XML document

users
#1

Hello,

I was writing my dissertation yesterday using Libre Office Writer. I
accidentally saved it as 2003 XML document.

I had written 3000+ words and now I can not get the words back.

However, when I open the document in Libre Office Writer, It comes up
saying that there is 3000+ words in the word count and 6 pages in the
properties but I can only see headers, some footnotes and two small
paragraphs. My hand in is on monday and I'm having a nightmare right now.

you can see in this image that there is 3362 words however only showing two
pages of around 300-400 words.

This second picture shows the 6 pages that it says it has.

​
if i open the document in anything other than Libre Office Writer, it only
appears in formula or code.

I am going to attach the document now.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Tom

#2

Hi Tom:

The e-mail users@global.libreoffice.org not accept attachment. To share
your document with us you can upload it to other sites like Dropbox, and
then send an email to this list with the link of the document on that
site and we can download to analize.

Regards,

Jorge

#3

Hi Tom,

I am assuming that if you have been working on this for a while, then
you have a previous version somewhere in ODT format ? Would that not be
an option ? Saving in another format doesn't overwrite the previous file.

Alex

#4

I was writing my dissertation yesterday using Libre Office Writer. I accidentally saved it as 2003 XML document. I had written 3000+ words and now I can not get the words back. However, when I open the document in Libre Office Writer, It comes up saying that there is 3000+ words in the word count and 6 pages in the properties but I can only see headers, some footnotes and two small paragraphs.

If I rename this as a .docx it also opens in OpenOffice as well as the Microsoft Word Viewer showing only those two pages. Examining the XML itself in Internet Explorer or a plain text viewer confirms that the small amount of text that you are seeing is all there is in the file.

you can see in this image that there is 3362 words however only showing two pages of around 300-400 words. This second picture shows the 6 pages that it says it has.

Examining the raw XML again shows that the figures of 6 pages, 3362 words, 20511 characters, and 55 paragraphs are coded in the file itself, and evidently LibreOffice is repeating those without calculating values itself. If you save a copy as .odt (but beware: see below and look for back-up copies first), I think you will see that you stimulate LibreOffice to recalculate the figures and come up with 30 paragraphs, 499 words, and 2974 characters.

So the material you have lost is simply not in this file.

o As someone has already said, if this was the first time you saved the document in a new format, you should still have the previously saved version in the older format, which will not have been overwritten. Look in your own folders for Dissertation.odt (or whatever).

o Look in Tools | Options.. for the path to Backups. Navigate there and look for Dissertation.bak. If you find it, *make a copy in your own document folders*, change the extension to .odt (or whatever it might have been), and hope that it contains your lost work.

o Go back to your most recent external back-up copy of the document and continue working from there.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker

#5

Hi Tom,

I opened the XML file in Word 15.24 for Mac OSX
It only contains 2 pages (492 words).

I opened your ODT file in LO530 alpha (my own master build)
It too only contains 2 pages. (483 words)

Both documents are substantially identical.

Alex

#6

If I open the XML file in a text editor, I see the same content. I can
only assume that at some stage you must have erroneously deleted some
content from your original ODT file, albeit inadvertently, as the two
files are the same.

Sorry to not be able to help any further.

Alex

#7

Alexander Thurgood wrote:

>
> Hi Tom,
>
> I opened the XML file in Word 15.24 for Mac OSX
> It only contains 2 pages (492 words).
>
> I opened your ODT file in LO530 alpha (my own master build)
> It too only contains 2 pages. (483 words)
>
> Both documents are substantially identical.
>
> Alex

That was MY ODT file, which apparently reached the original folder :slight_smile:

#8

I tried to save one of my own documents as MS 2003 XML, and it also contains only a part of my original document. Apparently the MS 2003 XML output filter is severely broken, and it should be repaired, or at least be disabled as long as it in this state. There probably isn't a good enough unit test for it in the build process.

#9

This is impossible tho. If I deleted these sections I would have had to have
deleted them separately as they were not together. And also if I had of
deleted them, the footnotes would have disappeared also? I would have had to
have highlighted each paragraph and deleted them and made sure I didn't
delete the citation... I remember perfectly saving my paper, exiting Libre
Office Writer and then going to bed. There's just no way.

I also don't appear to have any backups and I wrote that in one day so I
don't have another format saved.

#10

Hi Tom,

This is impossible tho. If I deleted these sections I would have had to have
deleted them separately as they were not together. And also if I had of
deleted them, the footnotes would have disappeared also? I would have had to
have highlighted each paragraph and deleted them and made sure I didn't
delete the citation... I remember perfectly saving my paper, exiting Libre
Office Writer and then going to bed. There's just no way.

I'm not saying that there wasn't a problem with LibreOffice, who knows
it could well have been a "Heisenbug"-type scenario that only occurs in
some specific, seemingly random circumstances - e.g. saving to network
drive where the connection fails, saving to USB key, power surge/outage,
etc.

I also don't appear to have any backups and I wrote that in one day so I
don't have another format saved.

That is unfortunate indeed. The file that you posted doesn't contain the
missing information, it is full of xml verbiage.

Alex

#11

Alexander Thurgood wrote:

>
> Hi Tom,
>
> > This is impossible tho. If I deleted these sections I would have had to have
> > deleted them separately as they were not together. And also if I had of
> > deleted them, the footnotes would have disappeared also? I would have had to
> > have highlighted each paragraph and deleted them and made sure I didn't
> > delete the citation... I remember perfectly saving my paper, exiting Libre
> > Office Writer and then going to bed. There's just no way.
> >
>
> I'm not saying that there wasn't a problem with LibreOffice, who knows
> it could well have been a "Heisenbug"-type scenario that only occurs in
> some specific, seemingly random circumstances - e.g. saving to network
> drive where the connection fails, saving to USB key, power surge/outage,
> etc.

As I wrote in a previous message, I saved one of my documents as MS 2003 XML, and it was severely broken. A large part was missing, so this doesn't seem an intermittent bug, but something structural.

#12

I just saved a document as MS 2003 XML and when I reopened it it was quite creatively messed up: broken headers and footers, bad fonts, weird vertical strips of text, ... .

I did a search for '2003 xml' at bugs.documentfoundation.org and found a number of old related bugs. The ones that I looked at had not had any attention for years except for annual checks that they still happen. It doesn't seem that it's a high priority. I hadn't even realized that there was such an export format.

- Robert