Multiply numbers in Excel or LibreOffice cell contents by a constant when they are mixed with text? - excel

Question

I have a long series of cells written like this (example text):
Example Number (3502, 456)
How would I multiply the numbers by 4 without having to delete the text?
I also have cells in the format [sic below]:
Example Number (3502,456) (4560,250) (2345,223)
et cetera, there are on average ten parentheses per text string.
Occasionally, the text might also be only one word long, e.g.
Example (3205, 456)
or
Example (3205,456) (4560,250) (2345,223)
et cetera.
(all above is [sic]).
As a sort of newbie to Excel (well, really Libre Office Calc but it's essentially the same), how would I do this? I don't want to go through and manually multiply all the numbers myself. The number I want to multiply by is 4. I've tried just running a find-and-replace to replace all ,'s and )'s with *4's, but the program I need these numbers for can't evaluate expressions, it needs single numbers.
There are some 110+ items on each list I need to change, and just one math error on any of the three lists (!) and the program won't run correctly (I'm resizing an image, and the points I plotted on the image didn't scale up with it). I don't want to risk it.

Answer 1

It should be possible to do this with a macro but unless I'm mistaken LibreOffice macro code is quite different from Excel VBA.
However if you can afford to use several columns of your spreadsheet to figure the values out, you can do so using formulae. If cell A1 contains
Example Number (3502,456) (4560,250) (2345,223)
and B1 contains
=MID(A1,FIND("(",A1)+1,9999)
then this formula will return the 3502 as a number:
=NUMBERVALUE(LEFT(B1,FIND(",",B1)-1))
(9999 is chosen to be much larger than the likely length of any line, so the MID function will always return the whole of the rest of the text after the search character).
You should be able to combine MID and FIND functions in further cells to isolate the other numbers, assuming these are always found in the format (xxx,yyy) as per your example. Then you can use a final formula to rebuild the string from the multiplied numbers:
="Example Number (" & 4*C1 & "," & 4*E1 & ")"
and so on.
If your data has a variable number of numbers to find, some of your FIND functions may return a #VALUE error. You may need to use an IF function to exclude these, for example:
=IF(ISERROR(G1),"",G1)
would return the value of G1 if it contains data, but blank if it contains an error.

Answer 2

Here is a Python LibreOffice macro that does what you want. It assumes all of the values are in column A, and it writes the results to column B.
import re
def do_calculations():
document = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument()
sheet = document.getSheets().getByIndex(0)
cellrange = sheet.getCellRangeByName("A1:A10000")
row_tuples = cellrange.getDataArray()
row = 1
for row_tuple in row_tuples:
if row_tuple:
row = output_values(row, row_tuple[0], sheet)
def output_values(row, pairs_string, sheet):
"""Multiply pairs of values by 4 and output each pair to B column.
:param row: the row number in the B column
:param pairs_string: a string like "Example Number (123, 456) (789, 1011)"
:param sheet: the current spreadsheet
Returns the next row number in the B column.
"""
pairs = re.findall(r'\([^)]+\)', pairs_string)
for pair in pairs:
match_obj = re.match(r'\((\d+),\s*(\d+)\)', pair)
x, y = match_obj.groups()
result = "(%d,%d)" % (int(x) * 4, int(y) * 4)
cell = sheet.getCellRangeByName("B" + str(row))
cell.setString(result)
row += 1
return row
# Functions that can be called from Tools -> Macros -> Run Macro.
g_exportedScripts = do_calculations,
Save the code to a text file, for example calc_multiply_numbers.py. Put it in Scripts/python in your LibreOffice user directory. On my Windows system it is C:\Users\JimStandard\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\Scripts\python. If the python directory doesn't exist yet, create it.
To run it, open the spreadsheet and go to Tools -> Macros -> Run Macro. Under My Macros, click calc_multiply_numbers and then press the Run button.
EDIT:
I don't think you need to worry about the JRE error. On my system I can uncheck "Use a Java runtime environment" in Tools -> Options -> LibreOffice -> Advanced, and it still works. I just click "No" when it asks if I want to enable the use of a JRE now, and then it runs my python macro.
The reason it is not showing up under My Macros is because python is not able to interpret the file correctly. To find the error, test it with python using the following steps (assuming Windows):
Open a command prompt, for example by pressing Win, typing cmd, and clicking "Command Prompt" from the start menu.
Type cd "path-to-libreoffice/program". On my 64-bit system this is cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\LibreOffice 5\program" I use the normal Windows File Explorer to find the exact path.
Type "python.exe python-script". On my system it is python.exe "C:\Users\JimStandard\AppData\Roaming\LibreOffice\4\user\Scripts\python\calc_multiply_numbers.py"
The python interpreter will give an error message about the problem. If you are not able to figure out the message, write it in the comments below and I will help you.