Bug 154076

Summary: Conditional formatting rules containing unquoted text only apply to empty cells
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: f <incoming>
Component: UIAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG    
Severity: minor    
Priority: medium    
Version: 7.5.0.3 release   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux (All)   
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:

Description f 2023-03-08 17:41:33 UTC 
Description:
I created a new conditional formatting rule with the range `E1:E1000`, as an example you can try "begins with" or "contains", and enter some text that you know you have in the range. You can observe all non-empty cells be applied with the rule, and not the ones matching your condition.

Putting double quotes around the text fixes this, but is not expected behavior and is somewhat unintuitive. This is inherently bad UX design for fields that are expected to contain text, like one would with something like "begins with".

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create a conditional formatting rule for something that would expect text, such as "begins with".
2. Apply the rule to a range you know contains the text


Actual Results:
Only empty cells have the condition applied.

Expected Results:
Parsed text input as text without quotations, as UX in a text field inherently implies a non-number input.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: Yes

Additional Info:
Version: 7.5.0.3 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 50(Build:3)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.1; UI render: default; VCL: kf5 (cairo+xcb)
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
7.5.0-1
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 Eike Rathke 2023-03-08 18:16:44 UTC 
Text not in quotes is not text but a cell reference or named range or other expression. The dialog even says so when you start typing, "Strings without quotes are interpreted as defined names or references or column/row labels." That "fields that are expected to contain text" is a misconception.

See also
"Use text inside quotes if you compare text values."
https://help.libreoffice.org/7.5/en-GB/text/scalc/01/05120100.html?&DbPAR=CALC&System=UNIX
Comment 2 f 2023-03-08 18:35:34 UTC 
I don't see such a dialog on my end, but I guess a documentation link is helpful. I did not realize there was a page for that, thank you.