Microsoft Office to OpenOffice Migration Guide
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Interpreting cell contents

In Calc if a cell is defined as text, even if the cell contains a number, then that cell is treated as text, which means it has the numeric value zero for formulas.

For example, if cell A1 is formatted as text and contains the character “1”, in Excel a formula =A1+1 would return the value 2, but in Calc it would return the value 1.

In functions, such an entry will be ignored rather than treated as zero. For example, the function AVERAGE will not treat a text entry as zero, but will ignore it. If cell A1 is a text entry of “1”, and cell A2 is a numerical entry of “10”, =AVERAGE(A1:A2) would be 10, not 5.

Microsoft Office to OpenOffice Migration Guide
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