Long, nested functions

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Teller
  • Start date Start date
J

John Teller

Hello All,

We inherited a program that exports temperature dependent equations
for materials properties in Excel format. It works beautifully,
except that the database does not know about the nested function
limit. For many of the properties the equation changes 9 or 10 times
depending on the temperature range. There are thousands of these
equations, and we have no way of knowing which are too nested and
which are not until we try them and they do not work. In addition,
breaking the nests up over multiple cells or using lookups would be
way way too labor intensive.

We discovered that the Calc program that comes with OpenOffice
freeware allows us more nested functions.

After we switched to Calc we did not have this problem any more, but I
do not know what the limit is in Calc.

I do not know if this will work for anyone else, but to try this,
download openoffice at www.openoffice.org, install it, open your Excel
workbook in Calc and then do a global change of commas to semi-colons
(openoffice uses semi-colon delimiters instead of commas).

Disclaimer: I am not a Microsoft basher (in fact I have made a pretty
penny on MSFT stock and use their products from Windows to Office to
Project daily), or OpenOffice supporter. I just need to get my job
done in the most expedient manner, and this was my best, quickest,
cheapest fix.

Hope it helps someone
John
 
We want the equation to function based on temperature values we place
in the spreadsheet. We input temperature value in cell A1, and the
equations (pulled from the database) in other cells calculate about a
dozen materials properties for a few hundred materials at that
specific temperature.

You may ask: why not simply do this in the original database?

Answer: It does not have this functionality. It is simply a large
listing of equations that describe materials properties of thousands
of materials at various tempertaures. We can only get one property at
a time for one material at a time and one temperature at a time in the
original listing.

John
 
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