EXPAND Function in LibreOffice Calc

• Introduced: LibreOffice 25.8, explicitly stated in function-specific Help.
• Supported in: 26.8 Help and 26.8.1.1 registration; no retirement is established.
• Scope: Desktop Calc, English semicolon-separated formulas. Help identifies the COM.MICROSOFT.EXPAND namespace outside OpenFormula 1.3.
• Checked: October 14, 2026. Eight listed component/dimension examples were recalculated in LibreOfficeDev 26.8.0.0.alpha0 using headless XLSX import. Stable 25.8, 26.8.1.1 and GUI array entry were not executed.

EXPAND places an existing array at the top-left of a larger rectangle and fills newly added positions. Rows and Columns specify the final dimensions, not how many positions to append. Existing values are copied; the operation is not a resampling or repetition of the original data. Function Help.

EXPAND(Array; Rows [; Columns [; Pad_with]])

Square brackets mark optional arguments; do not type them. Array is the source range or matrix. Rows gives the final height; Columns optionally gives the final width and otherwise keeps the existing width. An explicitly omitted Rows position retains the existing height in the inspected callback. Pad_with may be numeric or text; when absent, newly added cells contain #N/A.

For a whole-array result, the official Help instructs array-formula entry with Ctrl+Shift+Enter. The examples below instead select components with INDEX or inspect dimensions and padding. They do not establish a GUI spill or array-entry workflow.

Enter this source table in H2:J3:

The native column is from LibreOfficeDev 26.8.0.0.alpha0, build 2c87e51eeaa2b413ff4ae097b2705eea1995d8e5, using headless XLSX import and forced recalculation. TRUE is a Boolean result from the padding check, not an error value. Text is shown in quotes.

The source H2:J3 has two rows and three columns. =EXPAND(H2:J3;3;4;0) makes a three-by-four rectangle with rows 1, 2, 3, 0; 4, 5, 6, 0; and 0, 0, 0, 0. The numeric zero is useful only when zero is a meaningful missing value for the next calculation. Use a visible text marker such as “pad” when the extension should remain distinguishable from genuine observations.

With m×n source cells and R×C final dimensions, the number of new positions is R×C−m×n. Expanding the example from 2×3 to 3×4 adds six positions, not just one row plus one cell. Default #N/A padding keeps the absence visible; =ISNA(INDEX(EXPAND(H2:J3;3);3;1)) checks one added position. An empty-string pad is text-like output, not a genuinely empty source cell, so later blank handling should be evaluated separately. Inspected implementation.

Choose positive final dimensions at least as large as the source. EXPAND is not a shrinking function; TAKE is the relevant selection operation. The callback rejects ordinary smaller dimensions, but extreme and negative size conversions were not executed or certified. Padding changes downstream behavior: numeric zero, empty text and #N/A are different values. The examples check selected components and dimensions, not every possible formatting or visible-array entry workflow.

TAKE, HSTACK, VSTACK, INDEX.

• Function-specific Help
• Complete versioned callback
• English native-name registration
• Typed value/empty-cell copy helper

All eight saved formula identities and their typed results were reconciled. The stale SUM cache changed to 3 and the uncached SUM returned 7. Imported _xlfn.EXPAND formulas were saved with the documented COM.MICROSOFT.EXPAND identity. These checks establish the listed development-build components only; current-source guards and unexecuted cases remain source-derived.

The empty-text example retains its saved formula and an empty result paragraph without a serialized value-type attribute. It is recorded as an empty formula result, distinct from the true blank source cells used by the flattening examples.