Pounds to kg while maintaining original data - as cell formatting?

AskerAskins · August 15, 2020, 10:45am

I have a sheet, the original data base, that I don’t want to touch.

I have a dynamic table that presents data in different ways, like averages.

I have a Weight column in original data base expressed as pounds, I want to display them as Kg.

Is it possible to leave the value on original cells written as it is, and just render them as Kg in dynamic table?

Update: the proper name for dynamic table may be pivot table. Sorry, I don’t have my LibreOffice in English. What I want is not having to sanitize the original database, and just make pivot table display weights as Kg. Can it be done?

anon73440385 · August 15, 2020, 11:27am

Your update makes my answer worth- and senseless - deleted and afaik you can’t achieve anything by formatting, since updating a pivot table resets all formatting.

AskerAskins · August 15, 2020, 11:32am

@anon73440385, sorry for that, my mistake. I should said “pivot table”.

Regina · August 15, 2020, 4:40pm

What kine of database is it? Do you have already a database document (.odb) in LibreOffice for it? Make a query or view for the data, which contains already the pound to kg transformation. Then you can use that query or view in Calc.

AskerAskins · August 16, 2020, 12:12am

@Regina I called it “original database” because It’s how I named the sheet in Calc. I don’t have access to a “real” database, and I cannot write any queries. What I did, was to import a very big CSV file into calc to analyze it. The CSV came from a “real database”, and was probably exported to CSV by a SQL command, but I cannot ask for another export right now. In brief: the most practical It’s to work with the original data.

AskerAskins · August 15, 2020, 11:49am

Temporal solution, I’m ready to delete this any time.

I tried to create an extra column, in “Data Base” sheet, with calculated fields with the formula =CONVERT(XX,"lbm","kg") as proposed by a deleted answer.

Due to massive number of rows, my Calc instance nearly froze, but I leaved it alone for minutes, and somehow it held.

I could not just leave the calculated fields as they were, because every time Calc updated something it took minutes to be responsive again. To avoid this situation, I copied all the calculated rows, and pasted with “paste special” to get the fixed value without the formula. As result, now I have an extra column called “WEIGHT (Kg)”, and I’m using that column for the pivot table.