Free Stupid Spreadsheet?
March 24, 2008 8:11 AM Subscribe
Please recommend a free and very stupid spreadsheet for Mac.
Microsoft Office? Not free.
google Docs? can't handle this large a spreadsheet without long delays.
OpenOffice? Works poorly on the Mac, no native port.
NeoOffice? You can't turn off autocorrect. Says you can, doesn't work.
I'm looking for a free spreadsheet program that can handle no less than (and likely many more than) 100,000 cells and won't change what I type. When I type in 6-7 (as in, the information in question can be found on pages 6-7) I do not want it to change it to the date 6/7/08.
There must be a free rock-stupid spreadsheet program for Mac out there that I can type data into. A spreadsheet stupider than me. And that's stupid!
Microsoft Office? Not free.
google Docs? can't handle this large a spreadsheet without long delays.
OpenOffice? Works poorly on the Mac, no native port.
NeoOffice? You can't turn off autocorrect. Says you can, doesn't work.
I'm looking for a free spreadsheet program that can handle no less than (and likely many more than) 100,000 cells and won't change what I type. When I type in 6-7 (as in, the information in question can be found on pages 6-7) I do not want it to change it to the date 6/7/08.
There must be a free rock-stupid spreadsheet program for Mac out there that I can type data into. A spreadsheet stupider than me. And that's stupid!
With that amount of data, it sounds like you probably want something along the lines of a database rather than a spreadsheet, especially since you're not doing anything "intelligent" with it.
It might be worth it to spend 5 minutes playing with NeoOffice's Base program (assuming they include that in their port).
posted by spiderskull at 9:02 AM on March 24, 2008 [1 favorite]
It might be worth it to spend 5 minutes playing with NeoOffice's Base program (assuming they include that in their port).
posted by spiderskull at 9:02 AM on March 24, 2008 [1 favorite]
The spreadsheet is not doing autocorrection, but instead auto-formatting. This can be fixed by changing the format of the entire sheet to "Text". Generally this is accomplished by clicking on the upper-left hand box that selects the entire sheet, then changing the format to "Text".
posted by Xoder at 1:46 PM on March 24, 2008
posted by Xoder at 1:46 PM on March 24, 2008
Response by poster: All: thanks for suggestions! The cost of free software is sometimes a problem like this.
Perplexity: The ugly solution of changing human behavior to match software failure is sometimes the only option, it's true. But even that isn't working in this case. Typing a single-quote will preserve the numbers but add a single-quote each time I open the spreadsheet (as in '''''''6-7). Typing a double-quote doesn't work because the quotes disappear when I re-open the spreadsheet.
Conrad53: "google Docs? can't handle this large a spreadsheet without long delays."
Spiderskull: I was building a NeoOffice Base database to dump the spreadsheet into. Spent far more than 5 minutes working on it. Then I saw that the spreadsheet was changing my data each time I opened the file and decided to get it out of NeoOffice before I proceeded.
Xoder: The documentation says to do what you suggest, or turn off the autocorrect / autoformating by clicking here, here and here. But you can do those things all day long and the unwanted automatic changes still occur. This is a software problem, not a 'didn't click here, here and here' problem. The little boxes to click to turn off autocorrect / autoformat are there, they just don't do what they're supposed to yet.
posted by eccnineten at 10:40 PM on March 24, 2008
Perplexity: The ugly solution of changing human behavior to match software failure is sometimes the only option, it's true. But even that isn't working in this case. Typing a single-quote will preserve the numbers but add a single-quote each time I open the spreadsheet (as in '''''''6-7). Typing a double-quote doesn't work because the quotes disappear when I re-open the spreadsheet.
Conrad53: "google Docs? can't handle this large a spreadsheet without long delays."
Spiderskull: I was building a NeoOffice Base database to dump the spreadsheet into. Spent far more than 5 minutes working on it. Then I saw that the spreadsheet was changing my data each time I opened the file and decided to get it out of NeoOffice before I proceeded.
Xoder: The documentation says to do what you suggest, or turn off the autocorrect / autoformating by clicking here, here and here. But you can do those things all day long and the unwanted automatic changes still occur. This is a software problem, not a 'didn't click here, here and here' problem. The little boxes to click to turn off autocorrect / autoformat are there, they just don't do what they're supposed to yet.
posted by eccnineten at 10:40 PM on March 24, 2008
Best answer: Eccnineten, Xoder is fundamentally right -- NeoOffice is not autocorrecting, it's applying a format. Here is a discussion elsewhere among Mac users having exactly your problem and figuring it out -- I feel certain it contains your answer.
posted by gum at 3:32 PM on March 25, 2008
posted by gum at 3:32 PM on March 25, 2008
Response by poster: gum found the answer I hadn't found yet...
"Select the sheet by pressing Command-A, then go to Format > Cells >Numbers and select Text in the Category list. Click OK."
the link gum found lists the answers I'd found and tried and that had failed (ie type a apostrophy before the numbers, change human behavior to accomodate funky software), but the above did the trick in the Bucky Fuller way (don't change people, change the environment: don't change human behavior to accomodate the machine, change / use the machine to meet human needs).
ALL HAIL GUM! Best answer award!
posted by eccnineten at 6:59 PM on March 25, 2008
"Select the sheet by pressing Command-A, then go to Format > Cells >Numbers and select Text in the Category list. Click OK."
the link gum found lists the answers I'd found and tried and that had failed (ie type a apostrophy before the numbers, change human behavior to accomodate funky software), but the above did the trick in the Bucky Fuller way (don't change people, change the environment: don't change human behavior to accomodate the machine, change / use the machine to meet human needs).
ALL HAIL GUM! Best answer award!
posted by eccnineten at 6:59 PM on March 25, 2008
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In Excel, doing this prevents it from converting 6-7 to a date.
posted by Perplexity at 8:14 AM on March 24, 2008