Gnumeric question

Christopher Browne cbbrowne-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Thu Nov 20 22:27:47 UTC 2008


On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 4:15 PM, William Muriithi
<william.muriithi-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Hi Pals,
>
> I am using gnumeric over here and have a quick question. I have 4
> columns of numbers. Lets say column A, B, C & D. I want to compare
> column A and B.
>
> I do not think Gnumeric has the compare function. Okay, it may be
> there but I have not been able to find it. So I defaulted to
> subtructing the content of column B from content of column A.
>
> The formula is not working across the rows. For example, I thought I
> could put this in the first row of column E.
>
> =A1-B1
>
> Then, if I highlight the whole of column E, I assumed the formula
> would ripple all the way done. For example, I would have A2-B2 on the
> next row, A3-B3 on third row and so forth. Noop, not working.
>
> Any pointer on a good direction? I did a bit of googling, but nothing
> helpful has popped up yet. I am just raising this here just in case
> someone may know how to do it off head.

I'm not sure what you mean by "compare."

What you seem to be describing putting a formula in one cell, and
having it be applied to other cells.

In *most* spreadsheets, you have to do that by putting the formula in
the first cell, and then copying from that cell to the others.

The way I would accomplish that would be by "copying" the value in
cell E2; put the cursor on it, then select "Copy". (control-C; menu
entry "Edit/Copy").

Then, I would highlight the region I want to copy it into (e.g. -
select cells E2 thru E6), and select "Paste" (control-V; menu entry
"Edit/Paste").

Lotus Improv introduced the notion of having a single formula applied
automatically to an entire row or column; there has never been any
port of this to Linux.  There was a successor to Improv, called
Quantrix, which runs only on Windows and MacOS.  There is a clone of
Quantrix available on SourceForge called FlexiSheet; it only runs on
MacOS.

At any rate, applying a single function to many cells isn't something
that spreadsheets usually support.  If you want a function used
everywhere, they provide "copy/paste" to copy it into all those
places.

You won't find OpenOffice is materially different from Gnumeric, by
the way; they both have the same basis for their set of functionality,
as they are both basically tracking the base feature set of Microsoft
Excel.
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/spreadsheets.html
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results."  -- assortedly attributed to Albert
Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
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