I am trying to move from Excel to Calc. Engineering notation is hidden in Excel but there is a confusing way to invoke it. Calc seems to recognize engineering notation in an Excel spreadsheet, but I cannot find any way to invoke it in a new spreadsheet.
The one answer which I have found on this forum calls up a broken link.
There must be millions of people in the world who would like to use engineering notation. Where is it and why is it not an easy choice? I am not a programmer.
Simply use the >Format Cells...>Numbers dialog, select Scientific, and enable the option Engineering notation.
You then also see an example for the syntax of the format code.
Thanks! I had been stuck on Format>Number Format… 
Alternatively, in the “Format Cells …” (Ctrl+1) dialogue box, after setting the cell type to “Scientific”, make the INTEGER part of the format code have three codes such as “##0” or “###”, and the “Engineering notation” check-box gets set. So, format “##0.###E+##” would represent 1234.5678 as “1.235E+03” and format “000.#E+#” would represent it as “001.2E+3”.
Whether this works on older versions, without the “Engineering notation” checkbox, I’m not sure.
It might be more amenable to generating format codes in a macro.