Bug 106641 - Cell content disappears after modifying a text entry highlighted as a link
Summary: Cell content disappears after modifying a text entry highlighted as a link
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 95600
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.2.5.1 release
Hardware: Other macOS (All)
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2017-03-19 11:01 UTC by John
Modified: 2021-11-10 04:44 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
LibreOffice Cell Anomaly Example and User Experience (85.44 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2017-03-19 11:30 UTC, John
Details
Spreadsheet sheet went grey (18.27 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
2017-03-27 18:23 UTC, John
Details
Summary of Bug History with added symptoms (445.71 KB, application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document)
2017-09-30 15:24 UTC, John
Details
Example Problem Spreadsheet (2.99 MB, application/vnd.ms-excel)
2017-09-30 15:28 UTC, John
Details

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Description John 2017-03-19 11:01:20 UTC
Description:
Spreadsheet:
1) Text entry becomes a link without my consent, e.g. a dark background appears and it is no longer wrapped in 'normal' view
2) Links cannot be modified to correct spelling errors. Any attempt to do so causes all the text to disappear when moving to another cell.
3) Removing a comma after an email address converts all the text into a link as in the attached
4) If UNDO works and original cell view appears okay, moving from one sheet to another and back results in the cell content becoming a link, see attached.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. I don't know how to initiate this. Tried: Entered an email with text after it and tabbed to another cell and it remained as text. Added comma after the email and the email converted to a link, but the text after it remained as text. The link could not be modified afterwards.
2. This oddity has occurred in previous versions of LibreOffice and has resulted in loss of data, i.e. original cell data cannot be retrieved by repeated undo action. I was lucky this time and undo worked.
3.


Reproducible: Couldn't Reproduce

User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:


User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_3) AppleWebKit/602.4.8 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0.3 Safari/602.4.8
Comment 1 John 2017-03-19 11:30:31 UTC
Created attachment 132008 [details]
LibreOffice Cell Anomaly Example and User Experience
Comment 2 Xisco Faulí 2017-03-20 19:51:25 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 John 2017-03-27 17:03:18 UTC
In response to email request for the affected file, my bounced email response was:
Sadly I only use spreadsheets nowadays, except for simulation purposes on rare occasions, saved as xls files, for my financial records and as an address book, so it is not practical to send you these without confidential information. Also, an attempt to do so in affected cells normally removes all content from the cell, but not always. 

On the day of creating my bug report, I had to save my open updated xls address book in ods format so as to retrieve an accidentally ‘deleted’ cell entry (because of the LibreOffice odd behaviour).  Sadly, only to find that all the work I had done and 'saved' in the ods format had gone.

Further oddities include:
1) I added numerous phone numbers to my address book, manually, by copying from my mobile phone and saving frequently. However, afterwards when looking up at least three entries that were made, they could not be found: they simply were not saved. I made one entry just now, saved and closed and re-opened the spreadsheet and that entry was present. This has happened a few times in the past that I know about. I of course normally assume a save is successful. The only impression I have at the moment is that multiple new entries / updates when saved may not be saved, a few every so often may or may not, but one may be. 
2) When I searched for one of the new entries by looking up the old phone number, the old phone number was found in the formulae bar as wrapped text, but after leaving the formulae bar, the entry in the formulae bar became a single line with grey background just as it appears in the cell itself. So a search result can locate an item that will open as wrapped in the formulae bar, but will revert to a link style entry on leaving it. Re-selecting the cell does not change the link style un-editable entry in the formulae bar or cell itself.
3) When I selected a person’s name in the formulae bar to copy it, my MacBook Pro ‘Edit’ button in the menu bar ‘flashed' to confirm that I had supposedly copied it, but it only pasted the phone number that I had previously copied to try and find that person’s new phone number. Repeated copy-paste failed to copy and past the selection, only pasting the previously copied phone number!
4) Worse still, today one sheet of my spreadsheet has become completely greyed out-out with no lines or entries visible even after quoting the application and re-opening it.

One particular sheet has a different problem: about ten years ago I started using OpenOffice but reverted back to Microsoft Office as a result of a form of corruption that I have not yet cleared up: some original xls row entries with multiple paragraphs in a single wrapped text cell after being saved resulted in some cells with multiple paragraphs, but not all cells like this, becoming separate cells, one for each paragraph, so messing up the possibility of using the Sort facility to bring together similar entries. What is particularly odd about this is that these multiple cells one below the other corresponding to the separate paragraphs in the original xls file appear adjacent to a single cell on their left or right, as if the single cell were a merged cell but is not!

