Re: Formatting complex numbers?

Morten Welinder <[email protected]> Thu, 9 Jun 2022 15:21:48 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnome.apps.gnumeric
Message-ID <CANv4PNms2PRwb3_vU2cDvVGxH58TYHRvSv0di2QnZenuyOvWCw@mail.gmail.com>
> I'm not sure if this was intentional?

Sort-of.

Excel's number system, and thus Gnumeric's (and LO's, etc), know
nothing about complex numbers.  They are bolted on sideways as
strings, lots of duct tape involved.  There is no support for
rounding-for-purposes of display.

So it's not going to be elegant.

What you can do, as a sort-of workaround, is to extract the real and
imaginary parts.  Say, A1 contains a complex formula.  Then enter
=REAL(A1) into B1 and =IMAGINARY(A1) into C1.  Those numbers you can
format in all the usual ways.

We could introduce a function to round complex numbers but any use of
it would actually change values and thus results.  Not a great idea
either.

Morten