I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing
needed data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.

I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and
suggestion to save in ODF format.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write
xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

TIA








[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/TFP-2021-Disaggregated-Market-Basket.xlsx

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On 2025-07-28 at 11:52, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently
read/write xlsx format?

I have never had an issue with LibreCalc's xls support. If an xls
file is so complicated that LibreOffice can't read/write it properly,
I suspect you will find it unusable in anything but Microsoft
software since that is their proprietary format.

I did see a blog post somewhere recently from someone griping about how unnecessarily dense, complex, and impenetrable the Microsoft Office
document formats are, to such an extent that it makes implementing
support for them difficult verging on impossible. There was the
suggestion that Microsoft chose that development path on purpose,
specifically in order to make it harder for anyone else to interoperate properly with those formats.

Unfortunately I don't remember where that post was, and haven't been
able to find it again in searching offhand. It might have been somewhere GNU-related? But I can't swear to that.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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Hi,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write xlsx format?

I have never had an issue with LibreCalc's xls support. If an xls file
is so complicated that LibreOffice can't read/write it properly, I
suspect you will find it unusable in anything but Microsoft software
since that is their proprietary format.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
On 2025-07-28 at 11:56, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 7/28/25 10:52 AM, Andy Smith wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently
read/write xlsx format?

I have never had an issue with LibreCalc's xls support. If an xls
file is so complicated that LibreOffice can't read/write it
properly, I suspect you will find it unusable in anything but
Microsoft software since that is their proprietary format.

If that were the case, shouldn't it have complained on read also?

Reading a document is often easier to implement than writing it out
correctly. Reading is also safer, because you're not overwriting any
data; if you try to save the document, you might be doing so to an
existing filename, and if the resulting format is invalid by the
standards of whatever you want to read it next, then you've just caused
data loss.

It is not hugely uncommon to implement read support for a format, but
not write support for that format, precisely because of that safety consideration. I've seen it in filesystems (e.g., NTFS) and in A/V
codecs, among probably other places.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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Hi,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:56:45AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 7/28/25 10:52 AM, Andy Smith wrote:

I have never had an issue with LibreCalc's xls support. If an xls file
is so complicated that LibreOffice can't read/write it properly, I
suspect you will find it unusable in anything but Microsoft software
since that is their proprietary format.

If that were the case, shouldn't it have complained on read also?

You can't lose information from the file on read, only if you save it
again. But as I say, I don't typically have a problem.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> wrote:

I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing
needed data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.

I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and
suggestion to save in ODF format.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently
read/write xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

Did you try ignoring the 'dire warning' and saving it as .xlsx and did
you then try reopening it and try to spot any difference?

Alternatively, why do you want to save it as .xlsx rather than.ods
anyway?

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On 2025-07-28 at 11:52, Andy Smith wrote:

I suspect you will find it unusable in anything but Microsoft
software since that is their proprietary format.

If that is the case, the odds are it will not work with a different
enough version of Excel.

I mean, are not documents produced by French Excel incompatible with
German Excel because these idiots translated the names of macros?


The Wanderer (HE12025-07-28):

I did see a blog post somewhere recently from someone griping about how unnecessarily dense, complex, and impenetrable the Microsoft Office
document formats are, to such an extent that it makes implementing
support for them difficult verging on impossible. There was the
suggestion that Microsoft chose that development path on purpose, specifically in order to make it harder for anyone else to interoperate properly with those formats.

You just cut yourself on Hanlon's razor. If it was Apple, thinking it
was on purpose would have indeed been a very likely hypothesis, but Microsoft…

Regards,

--
Nicolas George

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On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 10:44:36 -0500
Richard Owlett <rowlett@access.net> wrote:

I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing
needed data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.

I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and
suggestion to save in ODF format.

It's only talking its book. ODFs are probably more accessible to other
LO applications than any other format. There may be a couple of LO-only
bells and whistles not available in the xls-type format that I'm not
aware of.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently
read/write xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

I've never been aware of any issues, but I haven't used xlsx very
often. I normally save to xls if I have to send something to Windows
users. Spreadsheet technology is fairly mature.

If this particular spreadsheet is your main concern, I wouldn't expect
trouble. It looks like just data, no tricksy functions or macros. Lots
of people use spreadsheets as databases. It looks as if the two data
sheets would convert to CSV with no issues.

The only other spreadsheet I've used in Linux is Gnumeric, and that was
a long time ago. I've no idea how much it is used now, and I don't
think I'd treat is as any more trustworthy than LO Calc. I'm not sure
how much it would pull in if you don't already have much Gnome stuff
installed.

