Compound Interest

There is no function in either OpenOffice.org or Microsoft Excel for calculating interest on an investment (or loan).
There is a simple formula to work this out that needs three figures:
- the initial value
- the number of payments
- the percentage rate that each payment is worked out at.

Assuming A2 is value, B2 is the interest rate and C2 is the number of periods, the formula in OpenOffice.org would be =A2*(power(1+B2;B2)).
This also works in Excel, but change the ; to a comma.

Alternatively, if you are comfortable with Maths you may want to use the ^ symbol for the power calculation, in which case the formula wold be =A2*(1+B2)^C2 in both programs.

Microsoft has instructions for making this formula into a macro at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141695
The advantage is that all you would need to enter into the cell would be =Yearly_Rate(A2,B2,C3).