some worksheets do not calculate a function, they show the function

Version: 7.0.4.2
Build ID: 00(Build:2)
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.10; UI render: default; VCL: kf5
Locale: en-CA (en_CA.UTF-8); UI: en-US
7.0.4-1
Calc: threaded

one worksheet shows the function =DCOUNT(A26:C29,C26,A31:C32)
a new worksheet does evaluate correctly, and shows the result

Hello,

in general there are 2 potential causes for this

1. Text pre-formatted cells

If cells have been pre-formatted using format code @ (Text) disables input recognition (formulas, dates) and takes the input “as-is” and = no longer functions as an indicator for “the following is a formula” but is taken literally.

Solution

  • Select the cell contain the textual formula
  • CTRL+M (removes the text format)
  • Perform any edit of the formula (e.g remove and re-add the closing parenthesis ) of the formula)

Advice
Do not pre-format cells with format code @, if you intend to use formulas.

2. Option View -> Show Formula set

This won’t apply in your case, since this appears to be a global setting and hence you’d see it in all sheets or none of you sheets.

Thanks for the prompt answer,
The original worksheet, where the formula doesn’t compute, was started with LO 6 three years ago, and as far as I know, never used a preformat or if I use one is, column-wise, as number w/so many digits as needed and I remember having used CTRL+M.
One thing I noticed was the need to copy over another simple formula (=F8+D9+E9) because it was giving wrong results, that’s when I started using CTRL+M and copying over and, voila, got the right results.
But when I wanted to add another calculation the problem arose, and a new sheet didn’t fix it, I hat to create a new worksheet for the formula to work.
Do you think it might be caused by the old version to carry over some information that the new one doesn’t know what to do.
If you are interested I still have the old file, it is very simple.
Peter

Another comment:
As I was working with a more complicated worksheet [File01] that has 4 sheets and 2 links to external worksheets, I decided to save as File02 and a third saved as xlsx [File03], and the sizes are not the same:
Name

File01.ods  31.7 KiB
File02.ods  32.4 KiB
File03.ods  32.8 KiB

All this is a bit worrying, Should I escalate the issue?
p

Should I escalate the issue?

Sure you can do that, but I still think it is a problem within your files/configuration. So it might be an idea to upload a sample file to your question (use edit, if you want to do so) showing the issue, so somebody could have a look into it.

File sizes don’t have to be equal if you newly save an older file, due to different configurations, differences between LibreOffice versions (i.e. new attributes or other changes how things are saved). Specifically if you save as .xlsx (wrongly shown as .ods in your example) things may be completely different.