--
Joe

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On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and suggestion to save in ODF format.

I think you can configure away the "dire warning" and make LibreOffice
save as xlsx by default, if you want.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

LibreOffice is very good at this.

What was the actual problem (except for the warning)?

/ralph

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On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing needed data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.

I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and suggestion to save in ODF format.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write xlsx format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

Libreoffice generally works - but you could always try Gnumeric from
the GNOME project.

It does help if you can try things for yourself if this is practicable
and *then* come back and say "X worked, Y didn't work". Some assembly
required, as they say, or at least a willingness to show and share your workings to allow the rest of us to see *exactly* what you are talking
about.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
(amacater@debian.org)

TIA

[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/TFP-2021-Disaggregated-Market-Basket.xlsx

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On 7/28/25 11:55 AM, Ralph Aichinger wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and suggestion >> to save in ODF format.

I think you can configure away the "dire warning" and make LibreOffice
save as xlsx by default, if you want.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write xlsx >> format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

LibreOffice is very good at this.

What was the actual problem (except for the warning)?

/ralph

I haven't checked closely. But when a program gives such emphatic
warning that they don't claim competency - I pay attention ;/
Also in the in the meantime someone mentioned that they liked gnumeric.
I loaded then saved the xlsx file with gnumeric. Its out put was much
closer in size to the original than was LibreOffice's attempt.

Also gnumeric seemed faster.

YMMV

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On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 11:55:57AM -0400, The Wanderer wrote:

[...]

I did see a blog post somewhere recently from someone griping about how unnecessarily dense, complex, and impenetrable the Microsoft Office
document formats are, to such an extent that it makes implementing
support for them difficult verging on impossible [...]

OOXML's spec is roughly 6000 pages compared to roughly 900 for LibreOffice's ODF [1]. The reference also describes how the ISO approval process was
highly controversial.

suggestion that Microsoft chose that development path on purpose, specifically in order to make it harder for anyone else to interoperate properly with those formats.

This is called "decommoditizing protocols" [2] and is a well-known
practice Microsoft is very adept at.

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML
[2] https://levien.com/free/decommoditizing.html
--
tomas


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On 7/28/25 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

I found a USDA published spreadsheet[1] [in xlsx format] containing needed >> data. I saved it to a local directory with no problems.

I copied it to another directory to prevent accidents.
I opened it - Debian defaulted to LibreOffice Calc.
I tried to save it [unedited] to file2.xlsx. Got dire warning and suggestion >> to save in ODF format.

Does Debian have a spreadsheet program that can competently read/write xlsx >> format? [never happy with LibreOffice text processing $#^$%YU]

Libreoffice generally works - but you could always try Gnumeric from
the GNOME project.

Someone else suggested Gnumeric.
Tried it. It appears more satisfactory. For me personally, Gnu has a
better track record than LibreOffice.

It does help if you can try things for yourself if this is practicable
and *then* come back and say "X worked, Y didn't work". Some assembly required, as they say, or at least a willingness to show and share your workings to allow the rest of us to see *exactly* what you are talking
about.

With every good wish, as ever,

Andy Cater
(amacater@debian.org)

TIA

[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/TFP-2021-Disaggregated-Market-Basket.xlsx

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On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/TFP-2021-Disaggregated-Market-Basket.xlsx

I was unable to download this with wget -- it just hung for a while.
But when I pasted the URL directly into a web browser, the browser was
able to download it.

Now, my choices at that point were to install Libre Office, or to try
to get Google Sheets to open it. I was able to do the latter, by
opening a new Google Sheet, clicking File -> Import, clicking Upload,
then selecting the file I had just downloaded. (My attempts to use
the =IMPORT* functions were not successful, but the "save to a local
file and then re-upload it" approach worked for me.)

The spreadsheet has three tabs: "Cover Sheet", "Codebook" and
"Disaggregated Market Basket". I'm guessing you want data from the
last sheet. That sheet has 3574 rows, and columns up to "AK", which I
believe means there are 37 columns.

