[Solved] Extra cells outside the normal cells

[orgopenoffice1]

Solved.
I have downloaded a file which has extra narrow columns added to the left of the normal spreadsheet.
See attached screenshot.
How are these columns created ?
Can we convert them to normal spreadsheet cells ?
We need to be able to download the data from the spreadsheet in a csv file, but the normal csv save does not save these weird extra columns.
We have searched Help but can not find anything.

[orgopenoffice1]

See attached screenshot.

[Lupp]

There are no "extra columns". What you see is the display showing the grouping of rows and offering to toggle between showing an hiding.

[orgopenoffice1]

How do we get to see the cell contents of the 7 columns to the left of the main spreadsheet ?
Clicking in the area of the columns to the left of the vertical number column has no effect.
Note the green cells is just hi-lighting of those cells, they are no different from the rest of them.

[orgopenoffice1]

OK.
We see from the Help, that the 7 rows to the left in the screenshot are an "outline group".
How do we get to see what is in the cells of the group ?
Which cells do the group(s) refer to ?
In other words how were the group(s) originally defined ?

[Lupp]

Once more: There are no "extra columns". There are seven nested groups of rows.
Click on one of the minus signs and you will see the efect: A group of rows gets hidden, and the minus sign is replaced by a plus sign.

Look at

Code: Select all

>Data>Group and Outline

Grouping is also available for columns.

aoo_113365_GroupAndOutline.ods

(13.46 KiB) Downloaded 38 times

An example tells more than thousand images.

[MrProgrammer]

We see from the Help, that the 7 rows to the left in the screenshot are an "outline group".

Read about Outline Group Controls on page 24.
Calc Guide Chapter 2, Entering, Editing, and Formatting Data

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[orgopenoffice1]

Thank you all for your assistance.
So our next question is,
how can we download the information about the groups, in the same way we can download cell contents into a csv file ?
It seem crazy that information in the spreadsheet is hidden from downloading.
Perhaps the only way may be to deconstruct the .ods file, which must contain the group information ?

[Lupp]

You can't.

Except
you make the information explict,
write it into cells of an additional row,
save it as a part of the csv-file,
and ask the receiver to re-create the groups manually.

Grouping isn't data, but metadata.
A loaded spreasheet document manages MUCH more metadata than you may suppose, and somebody else can be interested in any particular part of them.
The only reliable way to send them to storage and to send them to anybody is to save the Calc document to a file of the proper ODF type.

Does somebody know better?

[orgopenoffice1]

Yes we expected that.
Unforunately we do not produce the spreadsheet.
It is provided by the most computer illiterate organisation in the world, the UK government (you should see their new AI guidelines !!)
We are expected to extract the information and use it to provide info to the government.
As you say the only way to extract the grouping info is to do it manually (as we noted the UK government doesn't "do" computers).
The problem is when the government changes the data we would have to process the file manually again to get the groupings.
They should put in an extra 7 columns and show the groups in them, then we could process them.
So ...
we will try a last attempt -
Can somebody please provide the format for the .ods file, the info on groups is buried in there somewhere.
If we know the format we may be able to extract it.

[MrProgrammer]

Can somebody please provide the format for the .ods file

Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Version 1.2

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[Tutorial] Ten concepts that every Calc user should know

[orgopenoffice1]

Yes.
Thank you, that has it !!