Bug 108772 - FILEOPEN: DOC - Last paragraph not shown/hardly accessible in Word 2013+ after roundtrip
Summary: FILEOPEN: DOC - Last paragraph not shown/hardly accessible in Word 2013+ afte...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: interoperability
Keywords: filter:doc
: 98860 141229 143935 145333 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: DOC-Paragraph
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2017-06-25 18:20 UTC by Aron Budea
Modified: 2023-12-18 17:28 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Sample DOC (23.00 KB, application/msword)
2017-06-25 18:20 UTC, Aron Budea
Details
Sample DOC from Word (new) (22.50 KB, application/msword)
2017-06-25 22:18 UTC, Aron Budea
Details
word online preview (21.95 KB, image/png)
2017-06-26 12:37 UTC, Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired)
Details
Another sample (ODT, save as DOC in Writer and open in Word) (8.63 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text)
2018-08-23 14:07 UTC, Aron Budea
Details
Sample saved as DOC in Writer (appears empty in Word) (9.00 KB, application/msword)
2018-08-23 14:08 UTC, Aron Budea
Details
BFFValidator result of 1st sample roundtripped in Writer 7.2 (4.38 KB, text/xml)
2021-04-08 17:12 UTC, Aron Budea
Details

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Description Aron Budea 2017-06-25 18:20:37 UTC
Created attachment 134277 [details]
Sample DOC

Attaching a very simple sample DOC created in Word (single word + comment).
Delete comment in Writer, save DOC, open it in Word.

=> Text is not shown in Word, double-clicking in the area where it's supposed to be makes it appear, but it disappears again after clicking away, and it's very difficult to edit.

Note that I only encountered this bug using this small sample, and only with DOC files.

Observed with 5.4beta2 & 4.0.0.3 / Windows 7.
Comment 1 Xisco Faulí 2017-06-25 18:35:40 UTC
I can't reproduce in

Version: 6.0.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: cb37c5f0f3de7b545231a53d46a5271058af76ad
CPU threads: 1; OS: Windows 6.1; UI render: default; 
TinderBox: Win-x86@42, Branch:master, Time: 2017-06-23_06:55:41
Locale: es-ES (es_ES); Calc: group

and MSO Word 2010
Comment 2 Aron Budea 2017-06-25 22:18:57 UTC
Created attachment 134280 [details]
Sample DOC from Word (new)

Turns out it's got nothing to do with comments.
See the new sample, a doc that contains three one-line paragraphs. Opening it in Word after a roundtrip in Writer doesn't show the last paragraph. Double-clicking where it should be displays it, but it disappears again after clicking away.

I'm using Word 2013 for testing.
Comment 3 Aron Budea 2017-06-25 22:21:42 UTC
If the third paragraph is a couple of lines long, it's displayed fine in Word after roundtrip.
Comment 4 Xisco Faulí 2017-06-26 11:49:37 UTC
Still not reproducible in

Version: 6.0.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: cb37c5f0f3de7b545231a53d46a5271058af76ad
CPU threads: 1; OS: Windows 6.1; UI render: default; 
TinderBox: Win-x86@42, Branch:master, Time: 2017-06-23_06:55:41
Locale: es-ES (es_ES); Calc: group

and MSO Word 2010
Comment 5 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-06-26 12:32:39 UTC
Confirmed doesnt happen in Word 2003, 2007, and 2010 but does in 2013, but if saved in Word 2013, it will reappear. Also in 2013, the document has a very weird behaviour as when you move the cursor with the down arrow key, it seems like the cursor can go down forever. Was able to make the line appear by double-clicking to the right of the line, wherein a tab stop was added to the line, though the weird endless down arrow key behaviour still persisted.
Comment 6 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-06-26 12:37:54 UTC
Created attachment 134288 [details]
word online preview

So i checked Word Online and noticed that the preview that it generated looked weird, so i was able to get a large version of the preview which is attached, but when i open the document for editing, it looks fine.
Comment 7 Aron Budea 2017-06-26 17:45:20 UTC
Marco confirmed it with Word 2016.
Comment 8 Aron Budea 2018-08-23 14:07:32 UTC
Created attachment 144390 [details]
Another sample (ODT, save as DOC in Writer and open in Word)

Here's another sample created entirely in Writer: a single input field.
When saved as DOC and opened in Word, the document appears empty. However, if it's saved in Word without any changes and reloaded, the field appears.
Comment 9 Aron Budea 2018-08-23 14:08:29 UTC
Created attachment 144391 [details]
Sample saved as DOC in Writer (appears empty in Word)
Comment 10 Aron Budea 2018-10-09 17:41:01 UTC
*** Bug 98860 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 QA Administrators 2019-10-10 02:39:26 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete, spam)
Comment 12 Justin L 2021-04-07 18:42:29 UTC
*** Bug 141229 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Justin L 2021-04-07 18:45:43 UTC
So far I've been marking this as NOTOURBUG since it works fine in Word 2003 where DOC is still the native format. But this bug report gave some extra clues, so I'll make it the "master" report about this bug (at least in my own mind) and leave it open for anyone who wants to investigate further.
Comment 14 Aron Budea 2021-04-07 20:05:30 UTC
(In reply to Justin L from comment #13)
> So far I've been marking this as NOTOURBUG since it works fine in Word 2003
> where DOC is still the native format. But this bug report gave some extra
I'd be inclined to argue that Word 2003 is hardly relevant now, and Writer is expected to export DOC in a format that the recent Word versions can interpret correctly, which I assume isn't impossible.
Comment 15 Orwel 2021-04-08 08:52:39 UTC
I agree with Aron Budea, the fact that Word 2003 shows it correctly is not relevant (how many people use W2003 today???). Despite of Justin L who thinks this is NOTOURBUG I think, this is a LO bug indeed. If you reproduce steps I filled in Bug 141229 (marked as duplicate of this one) with Word 2019 (this means, you open the .odt file in Word2019, re-save it as .doc), the text will not disappear. If this would be some kind of WORD bug, the result should be the same.
Comment 16 Aron Budea 2021-04-08 17:12:06 UTC
Created attachment 171034 [details]
BFFValidator result of 1st sample roundtripped in Writer 7.2

In case it might be interesting, attaching the BFFValidator output of attachment 134280 [details] roundtripped in a recent Writer 7.2 build.
Comment 17 Justin L 2021-08-26 17:17:35 UTC
*** Bug 143935 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 18 Ezinne 2021-10-31 06:14:56 UTC
*** Bug 145333 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 Justin L 2023-06-14 19:04:22 UTC
This will be basically impossible to fix:
- inherited from OOo - no regression, so no code pointers
- no indication what specifically is wrong
- apparently everything is there in Word, since certain mouse actions can make it show up, and round-tripping also solves the problem.
- no reproduction in LO or OOo itself - only seen in recent Word

DOC format has been around forever in StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and it has ALWAYS worked in MS Word until a regression in MSO. So unless Microsoft provides information on what they broke (or the error situation that they now refuse to handle) we can't really fix it.
Comment 20 Justin L 2023-07-12 13:51:17 UTC
I wonder if bug 133560 holds any clues about this last paragraph.
Comment 21 Justin L 2023-12-18 17:28:33 UTC
In reading RTF code, it suggests that there might need to be an empty paragraph at the end of the document. Perhaps DOC has a spec like that? The symptoms certainly sound like that...