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Hello,
if we open up an example MS excel file, the macros and functions are not
100% working in LibreOffice.
When will LibreOffice have 100% MS macro and function support?
Or this is something that it's not worth it to do in LibreOffice?
IMHO if LibreOffice would have 100% MS compability for macros and functions
too, then... nothing would stand against LibreOffice to conquer the Office
world.
Thanks.
Hi,
I guess 100% is impossible....
Liebe Grüße / Yours,
Florian Reisinger
Hello,
if we open up an example MS excel file, the macros and functions are not
100% working in LibreOffice.When will LibreOffice have 100% MS macro and function support?
I hope LO *never** *has MS macro capability! That is how a great many viruses are spread on the MS system.
Although I agree that this would be great, it is not possible. Things are hampered in that LO supported things that MSO does not, and MSO supports things that LO does not. The moment you have an MSO macro that exploits a capability not supported by LO, things fail.; for example, the difference between a character highlight and a character background. How do you attempt to map this for 100% compatibility if it is not supported in LO. Sure, I am picking at nits here, but, I think that the most important take away in this regard is that even if we do a really good job, if we happen to miss that one thing that you need...
Even if we were only looking to say hit 80% compatible by emulating the objects and behavior in that way (and I suspect that it may not even be possible given how some of the VBA macros function), that still leaves 20% of the stuff that might fail. And then, if your macro uses .NET libraries and things not available on non Windows platforms, those will not work unless the entire .NET stuff is supported.
Off hand, I would say that this is a low priority for the majority of the users (in other words, there exist things that the majority would put as a higher priority such as improved OOXML support).
Understand that this is a really hard task, which would require significant investment in time and money. The end result would still not provide 100% compatibility.
So, I don't really expect it.
Given that LibO currently has support for half a dozen programming
languages that can be used to write extensions, I doubt it will ever be
implemented.
_IF_ good coding practices were adhered to, when the macro was written,
and updated, then rewriting them in a language that LibO supports is
trivial.
OTOH, assuming the code is like 99.9999% of the code found in MSO
macros, it not only is undocumented, but a mess of spaghetti, of the
type that Richard Conway condemned back in 1978.
In the latter instance, the only migration path is to start with the
requirements, as _currently_ used, and go from there.
jonathon
* English - detected
* English
* English
<javascript:void(0);>
the original macro requirements, and work from there.
Hi 
Apparently there is a problem using MS Office macros in different
versions of MS Office itself. So a macro 'written' for MS Office 2007
might not work very well in MS Office 2010 or 2013. Let alone going
backwards to try using the macro on an earlier version of MS Office!!
So moving from 1 version of MS Office to another might well involve a
bit of macro re-writing (or 'just' editing if you are lucky) but then
will probably need re-re-writing the next time you move to another
version of MS Office.
By contrast moving to LibreOffice / OpenOffice means re-writing just
the once. The macro will then work on pretty much any version of LO
and AOO even if you go back to earlier versions of either.
Also LO and AOO allow for a few other languages to be used so you
don't have to stick to Basic. I think Java is possible but obviously
worth avoiding these days. I'm fairly sure C++ is not an option for
macros. So Python is probably the best option if it's possible.
LO and AOO make it easier to write Add-ons / Plugins which we call
"Extensions" these can be kept secret within your company or
published, preferably using an Open Source license such as GPL, LGPL
or MPL. Publishing them to the LibreOffice website means other people
may well try it out and may be able to point out bugs or problems = so
you get a lot more testing for free. If you Open Source'd it then you
might find some other people help to fix things or update things for
free.
I've never heard of OpenOffice or LibreOffice macros being used as an
attack vector so maybe MS Office should copy our way of handling
macros!
Regards from
Tom
At least one proof-of-concept extension was released.
At least one document with an included proof-of-concept macro was released.
The upside of those proof of concept items, is that the user had to
deliberately click on something, for the payload to be delivered.
However, several years ago there was an article in a language related to
French, that implied that at least one "malware attack vector" using ODF
file formats was in the wild. (This article was several years after the
French ministry of Defence discussed security flaws in OOo, and was
referring to then-current events.)
One of the Snowdon Papers implied that OOo security flaws were being
exploited, but it gave no details about what, where, or how it was being
done.
That said, if one works in area where spear-phishing is a daily yawn,
the security model offered by OOo, and its derivatives, is harder to
breach than that offered by MSO.
jonathon
Hi
Yeh, the upgrade to 3.4.0 supposedly dealt with 1 security issue and i
think there have been 1 or 2 upgrades since then that we were urged to
do as a matter of some urgency for similar reasons. That makes about
2-4 in about 4 years. I'm not sure if macros featured in any besides
the 1 mentioned. I never seemed to fall foul of the problems even
though i didn't upgrade when told to, even on 'my' Windows machines.
