Including a ods in a odt

users
#1

Hello everyone,

I've been using OOo for a while now, in fact, most of the time I used go-oo
and now I switched to LibO. Unfortunately, I encountered a bit of a problem.

I keep a journal in an ods file. Not a too obvious choice but for me it
eases the job. Anyway, the journal is a part of a longer assignment I need
to write. So now I am stuck wanting to include the ods in my odt in a way
that I can keep changing the ods without loosing those changes in my odt.

That means to say, is there a way to link the ods into the odt preserving
the contents and format?

Thanks for your assistance,
Johannes Stoldt

#2

Hi Johannes,

Hello everyone,

I've been using OOo for a while now, in fact, most of the time I used go-oo
and now I switched to LibO. Unfortunately, I encountered a bit of a problem.

I keep a journal in an ods file. Not a too obvious choice but for me it
eases the job. Anyway, the journal is a part of a longer assignment I need
to write. So now I am stuck wanting to include the ods in my odt in a way
that I can keep changing the ods without loosing those changes in my odt.

That means to say, is there a way to link the ods into the odt preserving
the contents and format?

I think, that "Einfügen > Objekt > OLE-Objekt" (or my personal
translation to English: "Insert > Object > OLE-Object") should do,
what you want.

I hope, this helps.

Sigrid

#3

Hello Sigrid,

Unfortunately it does not. It would do if i only had like a page within the
ods but I already have like 6 pages in the ods so all i get is a rather thin
object that goes all the way from the top to the bottom of a page but does
not even contain all the lines.

I also thought about using that but gave up because I experienced the above
and could not find a solution that would let me spread one OLE object over
more than a page.

Any other suggestions? Anyone?

#4

I'm not sure I understand your problem, but if you would refer to the ODS
cells in the ODF document like a mail merge then you could create a document
which will have all your up-to-date cell contents when you print it to a
final document (in addition to what you type in the ODF document, of course)

The only limitation I could find is that you need to have one post per
column and you are currently limited to 1024 columns in the ODS format

#5

Hi plino,

This does actually sound promising. Just to be sure we really do talk about
the same thing, I got a .ods file with three columns in which I add new
contents at the bottom. Also note, there are a lot of cell merges to merge
two or three cells horizontally. This is part of an assignment I am now
writing in a .odt file. Now I would like to add those three columns to my
.odt file in a manner the contents are included from the .ods file and
footers and so forth are appended like in the rest of the .odt.

So if we really are talking about the same thing, how would I go about doing
what you propose?

Regards,
Johannes

#6

Actually that is not what I imagined from your first post.

I thought it would be a spreadsheet with a single column used where each
line would be a new post to your journal.

Maybe you can upload an example of the ods (two lines of fake data are
enough) and what you expect the final odf to look like (a table within the
text? a quoted post?)

I'm not sure what you mean with merged text: something like C1 cell content
is =A1&B1 ?

#7

I prepared an example from my original files. See the following link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?iarw8a0eb0tbbyz

#8

I thought it was something more complex :slight_smile:

The easiest way to include it is to open the ods file, select the cells with
data and then switch to the Appendix and choose Paste Special, DDE Link.

From now on, each time you open the file it will ask you if you want to

Update all links.

You should keep the ods and odf files on the same folder.

Unfortunately relative paths doesn't work (or I can't find the option to
activate it) so you must always work on the same drive and folder otherwise
the table won't be updated.

Hope this helps...

#9

I thought it was something more complex :slight_smile:

The easiest way to include it is to open the ods file, select the cells with
data and then switch to the Appendix and choose Paste Special, DDE Link.

From now on, each time you open the file it will ask you if you want to

Update all links.

You should keep the ods and odf files on the same folder.

Unfortunately relative paths doesn't work (or I can't find the option to
activate it) so you must always work on the same drive and folder otherwise
the table won't be updated.

Hope this helps...

NOTE: I'm not sure if the DDE Link option is available under other OSes.
These instructions apply to the Windows version.

#10

Well, I'm working on Windows so the OS would really not be the problem.
Anyway, I tried what you suggested even before I came here. Unfortunately it
did not work. Since I am appending new rows to those three columns I marked
the entire columns and did as you suggested. Unfortunately, all I get is
some of the texts separated by '|'. Also, the text is automatically
formatted like the text style in my .ods file.

So either I am doing something wrong when using the DDE Links or it does not
work.

Regards,
Johannes

#11

The problem is that you should not select the columns. You must select the
cells only.

To quickly select all the contiguous cells with contents just click on cell
A1 and press Shift, Ctrl and End. If you want to select some more blank
lines keep Shift pressed and press the Down arrow or the Page Down key.

Don't select more than 4000 lines, otherwise you get the some problem
(actually the problem is somewhere between 4000 and 5000 lines) This is an
LO bug. I have no idea if it is documented.

(Another LO bug is that Shift + Page Up won't select/unselect up one page
but one line only)

I think this should solve your problem

#12

Sounds very nice but it requires me to decide how many lines I want to copy,
doesn't it? Which would defeat my basic problem... I want to copy all the
contents of those three columns without knowing how many rows I will
eventually have. This is why I selected the columns but, like I said, that
fails. Any other idea?

#13

You can include up to 4000 rows (do you think you will have more than that?)
and it will always be updated.

Before delivering the report you just need to delete the lines in excess (or
leave them in...)

The other option (mail merge) I was suggesting would require one page per
post instead of a table...

#14

Well, taking that advise, that would pretty much equal the "use html special
paste at the end of your work" right at the end of your work approach. But I
wanted a more programmatic approach which would spare me the last bit of "do
it yourself". Anyway thanks for that. I think this was quite a lot of input
and it actually helped me understanding the capabilities of LibrO.

Thx,
Johannes

#15

No, it's not equal at all. Your data will be updated dinamically as you
modify if it the ods file.
There is no similarity with a static HTML table.

I'm glad I could help :wink: