Whilst it probably is an unnecessary step, it's at least consistent with the Chart creation wizard. Until Office 2007 (if I recall), you had to click the extra button in Excel too. Perhaps you could submit it as a feature request to the OOo devs?

I notice that the button is still present in Excel 2007, even though you don't have to click it. It seems to me that that's unnecessary too. Perhaps you could submit a feature request to Microsoft. I would provide a link, but I couldn't find one for Office.

That can't hurt. I'll do it.


I, uh, don't think so. I don't think Microsoft gives a rat's rear end what an individual user thinks about anything--it doesn't need to. I'm hardly an opponent of capitalism, but when you don't have to compete very much, you don't have to improve your product very much.

This is one of the major advantages of OOo as far as I'm concerned.We definitely agree there!

Arguably my biggest concern with OO Calc is not how it compares to Excel. Calc can of course save documents in Excel format, but because I have seen it load my Excel-created chart in a screwed-up form (it displayed the legend right in the middle of the bars and lines on the chart!), I do not trust Calc to correctly save in Excel format. I mean, I know those are two different things, but if it can't interpret an Excel-format chart correctly, how do I know it will convert its own format to Excel format without errors?
I am afraid that if I finish a chart in Calc and save it as an Excel document, the professor will open it in Excel and, finding a distorted version of what I made, think I did poor work. Because of this, I am not willing to finish my chart in Calc. I'll go back to the community college and use Excel.
(I'm not in any classes there--I'm in graduate school--but I paid a little money for an account on the computers there, just in case I had problems with my internet connection or, as is the case now, I had possible problems with the adequacy of my Linux software for my work. Anyone who tells me to just use Gnumeric or some other Linux software is being impractical. Why should I take the time to learn new software when I already know how to do the job using Excel?)

But, gnumeric is pretty much a clone of Excel ... without the bugs. It's very similar, and it can export fine. You ask for too much, I've never had any problems importing or export to xls or working with graphs (except in Calc).

I'm paranoid...

Okay, I am taking a closer look at Gnumeric, and am concluding that it is probably more comparable to Excel than Calc. It's a bit harder to figure out than either of them, though.