Clicking File -> Download -> Comma Separated Values (.csv), I was
then able to download a .csv file, which starts out looking like this:


EC,EC_Description,Form,Form_Description,TFP_Market_Basket_Category,amount_reffam,cost_reffam,amount_child1,amount_child2_3,amount_child4_5,amount_child6_8,amount_child9_11,amount_female12_13,amount_female14_19,amount_female20_50,amount_female51_70,amount_
female71_,amount_male12_13,amount_male14_19,amount_male20_50,amount_male51_70,amount_male71_,cost_child1,cost_child2_3,cost_child4_5,cost_child6_8,cost_child9_11,cost_female12_13,cost_female14_19,cost_female20_50,cost_female51_70,cost_female71_,cost_
male12_13,cost_male14_19,cost_male20_50,cost_male51_70,cost_male71_

1001,"Butter, salted",RFG-RTS,"Refrigerated, ready-to-serve",Table fats and oils,0.1626786879,0.6186631041,0.01103253659,0.02083454713,0.01311547854,0.01769687127,0.0594166627,0.0348792245,0.01777270695,0.02197901726,0.01769234628,0.01677677253,0.
061227006,0.06206025684,0.06358613667,0.06657438278,0.02314869676,0.04193037519,0.07880153702,0.04964098172,0.06735002221,0.226375425,0.1330267759,0.06830603059,0.08345215056,0.06651598271,0.06313037276,0.2333988445,0.2363390769,0.2414855064,0.2524536485,
0.08728644348

1002,"Butter, whipped, with salt",RFG-RTS,"Refrigerated, ready-to-serve",Table fats and oils,0.02686947962,0.1381845124,0.0007728399987,0.003071941992,0.0008396139053,0.001147128895,0.01186825664,0.005297700659,0.001120978168,0.001708961753,0.
001204639328,0.001301059988,0.01156720408,0.01199097977,0.01214513233,0.01345645264,0.001612712113,0.003964704841,0.01572173404,0.004266059726,0.005888717654,0.06109367429,0.02728689243,0.005832244741,0.00877883251,0.006083262385,0.006612304656,0.
05951829381,0.06171136119,0.06242328791,0.06914126498,0.008188846043

1006,"Cheese, brie",RFG-RTS,"Refrigerated, ready-to-serve",Cheese,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0

1009,"Cheese, cheddar",RFG-RTS,"Refrigerated, ready-to-serve",Cheese,0.09564044753,0.4865185748,0.009252925692,0.007254100156,0.004298026763,0.01669776985,0.01847750597,0.01767685543,0,0.05235453817,0.01620682648,0.001632507078,0.01243808671,0.
005561730818,0.008110633541,0,0,0.04954928577,0.03430869868,0.01911904212,0.08547814057,0.09453849941,0.0913920653,0,0.270423159,0.079955161,0.008555077603,0.06407827851,0.024740415,0.03607877588,0,0


The process of pasting into this email introduced blank lines, which I
have left in place. They actually make it more readable.

So, that's one way you can convert this spreadsheet into a .csv file,
without even needing to install an office suite.

From here, anything that can handle CSV input should be able to deal with this. Having the internal commas within the two description fields, with double quotes around them, is fairly common, and any decent CSV library

should be able to cope with that.

Would you like us to do anything more at this point (e.g. writing a proof-of-concept field extraction in some scripting language), or do
you want to approach the data with your own preferred toolset? Either
way's good, just let us know if you need any more help.

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On 7/28/25 18:01, The Wanderer wrote:

Reading a document is often easier to implement than writing it out correctly. Reading is also safer, because you're not overwriting any
data; if you try to save the document, you might be doing so to an
existing filename, and if the resulting format is invalid by the
standards of whatever you want to read it next, then you've just caused
data loss.

While this is true, there's also another side to it.
On writing, you can restrict yourselves to a safe subset,
while on reading you need to handle essentially
all obscure possiblities: even if you don't really understand
it, you need to be able to parse it.
Of course, XML (for xlsx) makes this easier.

There's a reason pandoc supports more formats for writing than for
reading.

Detlef

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On 7/28/25 20:13, Richard Owlett wrote:

Also gnumeric seemed faster.

That's definitely true.
I'm using gnumeric for essentially all my spreadsheet stuff.
But it doesn't have as many functions as Excel.

And it doesn't really support conditional formatting where
the format depends on other cells.
LibreOffice claims to support this, but I couldn't get it
working.
In the end I used Excel (I still have an Office 2016 in a
Win7 VM).

Detlef

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Hi,

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 01:23:48PM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

On 7/28/25 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

Libreoffice generally works - but you could always try Gnumeric from
the GNOME project.

Someone else suggested Gnumeric.
Tried it. It appears more satisfactory. For me personally, Gnu has a better track record than LibreOffice.