Wrt Johnny Rosenburg's comment that macros are not 100% backwards
compatible and ancient macros might not be 100% guaranteed to work in
newer versions but it all works "pretty much". It seems there are
changes that may affect some macros but these only happen quite a bit
less often than security issues occur in the whole program/suite.
Regards from
Tom
Hi,
Hopefully an easy question for someone
How to I turn off auto-generation of list entries (preferably without altering any other settings?
I generally tend to find this feature a pain in the proverbials, and would much rather apply list formatting, etc using styles, after a document (or section of a document) has been completed.
The problem really came to a head yesterday, when I was writing up some notes on language, and made some table headings (not an actual table, but one made "manually" using tabs) using M. F. N. (for masculine, feminine, neuter).
LO completely reinterpreted this, and, when I pressed 'enter,' made it into the first entry of a list, supposing it to be the Roman numeral M, and inserting MI at the beginning of the new line.
I was unable to find a way to eradicate this effectively, and had to stop what I was doing as a result.
I looked in "options" and I looked in "preferences" but couldn't see a way to turn off this behaviour. There was nothing in the paragraph style that I could see that should cause this behaviour.
(IMO, this behaviour should be restricted to styles which are designated for lists).
thanks, /Gary
Hi Gary,
Hi,
Hopefully an easy question for someone
How to I turn off auto-generation of list entries (preferably without altering any other settings?I generally tend to find this feature a pain in the proverbials, and would much rather apply list formatting, etc using styles, after a document (or section of a document) has been completed.
The problem really came to a head yesterday, when I was writing up some notes on language, and made some table headings (not an actual table, but one made "manually" using tabs) using M. F. N. (for masculine, feminine, neuter).
LO completely reinterpreted this, and, when I pressed 'enter,' made it into the first entry of a list, supposing it to be the Roman numeral M, and inserting MI at the beginning of the new line.
I was unable to find a way to eradicate this effectively, and had to stop what I was doing as a result.
I looked in "options" and I looked in "preferences" but couldn't see a way to turn off this behaviour. There was nothing in the paragraph style that I could see that should cause this behaviour.(IMO, this behaviour should be restricted to styles which are designated for lists).
This FAQ may help you
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq/Writer/025
Kind regards
Sophie
Hi Sophie,
Thanks for the link; yes, I looked at that menu as well, but couldn't see anything pertinent to generation of list entries. Perhaps I have a blind spot?
/Gary
Hi
I don't seem to be able to get the (wrong) results as described. I'm
attaching a quick little simple example file to give a few examples of
what it sounds like you are doing - and a table method. Obviously i
have missed something from the description so hopefully you'll be able
to clarify what you are doing.
On the other hand maybe my file might be free of formatting issues and
prove useful in getting the task done. If that's the case i might
upload it to Nabble so that other people can use it but i haven't done
anything particularly special so i doubt it's going to help in this
way.
When any word-processor behaves badly i find it helps to start a fresh
new document and use the default format for original versions of the
file. Then i might maybe create copies in other formats for other
people to use but at the moment i am beginning to find an increasing
number of people seem increasingly happy with ODF.
A lot of people seem to open an old document and then use that to
create new documents but that way tons of hidden formatting codes and
stuff seem to lurk and sometimes do some really odd things. I once
found a document that seemed to have traces indicating it had started
as a Word Perfect document and at some point been through Apple
systems and Word. Copy&Pasting as unformatted text into a fresh new
document got rid of all sorts of weird problems.
Writer doesn't seem to generate lists in the way described, at least
not for me. Calc does, of course, but i usually have to select 3-4
cells and then drag. So i am not sure what is going on.
Regards from
Tom
Hi Tom,
A lot of people seem to open an old document and then use that to
create new documents
[sometimes that's the easiest way in windows]
but that way tons of hidden formatting codes and
stuff seem to lurk and sometimes do some really odd things.
[I'd have thought that selecting all with Ctrl-A and hitting del or backspace should remove everything? perhaps not?]
Copy&Pasting as unformatted text into a fresh new
document got rid of all sorts of weird problems.
[I'll try that, it may well work]
Writer doesn't seem to generate lists in the way described, at least
not for me. Calc does, of course, but i usually have to select 3-4
cells and then drag. So i am not sure what is going on.
[I've tried it here in the office with a new document, and it doesn't seem to do it here, either; so your explanation may well be right. I'm not sure if the version here and the version at home are the same, I'll check.The style in my home doc was default, and there was nothing I could find that indicated that it might be in the middle of a list. Perhaps there is a way of making formatting codes visible in a document? And deleting unwanted ones? If not, perhaps it might be a good idea if one were to be introduced?]
best,/Gary
Hopefully an easy question for someone
Yup: so easy that there are two answers!
