[mdlug] Why is a blank cell != zero value in OpenOffice-Calc 3.5

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 5:56 PM, R KANNAN <rk111810 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 5:51 PM, Michael Mol <mikemol at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 5:44 PM, R KANNAN <rk111810 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > OpenOffice Users,
>> >
>> > I opened an exiting (from OO 2.2)  spreadsheet in Oo-Calc 3.5 aand found
>> a
>> > lot of #VALUE in cells where I had a formula prodcing perfectly
>> acceptable
>> > numbers. Then I found that some of the cells where I had blanks were
>> > considered by Oo-3.5 to be strings and that is why all these formulas are
>> > failing.
>> >
>> > Why is a blank cell considered to have a zero numerical value. Is there a
>> > global setting which does this?
>> >
>> > Thanks for any input.
>>
>> Check the cell formatting? Perhaps that may be having an impact.
>>
>
> No. I tried that but did not help. I had to go to each of the blank cells
> referred in the formulas and 'delete contents'. I probably have hundreds of
> these cells in non-contiguous columns and rows.
>
> This sheet was perfectly fine in OO2.2 :-(
>
> BTW I am using Libre Office 3.5 in Ubuntu 12.04 if it makes any difference.

If a cell is an empty string, it probably has ['] as its content.

You might be able to do a search-and-replace for empty string and
replace it with, well, not sure. Maybe some kind of scripted "for all
cells within this range, call "delete contents" if cell is empty"

--
:wq