Bug 53491

Summary: FILEOPEN: "Detect special numbers" option during text import seems to be backwards?
Product: LibreOffice Reporter: skoehler
Component: CalcAssignee: Not Assigned <libreoffice-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME    
Severity: normal    
Priority: medium    
Version: 3.6.0.4 release   
Hardware: Other   
OS: All   
See Also: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154131
Whiteboard: BSA
Crash report or crash signature: Regression By:
Bug Depends on:    
Bug Blocks: 108254, 120200    
Attachments: An example TSV file showing the issue with exponential-formatted numbers.

Description skoehler 2012-08-14 12:50:54 UTC 
Created attachment 65544 [details]
An example TSV file showing the issue with exponential-formatted numbers.

Problem description: 
Selection of the detect special numbers seems to work backwards from documentation (http://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Text_Import#Detect_special_numbers) and (at least my) expectations.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open temp.tsv (attached) using scalc
2. Select (or don't select) "Detect special numbers" on import.

Current behavior:
"Detect special numbers" selected -> 3E is left as text
"Detect special numbers" unselected -> 3E is converted to 3

Expected behavior:
The exact opposite behavior (but with the option still left unselected by default...I believe this matches Excel's behavior, not that Excel is the touchstone to meet :) ).

Platform (if different from the browser): CentOS 5.6, x86_64
              
Other notes: Interestingly, the documentation seems to be incorrect either way about not interpreting any exponential number...you'll notice that the 2nd item in temp.tsv (3E2) is interpreted as a number regardless of this option's value.  However, Excel does the same thing, so I actually prefer it that way for interoperability purposes.  In any event, this software is truly great, thanks!  And, as always, I apologize in advance if this is something braindead that I'm not understanding properly.

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1
Comment 1 Juan Canham 2012-12-23 20:34:28 UTC 
Confirmed on Version 3.6.2.2 (Build ID: 360m1(Build:2)) on Kubuntu 12.10
Comment 2 QA Administrators 2015-01-05 17:51:17 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 QA Administrators 2016-11-08 10:38:50 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 Thomas Lendo 2018-09-30 19:29:57 UTC 
I can't confirm that with 

Version: 6.2.0.0.alpha0+
Build-ID: 62cd86977ca41677c56fb2d1f97bb1c5cbdbd416
CPU-Threads: 4; BS: Linux 4.15; UI-Render: Standard; VCL: gtk3; 
Gebietsschema: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); Calc: threaded

With special numbers activated Calc imports:
3E
3,00E+02
4F

Without special numbers activated Calc imports:
3E
300
4F

This matches what the help says:
'When this option is enabled, Calc will automatically detect all number formats, including special number formats such as dates, time, and scientific notation.'
https://help.libreoffice.org/6.1/en-US/text/shared/00/00000208.html?&DbPAR=CALC&System=UNIX

I close this bug as RESOLVED WORKSFORME.

Please reopen as NEW if the problem still occurs in your installation. Please test with the newest possible LibreOffice version for your OS.