Percent calculation in a Writer table

[EarnestAl]

I have a Writer table and there is a total sum in each cell at the bottom of two columns. I want a percentage, in another cell, of the first summed cell over the second summed cell. I saw there was a percent calculation option when I click on F2, so in the formula bar I have = phd and I assumed I would just end the equation like this

= phd <D28> / <E28>

but I get ** Expression is faulty **. I have tried some other variations but not successful.

I know that I can enter = <D28> / <E28> in the formula bar and format it as percentage but I would like to find out how to use the included function and, by extension, the other functions offered. Nearly all the documentation I have found just shows Sum function as an example, although there was a paragraph in Help about using pipes | in Mean function.

Maybe I’m wrong and percent is for percentile function? Does anyone know of any complete documentation on the functions?

[PKG]

I hope that will help you.

Formula

[EarnestAl]

Thanks, I’ve bookmarked the page as I can’t find it again by search. Odd it wasn’t linked from Table Calculation which has many links but not very useful.

My related question is does anyone know what percent in this context actually means? Is it as implied in the Help, the not very useful a + b/100 (example given 10 + 15 PHD displays 10.15), or is phd just ignored as in =<A1>+<B1>phd displays 25 where A1 is 10 and B1 is 15?

[PKG]

I am trying to describe the path.

Open the help → choose: Module Writer

1. Working With LibreOffice Writer → LibreOffice Writer Features (link)
2. Calculations → calculation function (link)
3. Formula (link)

[EarnestAl]

Thanks for path but as I was using my production computer which runs LO 6.4.6 the help didn’t seem to include that page. Internet search engine didn’t deliver either; I obviously didn’t ask the right questions. Cheers, Al

[ajlittoz]

It is quite complicated to find the Formula page in built-in help.

From reading it, I understand that formula syntax is quite “original” in Writer. Parentheses are not always necessary in “functions”. I consider then that some “functions” in the submenu are rather operators.

This seems to be the case for phd as a suffix operator. It probably divides by 100 the preceding operand but I don’t succeed in getting a predictable result without “expression is faulty”.

EDIT: from experiment, it looks like phd only accepts a literal number as its left operand; a cell reference like <A1> causes the “expression is faulty” error.

The vertical bar | is the list operator to pass a list to prefix operators like MIN, SUM or MEAN.

As it has been frequently stated, tables in Writer are meant for text in tabular form. A courtesy very limited computation capability is offered but it is generally preferable to insert a Calc table as soon as the needed computation goes beyond simple addition.

The only interest in Writer table “functions” is the possibility to retrieve document statistics like WORD for the number of words but this can also be retrieved in a more versatile way with fields.

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[EarnestAl]

Thanks. That seems to correlate with my experiments over the last hour using Help found by PKG.

My table is text heavy with formatting that is not so easy to replicate in Calc. I want to place the table in a template so would like it to be correct from the beginning. A couple of one-off Sums and a percentage were all the calculations that were necessary but I got side-tracked by the percent issue. Another character defect I suppose, I tend to get a bit obsessed with problems until some sort of resolution appears.