On 7/28/25 08:44, Richard Owlett wrote:
I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing
needed data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.
I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and
suggestion to save in ODF format.
Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write
xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]
I believe the reason for the warning message is that, although the OO
Calc and Microsoft Excel are both spreadsheet programs, they are
fundamentally different programs. There are things that you can do in
one that you cannot do in the other and therefore the file formats do
not have a way to save something that doesn't exist in its own
functionality. In other words, there isn't a precise one to one
equivalency. between the two formats.
When you open an xlsx file in Open Office it is actually importing the
foreign file format into memory in its own format that it understands
and works in. If it comes across anything in the process that it
doesn't understand, it will complain and warn you that you may lose
something in the conversion, or you may just see something that's not
correct. If it doesn't find such a problem, then it just converts it
and doesn't complain. But when you go to save it, it warns you because
if you are going to work in OO it would be better if you kept it in OOs
native format so it doesn't have to convert back and forth.
I think the best policy would be to always save in the native format of
whatever program you are using to do the editing and then to export in
the non-native format only if you need to for specific purposes. If you
always use, say, Open Office, but always save in Excel format, you are
forcing it to convert back and forth. It'll probably work if you don't
make any edits that can't be saved in the non-native format, but sooner
or later you might find that certain elements may be lost.
Don
