Description: On FILEOPEN with numerous external links (to other LO workbooks mostly in the same directory), warning comes up about external links being disabled; click on enable box; file then opens normally and update - most but not all external references. Throws no general error; the cells that were not updated show a REFERENCE error. Forcing update using Alt-E-K "Links to External Files" in Edit menu) then updates the references. Not a real killer problem, but it's annoying. Has happened randomly in 6.x releases - some work correctly, others don't. So I can't point to a specific thing that might be causing this, except for the fact that the updates fail when enabling updates the first time after opening the file. Never had the problem in 5.x. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open file with numerous external references. Should have references to at least two external files. 2. When the warning about external references being disabled displays, click ENABLE button. 3. Proceed to work with file. External references to one of the multiple external files will show a REFERENCE error. 4. (Workaround) Enter Edit-"Links to External Files..." (keyboard shortcut alt-E-K still works), select all external files, and click "Update" when complete, Close. All external references will now be updated including those not updated after opening. Actual Results: About 60% of the time, nothing unusual happens - everything updates as it should. About 40% of the time, one file's links will not update and must be updated manually. Expected Results: All external links would be updated after enabling them on FILEOPEN. Reproducible: Sometimes User Profile Reset: Yes OpenGL enabled: Yes Additional Info: It's happening more often in the latest release (6.2). But it happened occasionally with most of the 6.x releases. The same workaround is effective in all of them. It *never* happened in 5.x. Perhaps a timing or threading issue of some kind? 6.x seems to use more multithreading than 5.x did. Files involved have much personal information in them and cannot be cleaned up for public release.
Thank you for reporting the bug. Please attach a sample document, as this makes it easier for us to verify the bug. (Please note that the attachment will be public, remove any sensitive information before attaching it. See https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/FAQ#How_can_I_eliminate_confidential_data_from_a_sample_document.3F for help on how to do so.) I have set the bug's status to 'NEEDINFO'. Please change it back to 'UNCONFIRMED' once the requested document is provided.
As happened once before with this bug, it seems to have vanished after a recent update. No idea why; it just hasn't popped up again. I'm going to assume it probably was due to some race condition that went away when other things were done. The first time it happened was just after Calc switched to parallel threaded calculations, and as with this time it went away on its own after a few additional minor updates, before I could create a clean set of spreadsheets that demonstrated it.
Addendum to Comment 2: the update after which things worked again was to 6.3.