Sorry I can’t help further.
Comment 4 John 2017-03-27 18:23:00 UTC
Created attachment 132197 [details]
Spreadsheet sheet went grey

This file is a LibreOffice created copy of one sheet from a problem Spreadsheet.

This sheet is a loan record, hopefully only containing comments against a record of each loan and repayment made. All other sheets from the spreadsheet were deleted to leave this one sheet that has become completely grey with missing row numbers. If you are able to retrieve any information from it, please delete any confidential information contained within it.
Every row of the other sheets contain confidential information, hence why they were deleted. 
Just opened the above saved file and instead of one sheet the saved file has somehow added six extra sheets called __VBA__0 where the 0 on other sheets is 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5. Even after deleting these after a save their were auto re-created. The file size was 21.2MB so could not be submitted so I 'moved it to an untitled ods sheet of size 20kb that remained 20kb after I removed the blank sheet from it and attempted to submit this.
Comment 5 John 2017-03-27 18:23:38 UTC
It worked despite being over the 10KB limit!
Comment 6 John 2017-03-28 22:41:12 UTC
Comment on attachment 132197 [details]
Spreadsheet sheet went grey

This file does contain confidential information: please delete it.
Comment 7 Alex Thurgood 2017-03-29 07:14:50 UTC
@John : thanks for submitting a file, but normal QA users can't delete files that you attach to the bug report which are confidential, there is a warning about not uploading confidential files before you do so. Maybe an admin can help here.

I'm confused as to what this bug report is about. In your initial report, you state that text typed in a cell became a link (URL) without your consent.
Then you add that links can not be changed to correct spelling mistakes.
Then you add that removing a comma after an email address converts all text to a link (per attached first file, which isn't a spreadsheet document, but a Writer document instead, containing screenshots). Then you state that the seemingly visually correct change is not maintained after switching to another sheet, then switching back.

These are potentially 4 separate issues. Please just focus on one issue and open separate reports for the others.

The ODS file you have provided asks if the user wants to update the content based on a link to an Excel 97/2003 file called "///Users/MacbookPro/Desktop/1. Greyed out sheet.xls" 

As this file is not present, no data is inserted and the content of the cells in the ODS is grey.
Comment 8 Alex Thurgood 2017-03-29 07:16:16 UTC
@John : at present, we can do nothing with your test ODS file, as it references a non-existent XLS file, and it is not entirely clear to me what exactly the singular problem is that you are attempting to report.
Comment 9 Alex Thurgood 2017-03-29 07:28:18 UTC
@John : you can edit autoformatted URLs in a cell by right mouse button clicking on a selected cell, and choosing Remove Direct Formatting. You should then be able to edit the character string in the Formula entry bar or the cell itself. Pressing enter or moving to another cell registers the change in the sheet.
Comment 10 QA Administrators 2017-09-29 08:57:21 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 11 John 2017-09-30 15:24:52 UTC
Created attachment 136644 [details]
Summary of Bug History with added symptoms
Comment 12 John 2017-09-30 15:28:06 UTC
Created attachment 136645 [details]
Example Problem Spreadsheet

This replaces "132197: Spreadsheet sheet went grey".

Example problem cells are illustrated by screenshots in the attached Word file, "Bug report update 30.9.17"
Comment 13 John 2017-09-30 15:34:10 UTC
My apology for not submitting a replacement sooner. I thought you might be able to use the last sample I submitted. This one should work.
Comment 14 Alex Thurgood 2017-10-03 08:15:15 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 95600 ***
Comment 15 John 2021-11-10 04:44:01 UTC
In the comment by Alex Thurgood 2017-03-29 07:14:50 UTC, Alex referred stated, "The ODS file you have provided asks if the user wants to update the content based on a link to an Excel 97/2003 file called "///Users/MacbookPro/Desktop/1. Greyed out sheet.xls" As this file is not present, no data is inserted and the content of the cells in the ODS is grey."

This file has been in constant update for many years. It seems I had a link many years ago, more likely a sheet insertion. I do not know why I continue to get the same message, "Automatic update of external links has been disabled ...   allow updating".

I never allow updating as I do not know what it will do to this sensitive critical data - I may not notice the changes, if any occur. 

I also do not know how to stop this message re-occuring.

So I was surprised that Alex had no data, as nothing is being linked to my knowledge.

This note has been added for clarification - far too late perhaps.

This Bug has become "[Bug 95600] Modify a cell that contains URL" and was assigned to xiscofauli@libreoffice.org on the 10th November 2021 at 1.14a.m. AEST time.