Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 5: Importing and Exporting StarOffice Documents

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Importing Other Spreadsheet Formats


Besides Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, you can have spreadsheets in several other formats. The sections that follow describe how to open other documents in StarOffice.

Using Lotus 1-2-3 Spreadsheet Files

Lotus 1-2-3 is arguably the second most-used spreadsheet in the world. StarOffice, however, does not give it much attention.

Lotus 1-2-3 1.0 is listed in the Select Filter dialog box as an option when you open a file with an unrecognized format. (See Figure 5.9.) But this Lotus filter opens the spreadsheet in StarWriter as a word processing document, which isn't of much use to you.

Figure 5.9
The Select Filter dialog box enables you to select the correct format for the file that you want to import into StarOffice.

If you have a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet that you want to edit in StarOffice, you'll need to open the file within Lotus 1-2-3 and then use the Save As command to save the file in one of the following formats:

Using DIF and HTML is described a little later in this hour. Depending on the version of Lotus 1-2-3 that you're using, all these options might not be available in the Lotus Save As dialog box.

If you can use the Excel option to save your Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, the file type is detected automatically and the file opens in StarOffice without a problem. If the format cannot be recognized, the Select Filter dialog box (shown previously) appears, and you can select the correct format.

Caution - Although this is really the only way to use Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet files, the combination of a non-Microsoft export filter in Lotus and a non-Microsoft input filter in StarOffice can lead to uncertain results. Check your imported spreadsheet carefully for errors, and keep backup copies until you're certain that the transfer worked.

Using Other Interchange Formats

StarOffice doesn't really support any other native spreadsheet formats. It does, however, provide the Data Interchange Format ( DIF), which can be used successfully in some cases. DIF is intended for use with databases more than with spreadsheets, but it is a widely used standard format that any spreadsheet can most likely save in.

The best option for using spreadsheets created by other programs is to use the Save As dialog box to save the document in an Excel format. Using both an input filter and an output filter on your spreadsheet increases the chance that a problem might occurring; however, the StarOffice input filter for Excel really provides the best option because it is so much further along than any other interchange format for spreadsheets with StarOffice.

Although StarOffice handles HTML text very well, using comma-delimited text--or even HTML--won't preserve the formulas that are part of your spreadsheet. It only preserves the values that are calculated from those formulas.

Therefore, if you want to use your spreadsheet to show someone your results, HTML is fine. If you need to continue working on the spreadsheet, however, HTML is useless.

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 5: Importing and Exporting StarOffice Documents

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