Bug 51917

Summary: CONCATENATE of RAND generated characters recalculating at each cell entry
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: Brian Wilson <bountonw>
Component: CalcAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG    
Severity: major CC: bountonw, rb.henschel
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.5.0 release   
Hardware: Other   
OS: macOS (All)   
Whiteboard:
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:
Attachments: Example of concatenating issue

Description Brian Wilson 2012-07-09 14:48:50 UTC
Created attachment 64025 [details]
Example of concatenating issue

While concatenating cells with randomly generated characters 

=CHAR(65+RAND()*26)

all cells with random characters recalculate simultaneously at each new event. It is kind of pretty, but does remove the functionality of this function :)

Some of the events that cause the regeneration of all random characters in the sheet are as follows:

Adding text to a cell.
Deleting text from a cell.
Deleting a column.
Pasting.

I have attached the example file.
Comment 1 Urmas 2012-07-09 14:56:18 UTC
Working as intended.

If you need persistent random values, copy them and paste special as values.
Comment 2 Brian Wilson 2012-07-09 14:58:07 UTC
Simply justifying any random column will also recalculate all randomly generated characters in the spreadsheet.
Comment 3 Brian Wilson 2012-07-09 15:10:52 UTC
So you are saying that this is a feature. Please reevaluate. That all random characters regenerate randomly for each and every cell entry and other myriad events does not seem like a desirable feature. 

What is the value of random text that changes before you can even use it? A spreadsheet is supposed to automate to some extent the calculations etc. Having to manually copy / paste-text for each generated character string is a bug. It is a pretty bug, watching rows and rows of random text recalculate with each click, but it is still a bug.
Comment 4 Brian Wilson 2012-07-09 15:17:35 UTC
indenting, highlighting, changing font or background color, bold, italics, justification, *in any cell* simultaneously regenerate random characters *for the entire spreadsheet*.
Comment 5 Urmas 2012-07-09 15:19:04 UTC
RAND function returns a different value on each call, which occur on cell recalculation due to automatic sheet recalculation. This is a standard behaviour of this function in each and every spreadsheet.

If your problem is that format changing on a sheet triggers recalculation, please state it clearly.
Comment 6 Regina Henschel 2012-07-11 18:50:20 UTC
Use RANDBETWEEN instead of RAND. RANDBETWEEN is designed to not recalculate on every event.