DMIN in Collabora Office: Find Selected Minima without Confusing Zero and No Data

• 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.

=DMIN(Database; DatabaseField; SearchCriteria)

All arguments are required. The dedicated help excludes blank and nonnumeric field cells. It documents zero when no records match or no nonzero numeric values remain in the selected field.

That fallback is not evidence that zero was actually observed. Pair an extremum with a numeric count when the presence of data matters.

Enter this database in A1:E8, including the header row. Cells marked leave empty must be physically empty; do not type those words or enter an empty-string formula. Enter pending as ordinary text.

Put the exact header Cost in G1 and the criterion >=10 in G2. The criteria range is G1:G2, including its header. It selects items A, B, F and G. Its column need not be vertically aligned with the database’s Cost column.

Use an empty output cell outside the database and criteria areas for each formula. Do not include unused rows in these criteria ranges. The database range includes all seven records, even though only four satisfy this first criterion.

For Cost >=10, use:

=DMIN(A1:E8;"Units";G1:G2)
=DMIN(A1:E8;"Cost";G1:G2)

The selected Units values are 4, 0 and 6, plus an empty cell. Their minimum is zero. Selected costs are 12, 20, 15 and 11, whose minimum is eleven, belonging to item G.

The empty Units cell is excluded from the numeric calculation; it does not supply a new zero observation. In this fixture the zero belongs to B explicitly.

Put Cost in G4 and Units in H4. Put >=10 in G5 and >0 in H5. Same-row AND criteria now select A and F.

=DMIN(A1:E8;"Units";G4:H5) gives 4. The added condition deliberately changes the question from minimum recorded quantity to minimum strictly positive recorded quantity.

The numeric count is two, and the largest selected Units value is six. Keep the >0 rule visible so readers know why the recorded zero was excluded.

With the original G1:G2 criteria, DCOUNT on Units gives 3, confirming that DMIN’s zero comes from a nonempty numeric set.

A separate Cost >100 criterion selects no records. DMIN’s documented result is also zero, but the numeric count is 0. A report should label these states differently rather than presenting both as an observed minimum of zero.

The same caution applies when records match but their selected field contains only text. An omitted-field DCOUNT can establish record presence, while a field-specific DCOUNT checks numeric observations.

In a separate copy of the fixture, change F’s Units from six to zero. The original Cost >=10 criterion now sees values four, zero and zero, giving minimum zero again.

Both B and F share that minimum. DMIN returns the value, not a unique item label or a count of tied items. The record count and numeric count stay four and three, respectively.

If the original six is restored, only B has the zero minimum. A stable minimum alone does not prove that the set of minimum-producing records stayed unchanged.

In another separate copy, change A’s Units from four to the numeric input -4, leaving B zero and F six. The selected minimum becomes −4. A minimum operation is not a positivity validator.

A >0 criterion would deliberately exclude that negative observation and the zero, leaving only six. Keep such data-policy choices separate from the underlying function’s numeric minimum.

Exact database and criteria headers matter. The shared reference documents argument errors for an invalid field header or index; those should not be treated as a legitimate no-match zero.

The source’s special date/logical numeric classification is separate from the plain-number examples here. Formula-empty strings, mixed error propagation and unsupported text-parsing cases are not certified. Use DMAX for the corresponding selected maximum, not as a substitute for a missing-data check.

The field argument selects the column to calculate after records are matched; it need not be the column used in the criteria. It can be a quoted header, a reference to its header cell, or a one-based column index within the database.

For this table, Units, C1 and index 3 identify the same field. Index three means the third database column, not an absolute worksheet-column number. The shared help says a numeric field index ignores digits after the decimal point, but the examples use integers for clarity.

Criteria in the same row are combined with AND; criteria in separate rows are combined with OR. Repeating a header lets two conditions apply to the same field. Text matching and wildcard or regular-expression behavior depend on Calc’s calculation settings. The primary numeric criterion avoids those pattern choices.

If you use literal Team criteria, enable whole-cell matching and use the exact labels shown. Do not silently treat wildcard and regular-expression modes as interchangeable. The shared database documentation also treats dates and logical values as numeric in these functions; that rule should not be replaced with another aggregation function’s type rules.

• Collabora Office 26.04: DMIN.
• Shared database arguments and criteria rules.
• Editorial testing standards.

Complete function-specific and shared database documentation reviewed. Outputs are independent row-selection and arithmetic controls or explicit documented rules, not captured native results. Formulas use English names and semicolon separators.