UNICODE in Calligra Sheets: Identify the Unicode Code Point of the First Character

Use UNICODE to inspect the first character of imported data, distinguish a regular space from a nonbreaking space, or recover a Unicode scalar number for a displayed letter or symbol. It is useful in multilingual worksheets because it is defined in terms of Unicode rather than a system code page. It examines only the first character; use additional string operations if you need to scan the rest.

=UNICODE(text)

The pinned XML documentation specifies one string argument, integer return and UNICODE("KDE") → 75. The registration registers UNICODE separately from CODE. This one-parameter call has no separator; for IF and other multiple-argument calls the English handbook shows semicolons. Decimal formatting and function names may vary by locale; Unicode scalar values do not depend on a display font.

In A2:A7 type KDE, ©, €, 😀, a text with an ordinary leading space ( North) and éclair. Enter =UNICODE(A2) in B2, then fill through B7. These are source-derived and independently calculated expected values, not Calligra measurements.

Text-normalization caution: é can be encoded as a single precomposed code point U+00E9 or as e plus a combining accent; visual appearance alone does not make the first UNICODE result equal. For a decomposed leading e, the first scalar is U+0065 = 101. This is a property of the input sequence, not an indication that UNICODE is unreliable.

Type into A2 an identifier copied from a web page. In B2 enter:

=IF(UNICODE(A2)=32;"Starts with ordinary space";"First character is not U+0020")

For West the expected result is Starts with ordinary space. A nonbreaking space is U+00A0 = 160, so this check intentionally will not treat it as an ordinary space. To avoid a value error when there is no first character, use:

=IF(LEN(A2)=0;"Empty";UNICODE(A2))

For BMP symbols, =UNICODE(UNICHAR(8364)) is source-derived as 8364. Do not generalize this round trip to an emoji: Calligra’s UNICHAR implementation uses a single 16-bit unit and cannot synthesize an arbitrary supplementary character, even though UNICODE can read one from a string.

The C++ code converts the value to a string, returns internal errorVALUE if the string is empty, then returns the first item of a toUcs4() conversion. This is source inspection, not a direct application test of #VALUE! rendering. If an emoji seems to give a much smaller integer in another function, check whether you used CODE (first UTF-16 unit) instead of UNICODE (first full code point). If a strange value appears for multilingual names, inspect normalization, leading spaces and whether pasted characters are valid.

The 26.08.2 source does not establish every possible malformed-surrogate handling path, nor does it establish installed edition support. Do not describe an unobserved error code or behavior as tested. For numeric-looking inputs, type a literal text example before inferring locale-dependent conversion from a reference cell.

Microsoft’s Excel UNICODE documentation likewise describes the numeric code point of the first character; LibreOffice Calc’s UNICODE reference describes the same concept. This supports a conceptual match, not proof that malformed Unicode, text coercion, errors, or separators behave identically. Microsoft’s CHAR and CODE documentation use platform-specific character-set conventions, while Calligra’s pinned UNICODE uses Qt UCS-4 conversion. Always compare representative cells when exchanging documents.

See UNICHAR, CODE, CHAR, LEN, and IF.

• KDE stable-KF6 function handbook — documented syntax and example; checked 2026-10-11. The stable handbook is not a native runtime test.
• Calligra 26.08.2 function registration — official version-pinned source, checked 2026-10-11.
• Official Calligra XML help for text functions — shipped argument-type definitions, checked 2026-10-11.
• KDE 26.08.2 release announcement — release 2026-10-08; checked 2026-10-11.

Validation: Official documentation, immutable implementation and independent code-point calculations were checked. No native Calligra execution, installed-platform checks, glyph rendering or workbook interchange tests were performed.