From LO 4.0 we have: "Menu/Tools/Options/LibreOffice calc/Formula - Recalculation on file load" with default setting "Excel 2007 and newer" and "ODF spreadsheet" to "Never recalculate". I suggest default setting be "Prompt user" for the following reasons: - I use it myself like that feeling that's logical - it's informative about recalculation - it's not too complicated for average user because there's "Always perform this/chosen without prompt in the future". - some bugs and confusions can be avoided like Bug 60718. What I can be wrong about is that even without recalculation values should be right, like Bug 81396 and in that case I wrongfully closed Bug 60718. But what would be recalc do then? Help https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Recalculate is not correct and useful. Note: I checked previous bugs but they are not the same, Bug 60964 was about "Always recalculate" as default, Bug 60974 for per-spreadsheet so not accepted, Bug 60973 that "Prompt user" not working was probably about those exceptions that used to exist, such as Bug 97897.
markus.mohrhard@googlemail.com 2017-05-25 14:43:24 UTC Status UNCONFIRMED -> RESOLVED WONTFIX
Use case of all the requests is to have valid data, which is paramount over the last file status. Now I wonder why you close the ticket so abruptly, Markus. The only idea that comes to my mind is that most sheets have formula like [C1]=A1+B1, so prompting would affect all users even those who's formula are "static" (the recalculation has the same result). If that's your concern, how about doing things in background and asking only when the recalculation would change the reloaded file? Too much calculation slows down file load? Threading, stopping after a small number of data, testing first if the number of data... there might be options to solve this.
As an explanation to the reasons I already wrote, there are obviously situations and bugs that stem out of "Never recalculate" as a default. Looking at those bugs, users cannot know that is needs recalculation. Probably they are not even aware of soft and hard recalc. By setting "Prompt user", s/he is informed about term "recalculation" with nice option "always perform this..". If result i snot as expected, s/he may try it and read about it. We may add Help button to prompt window, I'll add a bug.
Turns out all cases mentioned above either were other bugs that meanwhile are fixed already, or in the case of bug 60718 for the actual file in question Excel stored wrong result values to the file (which then of course are updated with the correct values when recalculated). However, the latter seems to be an exceptional case and whatever bug of Excel beyond our control and most likely the user wouldn't be aware of the problem either. Being asked every time to recalculate when loading an Excel file (or files not stored by LibreOffice) until disabled is a rather poor user experience. If there arise other (non-)recalculation problems they'll probably indicate individual problems that shouldn't be addressed by a "hit everything and all with a big hard recalculation club" but solved individually instead. I agree that improving help with bug 107930 could raise awareness of the concept of recalculation.
According to the previous comment, I'll set to WontFix.