IMAGINARY Function (Calligra Sheets)

• Introduced: First release not established; the name is present in Calligra 2.4.0 source.
• Supported in: Calligra Sheets 26.08.2, with no retirement established.
• Scope: Desktop Sheets with the Engineering module. Examples use English semicolon-separated formulas.
• Checked: October 14, 2026. Formulas were executed through the official 25.04.2 engine library and checked against source and independent mathematics. This is not GUI-cell or workbook-import evidence; 26.08.2 was source-checked, not executed.

IMAGINARY returns b from a complex value a+b·i. The result is the numeric coefficient, without an appended i or j. For example, the imaginary coefficient of 3−4i is −4. It is different from magnitude, phase and the real component. Function help.

=IMAGINARY(complexValue)

Exactly one argument is required. A native value constructed by COMPLEX is a direct way to avoid ambiguities in text entry. A real input has imaginary component zero. The tested strings “3+4i” and “3+4j” both produced 4. Registration and implementation, with versioned help.

Noninteger results are rounded to twelve decimal places. The formulas construct the input components explicitly, making each case reproducible.

Put the real component 3 in A2 and the imaginary coefficient −4 in B2. =IMAGINARY(COMPLEX(A2;B2)) returns −4. This provides a direct cross-check when rebuilding complex values from two measured columns: the extracted coefficient should agree with the original B value.

The recorded =IMAGINARY(IMCONJUGATE(COMPLEX(3;4))) returns −4. Conjugation leaves the real component unchanged and reverses the imaginary sign. That identity is useful for checking transformations or an imported convention, but it does not establish which sign convention an external measurement system uses.

A purely imaginary value 0+4i has coefficient 4; a purely real value 3+0i has coefficient 0. A zero coefficient does not mean the whole complex value is zero. Examine IMREAL as well when that distinction matters.

The tested invalid text “abc”, empty text and TRUE all returned 0. For the first two, the shared converter substitutes zero after an unsuccessful text parse. TRUE becomes the real value 1, whose imaginary coefficient is also zero. These different inputs therefore produce the same result.

Validate the original value rather than using IMAGINARY alone to decide whether it was a valid complex number. An omitted argument returned #VALUE!. These are exact tested parser cases; locale-specific decimal separators and arbitrary text formats were not swept.

The complex conversion helper explains the text and Boolean cases above. The inspected Engineering module and complex converter are byte-identical between 25.04.2 and 26.08.2. That source comparison does not establish every locale, import path or extreme-value case.