Re: making flexible table formulas

[Carsten Dominik <carsten.dominik@gmail.com>]

On 28.2.2011, at 18:35, Rustom Mody wrote:

> When using orgmode for hacking on data in a table (org a la spreadsheet)  I have this situation
> Say I am concentrating on column 2 and I want the bottom cell to be the sum of the above cells
> For a 7 row table with 8th row having the total I get
> 
>   #+TBLFM: @8$2=vsum(@1$2..@7$2)
> 
> But now I have a problem: If say I add a row to the table then the next time I recompute the formula(s) the ninth row is not affected and the 8th row which is now data gets overwritten with a computation.

Hi Rustom,

in addition to the excellent advice you have already gotten in this thread,
I would like to add the following piece of information (if only to make
the thread a more complete online reference):

Apparently you have been inserting new rows with normal editing commands like
RET or `C-o'.  If you use Org's special commands to insert new rows, for example
M-S-<down> on the last row, the row references in the formula will be adjusted
to

 @9$2=vsum(@1$2..@7$2)

So you see that the @8 has become a @9.  However, the @7 has not been
adjusted because Org has no way of telling what you meant.  So even if
you write your formula with @8$2=, you should use relative references to
refer to the fields when summing:

@8$2==vsum(@1$2..@-1$2)


Anyhow, the methods proposed by Nick and Luke are much better in this case.

Hope this helps

- Carsten


> 
> So basically I want the @1 and @7 which are hardcoded above to be replaced by something to the effect: "everything above..." and the @8$2 should be something to the tune of "bottom of $2"
> 
> I guess this may not be a reasonable request -- but with org you never know :-) so asking if there is some way.
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