Description: My SO has been using Ubuntu and LibreOffice for a little while now. I am a super Linux fan, I've been using Linux for many years. I'm always recommending open source and Linux to people. It's super embarrassing for me when people run into these UX problems. The way LibreOffice handles CSVs is not intuitive. If you create new sheets in a CSV and then save and quit, only the active sheet is actually saved. This means it's easy for a user to lose data. This is TERRIBLE UX. Calc should not allow the user to create new sheets when working with a CSV. Period. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open CSV 2. Create new Sheets with the Plus button 3. Add data to all your sheets. 4. Save and close (pressing OK on all the warnings) Actual Results: You lose everything except the active sheet. Expected Results: The user doesn't care about file formats. The user expects all sheets to be saved. Calc should very clearly warn the user, the existing warnings are not good enough. Calc should not allow the user to make a new sheet for a CSV. Calc should provide a way to restore lost data from CSVs. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: Related: https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/242110/recover-overwritten-csv-files-with-multiple-worksheets/
(In reply to bryanpaget@pm.me from comment #0) > Calc should not allow the user to create new sheets when working with a CSV. > Period. > > Steps to Reproduce: > ... > 4. Save and close (pressing OK on all the warnings) Actual results: one pressed OK to all the warnings. LibreOffice tried to warn the person. They told that they know what they are doing. LibreOffice obeyed. You can't prevent such things. LibreOffice can't predict that you will use CSV (you may decide that after you have created an empty new spreadsheet); user might want eventually to save as ODS. Preventing things based on opened format will not be acceptable for many, and - as explained - will not prevent this kind of problems in cases when it wasn't a CSV. The warnings could be more detailed and list specific things that would be lost (unfortunately, my proposal to implement that was opposed as user-unfriendly), but IMO that's all. Requiring that user re-save first to unblock the UI is not a good option.
The warnings are not clear enough. That should be an easy fix, I'll make some mockups.
Thanks for your response by the way. :-)
(In reply to bryanpaget@pm.me from comment #2) > The warnings are not clear enough. That should be an easy fix, I'll make > some mockups. See bug 125268 comment 37 (and following discussion till comment 40) by the way. The fix is not "easy". There are *lots* of things that get lost on export to *different* formats; trying to only provide an explicit warning about extra sheets for CSV is not a correct option: you loose columns after 256 and rows after 64K when save to XLS; you loose formatting or special kinds of charts, pivot tables, etc.; there are limitations in other formats - DBF, XML, lots of them. The level of support is constantly changed, and the warning should be designed such that it could find out what *actually* gets lost in this specific document in this specific save, to be useful to user.
As noted in duplicate bug 124859 .CSV is not a native format, it is not even a viable spreadsheet (as no formulas are encoded, just values). Data held in a .CSV (of any separator) will be filter imported to LibreOffice's Spreadsheet UI--Calc. Save is then to XML as ODF spreadsheet (.ODS). Any other format will use an Export filter. User is warned, and this facet is well documented. Advisory to users--do not work directly in formats that require filter import and filter export. Mind your data keeping it in support ODF formats, and then export the portion you need. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 92984 ***