Bug 154082 - FILEOPEN DOCX: section starts after the top margin of the first paragraph in the section
Summary: FILEOPEN DOCX: section starts after the top margin of the first paragraph in ...
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:
Keywords: filter:docx, notBibisectable
Depends on:
Blocks: DOCX Section
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2023-03-09 01:31 UTC by Justin L
Modified: 2025-05-15 03:12 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Justin L 2023-03-09 01:31:15 UTC
If a section starts with a back-ground coloured paragraph and a top margin of 100pts, you would expect to see a large coloured block above the text. And normally you do, except at the start of a section - where the block is just "empty".

This is especially noticeable when the section has columns. The other columns don't start "at the top of the page", but "after the 100pt top margin". In other words, they are automatically aligned with the first paragraph's text.

This is a fundamental difference between LO and MS Word. See bug 153964 where this was initially discussed, and is demonstrated by
attachment 185823 [details]: sectionStart.odt.

To reproduce:
-open attachment 185749 [details]: columnMargin15.docx

It should look like the compat15 version in attachment 185748 [details].


This is not bibisectable. I don't care if earlier versions imported the DOCX as page-columns instead of section-columns. The point of the bug report is about sections, so use sectionStart.odt if you want to do any bibisecting.
Comment 1 Justin L 2023-03-09 01:36:49 UTC
It is probably worth nothing that the PDF is not actually a perfect representation of how it appears in MS Word 2019 - apparently what you see is not what you export to pdf. (Mainly the background colouring is off. The focus in any case is the position of the text relative to the top of the column, which is accurately shown in the PDF.)
Comment 2 Dieter 2023-04-06 13:55:13 UTC
I confirm it with

Version: 7.6.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 1e9f4de320f67d1218c710bcee1969a2324c6888
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (de_DE); UI: en-GB
Calc: CL threaded

Steps (as far as I could understand report):

1. In a new document insert a section with two columns and coloured backgrond.
2. Place cursor within section and change spacing above paragraph to 3,5 cm

Actual result:
Spacing above paragraph is white.

Expected result:
Spacing above paragraph has colour of section background.

Additional information
Can't see, that this behaviour is limited to docx-files, so I would change bug summary.
Comment 3 Justin L 2023-05-15 15:13:21 UTC
(In reply to Dieter from comment #2)
> Can't see, that this behaviour is limited to docx-files
You are correct. I found bug 50068 discusses this.

However, that is a "lets change ODT implementation discussion, while this is a DOCX compatibility discussion. The two are highly intertwined, but lets just leave them separate for now.
Comment 4 QA Administrators 2025-05-15 03:12:36 UTC
Dear Justin L,

To make sure we're focusing on the bugs that affect our users today, LibreOffice QA is asking bug reporters and confirmers to retest open, confirmed bugs which have not been touched for over a year.

There have been thousands of bug fixes and commits since anyone checked on this bug report. During that time, it's possible that the bug has been fixed, or the details of the problem have changed. We'd really appreciate your help in getting confirmation that the bug is still present.

If you have time, please do the following:

Test to see if the bug is still present with the latest version of LibreOffice from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/

If the bug is present, please leave a comment that includes the information from Help - About LibreOffice.
 
If the bug is NOT present, please set the bug's Status field to RESOLVED-WORKSFORME and leave a comment that includes the information from Help - About LibreOffice.

Please DO NOT

Update the version field
Reply via email (please reply directly on the bug tracker)
Set the bug's Status field to RESOLVED - FIXED (this status has a particular meaning that is not 
appropriate in this case)


If you want to do more to help you can test to see if your issue is a REGRESSION. To do so:
1. Download and install oldest version of LibreOffice (usually 3.3 unless your bug pertains to a feature added after 3.3) from https://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/old/

2. Test your bug
3. Leave a comment with your results.
4a. If the bug was present with 3.3 - set version to 'inherited from OOo';
4b. If the bug was not present in 3.3 - add 'regression' to keyword


Feel free to come ask questions or to say hello in our QA chat: https://web.libera.chat/?settings=#libreoffice-qa

Thank you for helping us make LibreOffice even better for everyone!

Warm Regards,
QA Team

MassPing-UntouchedBug