;6;1)))-7)

I leave the rest for you as an exercise!

At some point, you will want to use OOo Calc to perform some sort of financial analysis. Like other topics I cover, you could write a whole book on this. As an introduction to the topic of financial functions in OOo Calc, we will look at a home mortgage example.

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