Bug 155960 - Wrong format (HTML) copied to clipboard when a cell's contents have multiple formats
Summary: Wrong format (HTML) copied to clipboard when a cell's contents have multiple ...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Cell-Direct-Formatting-Parts HTML-Paste
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2023-06-21 11:20 UTC by dapgo
Modified: 2025-06-21 03:11 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
sample ODS file (10.96 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
2023-06-21 15:51 UTC, Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Details
xclip output for text/html target (906 bytes, text/html)
2023-06-21 15:53 UTC, Stéphane Guillou (stragu)
Details

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Description dapgo 2023-06-21 11:20:34 UTC
Unexpectedly sometimes format is not properly copied to clipboard, specifically when copying a table with format applied to partial text of a cell. 

For example, when all the content of a cell has style (bold, italics) the format is copied to clipboard
<td height="27" align="left"><b><font color="#000000">AS A</font></b></td>
As expected html contains tags<b></b> , BTW this way is more compatible and nicer than the how excel copies format to clipaboard


However, when the style is applies just to a substring or a partial text, the format for the cell is lost/not copied to clipboard

<td align="left"><font color="#000000">normal text, bold text </font></td>


"bold text" has bold in the cell but as you can see there is no tags<b></b>


How to reproduce

fill a cell with a no format tex
fill a cell with a text in bold
fill a cell with a text in bold, italics and not format
copy cells
Paste in excel as HTML
Paste in a notepad with support for paste "as HMTL" i.e PSPAD

Then you will see that unexpectedly format sometimes is not saved to clipboard 

Found in several windows versions, including 7.6beta
Comment 1 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-06-21 15:49:47 UTC
Reproduced in:

Version: 7.6.0.0.beta1 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: be55b15d98c5f059483845a183fcb5ea8023d27c
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Multi-format cell contents are kept when pasting in e.g. Gnumeric, but probably because it uses a different clipboard target.

If:
- pasting in Google Sheets
- pasting in Office.com
- pasting in OnlyOffice desktop
- pasting special in LibreOffice Calc as HTML
- using the command: `xclip -selection clipboard -o -t text/html`

... we get unformatted when the source cell has differently formatted parts.

Same in OOo 3.3, so inherited.
Comment 2 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-06-21 15:51:05 UTC
Created attachment 188044 [details]
sample ODS file

Steps:

1. Copy cells A1:A3
2. Paste special HTML elsewhere in the sheet

Results: format is retained for A2, but not for multi-formatted cell A3.
Comment 3 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-06-21 15:53:48 UTC
Created attachment 188045 [details]
xclip output for text/html target

After using steps in comment 2. 
Note missing formatting tags for bottom cell.
Comment 4 QA Administrators 2025-06-21 03:11:39 UTC
Dear dapgo,

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.

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