Bug 150092 - FILESAVE XLSX Very slow saving time for spreadsheet with large number of columns
Summary: FILESAVE XLSX Very slow saving time for spreadsheet with large number of columns
Status: RESOLVED INSUFFICIENTDATA
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.3.4.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2022-07-21 17:52 UTC by Owen Savill
Modified: 2023-10-15 03:16 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
gdb crash log when importing the document (47.15 KB, text/x-log)
2022-07-21 18:09 UTC, Owen Savill
Details

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Description Owen Savill 2022-07-21 17:52:07 UTC
My sister's accountant has switched to a newer version of MS Office and "enhanced" her stock XCell spreadsheet.

The first observation is that LO warns of truncation due to the maximum number of columns being exceeded. 

Then when saving the document, LO produces a zero length tmp file and promptly crashes.

I've tried this on two Macs and Ubuntu, haven't been able to try Windows.

I can shed nothing more on this at the moment. I'll seek permission to share the document with the LO dev team. 

Is there any more info I can gather? If so, how?

Sorry this a bit vague at the moment, hopefully I'll be able to add more soon.
Comment 1 Owen Savill 2022-07-21 18:05:07 UTC
Running libreoffice --backtrace crashes out of gdb when first importing the document
Comment 2 Owen Savill 2022-07-21 18:09:41 UTC
Created attachment 181363 [details]
gdb crash log when importing the document

Crash happens with OpenJDK-11 and Oracle JDK 12
Comment 3 Rafael Lima 2022-07-21 18:20:10 UTC
Hi Owen, thanks for reporting.

What version of LibreOffice are you running? Please copy and paste the version information from Help - About LibreOffice.

Also, we need to have a test file to check if it is indeed a bug and pinpoint its cause. Maybe you can anonymize the data in the file (change their actual value but not the file structure).

If that's not possible, try creating a smaller file where the error also happens.
Comment 4 Owen Savill 2022-07-21 18:27:13 UTC
Realised I was backtracing 7.3.0, however 7.3.5.2 crashes in gdb when starting up so unable to get a backtrace. Both 7.3.0 and 7.3.5.2 hang in the same way.
Comment 5 Owen Savill 2022-07-21 18:29:31 UTC
It would be best to get the original to you as I don't have any copies of Office after Office 2000! and we use Office 2007 at work, so any editing may remove the bug
Comment 6 QA Administrators 2022-07-22 03:44:55 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 7 Roman Kuznetsov 2022-07-23 16:09:08 UTC
Please attach here the problem file. Thanks
Comment 8 QA Administrators 2023-01-20 03:25:10 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 9 Owen Savill 2023-01-20 09:50:35 UTC
I'm not clear what extra info is required. Please let me know and I'll attempt to suply it.
Comment 10 Owen Savill 2023-01-20 09:53:07 UTC
Sorry, I made the last comment in haste. I never received the spreadsheet less confidential data. I'll attempt to get it again.
Comment 11 QA Administrators 2023-01-21 03:24:07 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 12 Buovjaga 2023-03-17 12:55:11 UTC
(In reply to Owen Savill from comment #0)
> My sister's accountant has switched to a newer version of MS Office and
> "enhanced" her stock XCell spreadsheet.
> 
> The first observation is that LO warns of truncation due to the maximum
> number of columns being exceeded. 

I don't know if the crash is in any way related to this, but with a newer version (7.4 or later) you would have support for a bigger number of columns: http://llunak.blogspot.com/2022/03/enabling-calc-support-for-16384-columns.html

Set to NEEDINFO.
Change back to UNCONFIRMED, if the problem persists. Change to RESOLVED WORKSFORME, if the problem went away.
Comment 13 Owen Savill 2023-03-17 16:31:07 UTC
Yes, that appears to have fixed it, but it took a full eight minutes to save it! XCell is spoofing the columns, in that the actual data is 23 columns and 65520 rows, but XCell seems to store a huge number of each.

Would there be a way of either pruning out empty columns or rows? LO appears to be using one core and one process, is there a way to make saving multi threaded?

LO is still largely unusable with files of this size, taking 8+ minutes to save a file is not great.
Comment 14 Buovjaga 2023-03-17 16:57:49 UTC
We still need the example file
Comment 15 ady 2023-03-17 17:20:03 UTC
(In reply to Owen Savill from comment #13)
> LO is still largely unusable with files of this size, taking 8+ minutes to
> save a file is not great.

FWIW, it happened to me too, but I was never able to pinpoint what triggered such huge time and file size (from tens of KB to tens of MB). The next time I saved it, the size was reduced again, and also the time it took to save it.

Is the size of the file much bigger than expected?

This is probably not the right way to investigate bugs systematically, but considering that there is no access to the original file... Perhaps it would be worth a test: changing something minimal (e.g. one number), and saving it again. Does the file size change? And the time to finish saving it? It is up to you to decide whether the test is worth anything; I'm just sharing one experience I had some time ago.

Sometimes clearing the format and content of all cells beyond the last cell in real use helps. Again, I'm just a user sharing experiences (probably more appropriate for ask.libreoffice.org than to a bug report).
Comment 16 QA Administrators 2023-09-14 03:05:58 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 17 QA Administrators 2023-10-15 03:16:33 UTC
Dear Owen Savill,

Please read this message in its entirety before proceeding.

Your bug report is being closed as INSUFFICIENTDATA due to inactivity and
a lack of information which is needed in order to accurately
reproduce and confirm the problem. We encourage you to retest
your bug against the latest release. If the issue is still
present in the latest stable release, we need the following
information (please ignore any that you've already provided):

a) Provide details of your system including your operating
   system and the latest version of LibreOffice that you have
   confirmed the bug to be present

b) Provide easy to reproduce steps – the simpler the better

c) Provide any test case(s) which will help us confirm the problem

d) Provide screenshots of the problem if you think it might help

e) Read all comments and provide any requested information

Once all of this is done, please set the bug back to UNCONFIRMED
and we will attempt to reproduce the issue. Please do not:

a) respond via email 

b) update the version field in the bug or any of the other details
   on the top section of our bug tracker

Warm Regards,
QA Team

MassPing-NeedInfo-FollowUp