How to I turn off auto-generation of list entries (preferably without altering any other settings? I generally tend to find this feature a pain in the proverbials, and would much rather apply list formatting, etc using styles, after a document (or section of a document) has been completed. The problem really came to a head yesterday, when I was writing up some notes on language, and made some table headings (not an actual table, but one made "manually" using tabs) using M. F. N. (for masculine, feminine, neuter). LO completely reinterpreted this, and, when I pressed 'enter,'Â made it into the first entry of a list, supposing it to be the Roman numeral M, and inserting MI at the beginning of the new line. I was unable to find a way to eradicate this effectively, and had to stop what I was doing as a result.
Always think of keeping the facility and dealing it with it piecemeal when it happens. The action of pressing Enter to complete the first paragraph causes an automatic "correction" which you will notice. The correction is a separate process from the paragraph break that you actually want. So if you go *immediately* to Edit | Undo (or Ctrl+Z), you can remove the correction but retain the part you need.
I looked in "options" and I looked in "preferences" but couldn't see a way to turn off this behaviour. There was nothing in the paragraph style that I could see that should cause this behaviour.
If you really want to disable this correction process completely, remove the tick from Tools | AutoCorrect Options... | Options | Apply numbering - symbol: *.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
Hi
There are various different layers of hidden codes. Ctrl A, Delete
only gets rid of a few of them.
Some can be seen by pressing the backwards sort of double-struck P in
the toolbar icons. This "shows non-printing characters", such as tabs
and end-of-paragraphs, that don't get printed out. These are the ones
that get deleted by Ctrl A, delete.
If you poke around with a hex-editor or get even further (well,
slightly further) down into the 1s and 0s (with a side-bar or
something to see the ascii characters) then you see all sorts of weird
characters, most of which are incomprehensible to almost anyone but
some are human-readable and show things such as names, systems,
occasionally even addresses and phone numbers from ancient times. I
think some of the incomprehensible ones are the ones doing screwey
things.
Yeh, Windows tries to avoid letting people develop good habits and
tries to push them into bad ones.
One of my favs was Microsoft saying you should never accept cookies
and never turn your anti-virus off for anything. Then their own
website asked you to accept cookies and to install anything from them
they would tell you to turn off your anti-virus. However if you did
so and ran into troubles then 'experts' would blame the user for
obviously bad habits and ignoring security issues.
One wonders why people are so surprised that Windows so frequently
runs into problems and is so open to malware and attacks.
Regards from
Tom
ha ha!I guess it doesn't surprise me. Thinking about it though, that's not what I normally do. What I do is to open a document, then create a new one from the file>new menu entry. This seems to me to be the best way to do it - but maybe I'm wrong.
Anyway, I'm probably going to install the latest version very soon, so I'll see how that behaves!!
Thanks,/G.
Hopefully an easy question for someone
Yup: so easy that there are two answers!
...
Always think of keeping the facility and dealing
it with it piecemeal when it happens. The action
of pressing Enter to complete the first paragraph
causes an automatic "correction" which you will
notice. The correction is a separate process from
the paragraph break that you actually want. So if
you go *immediately* to Edit | Undo (or Ctrl+Z),
you can remove the correction but retain the part you need.
Thanks, Brian, I'll try to remember to try that and see if it helps.
I looked in "options" and I looked in
"preferences" but couldn't see a way to turn off
this behaviour. There was nothing in the
paragraph style that I could see that should cause this behaviour.
If you really want to disable this correction
process completely, remove the tick from Tools |
AutoCorrect Options... | Options | Apply numbering - symbol: *.
I'm pretty sure I unchecked that, and it didn't make any difference. I'd better double check, though. As I indicated in a response to another reply, it doesn't seem to work like that here in the office, in a new document. It seems that in my document at home, LO seems to think that it is in the middle of a list and responds accordingly. I really don't know. I'm going to install the latest version soon, though, and will see if that helps...
I trust this helps.
I hope it does! We'll have to see 
Brian Barker
Thanks,/Gary
Hi
Yes, you are doing the correct thing.
So, my answer doesn't explain why you are running into the problems
you are having. My advice might still have helped but more by
accident than for the reasons i gave. Errr, of course LibreOffice
also puts tons of stuff in that underlaying coding but i think it does
a lot less than Word.
Fortunately Brian has given a good answer that hopefully might help.
His answer just fleshes out the answers given by other people this
time but you can always rely on his answers as being well worth
trying.
Regards from
Tom