No accounting for taste and I'm glad you found some software you get
along with, but you do understand that the "Gnu" in "Gnumeric" has no association whatsoever with GNU as in the Free Software Foundation,
right? Gnumeric is a GNOME project.

And even if it was from the FSF, there are hundreds, maybe even
thousands of GNU projects, so I don't understand how one would judge any
of them to have a better track record than anything else just by the
fact that its copyright is held by the FSF. You'd really need to know
specific details about that specific project.

Thanks,
Andy

--
https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting

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On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:43:52 +0200
Detlef Vollmann <dv@vollmann.ch> wrote:

On 7/28/25 20:13, Richard Owlett wrote:

Also gnumeric seemed faster.

That's definitely true.
I'm using gnumeric for essentially all my spreadsheet stuff.
But it doesn't have as many functions as Excel.

And it doesn't really support conditional formatting where
the format depends on other cells.
LibreOffice claims to support this, but I couldn't get it
working.

I've had that working, changing the background colour of cells depending
on value, but it has been flaky in the distant past. I'm using sid, so
the problem might have been present more recently on stable.

--
Joe

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On 7/28/25 20:50, Joe wrote:

On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 20:43:52 +0200
Detlef Vollmann <dv@vollmann.ch> wrote:

On 7/28/25 20:13, Richard Owlett wrote:

Also gnumeric seemed faster.

That's definitely true.
I'm using gnumeric for essentially all my spreadsheet stuff.
But it doesn't have as many functions as Excel.

And it doesn't really support conditional formatting where
the format depends on other cells.
LibreOffice claims to support this, but I couldn't get it
working.

I've had that working, changing the background colour of cells depending
on value, but it has been flaky in the distant past. I'm using sid, so
the problem might have been present more recently on stable.

I'm on Sid as well. And yes, I could get some things working,
but others not, and after spending a day on it, I decided to go
for Excel.
And even on Excel it was somewhat shaky.
Reading the working Excel version into LO again didn't work.

But that was a one-time task, for all my other needs gnumeric
works pretty well :-)

Detlef

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Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:

On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 10:44:36 -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:

[1] https://www.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/file/TFP-2021-Disaggregated-Market-Basket.xlsx

I was unable to download this with wget -- it just hung for a while.
But when I pasted the URL directly into a web browser, the browser was
able to download it.

I was interested so I tried wget with the same result as you. I found
adding -U "" in the command line caused it to work and download the
file. The way it worked was interesting. First came a '302 Moved
Temporarily' that referred to fns-prod.azureedge.us which leaves me not
knowing whether to blame the US Gov or Microsoft :) Though my money's
on the US Gov.

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On Mon, 2025-07-28 at 12:27 -0700, Van Snyder wrote:

Is there Debian software that can work with, and especially convert, WordPerfect files?

There is a library called libwpd which is used by LibreOffice, Abiword
& Calligra Words, as well as a number of commandline tools (and some
other applications then depend on those tools).

Try running the following on your system to find out what is available
for the Debian release you are using:

apt rdepends 'libwpd-*'


--
Jan Claeys

(please don't CC me when replying to the list)

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On Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:27:36 -0700
Van Snyder <van.snyder@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Is there Debian software that can work with, and especially convert, WordPerfect files?

charles@peregrine:~$ apt-cache search wordperfect
abiword - efficient, featureful word processor with collaboration
ebook-speaker - eBook reader that reads aloud in a synthetic voice
gnumeric - spreadsheet application for GNOME - main program
libwpd-0.10-10 - Library for handling WordPerfect documents (shared
library) libwpd-dev - Library for handling WordPerfect documents
(development) libwpd-doc - Library for handling WordPerfect documents (documentation) libwpd-tools - Tools from libwpd for converting
WordPerfect to HTML/RAW/Text libwpg-0.3-3 - WordPerfect graphics
import/convert library (shared library) libwpg-dev - WordPerfect
graphics import/convert library (development) libwpg-doc - WordPerfect
graphics import/convert library (documentation) libwpg-tools - Tools
from libwpg for converting WP Graphics to Raw/SVG wp2latex - Conversion
of WordPerfect documents to LaTeX: the converter wp2latex-styles -
Conversion of WordPerfect documents to LaTeX: the LaTeX style files
wp2x - WordPerfect 5.x documents to whatever converter wpd2epub -
WordPerfect document to EPUB converter wpd2odt - WordPerfect to
OpenDocument converter wpg2odg - WordPerfect Graphics to OpenDocument
converter charles@peregrine:~$


--
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/

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