CHOOSE in Collabora Office: Select Indexed Values with a Documented 30-Value Limit

• Introduced: the original Collabora release and launch date are not established by the reviewed sources.
• Availability: documented in Collabora Office 26.04 desktop help.
• Platform scope: online and mobile deployment support is not inferred from the desktop documentation.
• Checked: October 14, 2026. Function-specific documentation and independent controls; no native Collabora execution.

=CHOOSE(Index; Value1 [; Value2 [; ... [; Value30]]])

Index is a number or cell reference identifying a list position. The documented index range is 1–30; a meaningful selection must also have a corresponding supplied value. Each choice can be an individual value or a reference to a cell containing a value.

The short source does not specify fractional-index truncation, exact invalid-index error codes or whether unselected expressions are evaluated. Those rules are not borrowed from Excel. These examples use integer selectors within the supplied list.

Use English function names and semicolon separators as shown in the help. Text choices require quotation marks in formulas; numeric choices do not.

Enter selectors 1, 2 and 3 in A2:A4. In B2 enter and fill down:

=CHOOSE(A2;"Low";"Standard";"High")

Expected outputs are Low, Standard and High. The function chooses by position. It does not search the words alphabetically or compare their meaning with the selector.

If you rearrange the argument list to “High”, “Standard”, “Low”, selector 1 now returns High. A numeric code and its choice list therefore need a stable, documented mapping.

The first choice is position 1, not position 0. Do not subtract one from a human-readable selector unless a separate calculation actually requires a zero-based index.

Put 120, 150 and 210 in E2:E4. Put selector 2 in D2:

=CHOOSE(D2;E2;E3;E4)

Expected result: 150. Change E3 to 175, and the expected selected value becomes 175, because the choice points to that cell’s contents.

Change D2 to 3 instead, and the result becomes 210. This separates two different inputs: the selector chooses a position, while the referenced cell supplies the value at that position.

Keep labels beside the source cells so a reader can see which option each argument represents. The function does not attach descriptive metadata to an otherwise unexplained number.

Use a selector in A2 with these meanings: 1=basic, 2=standard, 3=premium. Put numeric base amount 240 in B2:

=B2*CHOOSE(A2;0.05;0.08;0.12)

The independently expected amounts are 12, 19.2 and 28.8 for selectors 1, 2 and 3. CHOOSE selects one rate; ordinary multiplication applies it to the base.

For a report label, use a separate =CHOOSE(A2;"Basic";"Standard";"Premium") formula. Keep the numeric result numeric rather than concatenating the label into the amount needed for later totals.

This is a generic arithmetic scenario, not a pricing or financial recommendation. The rates and selector policy are explicit fixture inputs.

A selector of 2 means the second supplied option, not a point halfway between the first and third values. With choices 10, 100 and 1000, index 2 returns 100, independent of the distances between the numbers.

If your problem requires interpolation between numeric thresholds, a discrete argument list does not implement that policy automatically. Define the calculation separately rather than relying on a fractional CHOOSE index whose native behavior is not established by this reference.

Similarly, CHOOSE is not a text lookup. A cell containing the label Standard is not the integer position 2 used in these examples. MATCH can address a separately documented search problem, while INDEX selects a position within a range.

Keep selectors visible and validate them against the supplied list before relying on the result. Do not hide every invalid selector with a zero fallback, since zero may be a legitimate chosen value elsewhere.

The 30-value statement belongs to Collabora’s cited 26.04 help. Another application’s larger limit does not expand this documented scope. Reference-returning range endpoints, array-index results and lazy evaluation of potentially failing branches remain unverified here; all worked choices are scalar values or individual cells.

• Collabora Office 26.04: CHOOSE.
• Editorial testing standards.

Complete function-specific documentation reviewed. Worked outputs are independently modeled reference, text or arithmetic controls, not captured native application results. Unverified entry, conversion and error boundaries retain their stated scope.