Problem pasting spreadsheet cells into Impress

Tanstaafl · January 13, 2012, 9:18pm

Hi everyone,

Can anyone confirm this as a bug, or explain why it is such a problem?

I have been meaning to report this since forever, but I do it so rarely that I just haven't...

Whenever I try to copy some cells from a spreadsheet and paste the into an Impress Presentation Libreoffice (and Openoffice used to do the same thing) totally locks up goes into never-never land, and I have to kill it.

The only way to paste from a spreadsheet into a Presentation that I have found is to do Paste Special, then take the Default 'calc8' format, and that pastes perfectly.

What is up with this? Why doesn't it just 'Paste' as calc8 format??

Tom_Davies · January 13, 2012, 9:38pm

Hi
Weird. It was fine for me. Ubuntu 10.04 (or 10.10) and LibreOffice 3.3.2 (still, i guess i really should upgrade sometime). I do have the memory options all set far higher than defaults. Only 2Gb ram tho.
Regards from
Tom

Tanstaafl · January 13, 2012, 9:49pm

Sorry, I neglected to provide system details...

This is on Windows XP Pro, and I just confirmed it does the exact same thing on a brand new install of 3.4.4 on Windows 7 64 bit...

TomW1 · January 13, 2012, 10:17pm

Both 3.4.4 and 3.5.0beta3, on Vista, will paste a table of the selected Calc cells without using Paste Special.

TomW

Tanstaafl · January 15, 2012, 3:25pm

Well, since I wouldn't touch Vista with a ten foot pole, I don't care if it works with Vista...

As I said, it does the exact same thing in Windows 7... can you confirm the problem with XP or 7?

TomW1 · January 15, 2012, 5:55pm

Just installed 3.4.4 on an XP VM. I can still paste a a range of cells into a presentation creating a table of values.

TomW

P.S.
Understand the Vista issue in may ways. I could comfortable run two VM's on XP along with Firefox and Thunderbird. Vista can't handle it. Two VM's barely are usable.

Tanstaafl · January 26, 2012, 4:56pm

Anyone??

This is just a normal, standard installation, nothing has been tweaked, and it does this on every PC in our office, and has for a long time.

Something is not right...

Tom_Davies · January 26, 2012, 5:16pm

Hi
No problems on WinXp Sp3 but a really doddery old machine. LO version 3.4.3

Hmmm, doesn't look quite right as lettering is a bit larger so i guess i should have pasted without formatting.
Regards from
Tom

cornouws · January 26, 2012, 10:06pm

Hi,
Tanstaafl wrote (13-01-12 22:17)

Whenever I try to copy some cells from a spreadsheet and paste the into
an Impress Presentation Libreoffice (and Openoffice used to do the same
thing) totally locks up goes into never-never land, and I have to kill it.

No problem for me in 3.5.0rc1 (only I tested now).
So please give more details, as others to help finding where the problem might be.

Thanks,

Tanstaafl · January 27, 2012, 5:29pm

Any chance you could try in a stable version?

We are using 3.4.3, 3.4.4 and 3.4.5 (haven't updated all yet)...

this was also a problem in older version going all the way back to Openoffice days...

A simple 'paste' (or Ctrl-V) results in the problem, but 'Paste Special' and clicking OK (keeping the default selection of calc8) works fine...

I really don't know what other details I can give... these are all standard installs, on Windows XP Pro sp3 fully patched (I thought I already gave those details though - if not, my bad)...

cornouws · January 30, 2012, 8:36pm

Tanstaafl wrote (27-01-12 18:29)

Any chance you could try in a stable version?

We are using 3.4.3, 3.4.4 and 3.4.5 (haven't updated all yet)...

I tried in 3.4.5 and it works there fine too. Ctrl-V creates a nice Impress-table with the content that I copy from Calc.

Tanstaafl · January 31, 2012, 12:04pm

But... we don't want to convert the copied cells into an Impress Table when pasting them, we want them to be an embedded 'spreadsheet', that when double-clicked, allows you to edit it as if it was a spreadsheet. This is how it used to work a long time ago - and how Microsoft Office works by default.

I don't know which version/update changed this...

I'll have to find an example spreadsheet/Presentation that causes this problem and file a bug and upload them to it...

Thanks for checking Cor...

TomW1 · January 31, 2012, 11:31pm

Tanstaafl:

OOo 2.4.2 pastes as a calc8 file by default.
OOo 3.2.1 pastes as table of cells by default.

All on Vista (No rocks please)

TomW

Tanstaafl · February 1, 2012, 11:33am

Hi Tom,

Thanks very much for looking at this, but a question to confirm...

It looks like you didn't check every version in between, just figured out that it changed somewhere between 2.4.2 and 3.2.1, correct?

Now, I guess the questions are, 1) what was the precise version where this behavior changed, 2) was the change intentional, and 3) if so, *why*.

Imho, the default behavior should mimic MSO (the most popular office package with the largest installed base, whether one likes it or not).

Cor? anyone? Should I just go file a bug?

TomW1 · February 2, 2012, 2:34am

Tanstaafl:

The earliest I have found that changed to pasting as a table is OOo3.0.1. I may have the release notes archived somewhere.

TomW

cornouws · February 3, 2012, 10:47pm

Hi,

Tanstaafl wrote (31-01-12 12:42)

I tried in 3.4.5 and it works there fine too. Ctrl-V creates a nice
Impress-table with the content that I copy from Calc.

But... we don't want to convert the copied cells into an Impress Table
when pasting them, [...]

Hmm. I then I was mislead by (one of) your first post(s) in this thread:

Tanstaafl wrote (13-01-12 22:17)

Whenever I try to copy some cells from a spreadsheet and paste the into
an Impress Presentation Libreoffice (and Openoffice used to do the same
thing) totally locks up goes into never-never land, and I have to kill it.

Sorry about that,

Tanstaafl · February 4, 2012, 1:45pm

No problem, sorry for being a little unclear, and thanks for your efforts at reproducing the problem...

The main point of my question/report - which I failed to emphasize - was the fact that the default format when copy/pasting cells from a spreadsheet into an Impress document had *changed* from calc8 to an Impress Table, which was causing the problems we were having.

The fact is, it is the fact that it defaults to pasting as an Impress Table that causes the problem (appearing to go into 'lala land' whenever there is any content of significance that is copied/pasted).

Also, when testing with just a few cells of simple text content (no formatting/colors/styles applied on a larger selection of cells (say, 10 columns and 20 rows), it does work better, but it still takes a *much* longer time to paste than I think it should (10 seconds? 15? 20?), but it doesn't totally lock up. But, when copy/pasting a larger set of cells with styles applied (and maybe some lo res graphics inside the cells), that is when it goes into lala land. But, to be more precise... I think I do recall waiting once (not doing anything else on the PC during this time) and it did *eventually* come back to life with the cells pasted in as a table after maybe 10 or 15 *minutes*, but the result was totally unusable anyway (the table was way, way bigger than the same content pasted as calc8 content and no amount of trying to reformat it would help).

I will get a sample document that exhibits the problem, and open a bug and attach the document. I'll report back here with the bug # once I've done this, and maybe you could then try the precise steps to reproduce the problem to verify it with the sample document in the bug...