Bug 158733 - Add UI Configuration Option To Disable Showing Hidden Filter Elements As Inactive In Autofilter
Summary: Add UI Configuration Option To Disable Showing Hidden Filter Elements As Inac...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
7.6.4.1 release
Hardware: All All
: high enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: AutoFilter
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Reported: 2023-12-16 14:54 UTC by Kevin Suo
Modified: 2024-08-07 18:48 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
test ods file (37.06 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
2023-12-16 14:54 UTC, Kevin Suo
Details

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Description Kevin Suo 2023-12-16 14:54:04 UTC
Created attachment 191457 [details]
test ods file

The "showing hidden filter elements as inactive" feature is added in commit 2d1df9f3dccc10f13b8585ad18afce1542ebc4d1 (with follow-up commits 2085e90fe8ac129bc4dbac4612d1ea7544335dae and 7321db3cadc8c0e4437ca04e5dcb652734ea9c26). While we welcome new features, this feature really annoys me in my daily workflow. I request to add a UI configuration option to enable/disable this feature by the user *and* it defaults to be disabled.

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open the attached test ods file.

This file has two columns. the first column contains some unique IDs. The second column contains some random integer numbers. The third column contains some numbers representing the category of each ID.

2. Select "0" only in the autofilter dropdown in column 2, then click the autofilter dropdown in column 1, then try to locate the last "active" ID (i.e. 0001385).

Current Behaviour:
In LibreOffice 7.6 (where this feature is enabled), in step 2 there are 2385 IDs shown in the dropdown while there are only 22 relevant. Who cares about those inactive ones? Those inactive ones are very annoying because it does not allow me to quickly locate the last ID. I need to scroll and scroll and be very careful in order to observe where the last active ID is shown.

Expected Behaviour:
In step 2, with LibreOffice 7.4, when I click the dropdown in column 1, I can quickly sroll to the last ID, select it and then observe its category number. I can also quickly observe that there are roughly 20 items related to this filter condition (one very important purpose of using autofilter is to quickly understand your data!)
It's quick and convenient because the item list is always sorted so the last one will always be at the end of the scroll bar.

As an experienced spreadsheet user, I really can not think of a use case when the inactive items should be shown. It should be configurable and defaults to be turned off.
Comment 1 Kevin Suo 2023-12-16 14:56:16 UTC
Adding Balazs Varga to cc because he has worked on that feature.
Comment 2 m_a_riosv 2023-12-16 16:34:15 UTC
They are shown in gray for me at the end of the selectable items, not in the middle.
I don't think they can bother in this way.
Comment 3 Kevin Suo 2023-12-16 17:05:59 UTC
In "production" usage, spreadsheets can have millions of records. We do autofiltering to narrow down the results. For me, it makes no sense to show everything in the dropdown (while maybe some few others may like this feature). Anyway, this should be configurable.

And that is a TODO as shown in the commit message in commit 2d1df9f3dccc10f13b8585ad18afce1542ebc4d1:
"TODO: maybe we can add a global option where the user can switch on/off this feature."
Comment 4 Rafael Lima 2023-12-19 19:49:25 UTC
I too do not like this feature. I often open sheets with 50 thousand rows or more and this is a bit annoying. Even if you have very few visible rows (f.i. 3 rows), thousands of options will be visible in the auto filter.

(In reply to Kevin Suo from comment #3)
> "TODO: maybe we can add a global option where the user can switch on/off
> this feature."

I'm not sure this should be a global option, because when the user needs to toggle this option, this needs to be done quickly.

Maybe we could have a quick checkbox to show/hide inactive elements in the autofilter dialog itself (by default the "hide" option should be checked).
Comment 5 Timur 2024-08-07 11:22:50 UTC
IMO this should have been optional from the beginning, so I set High as usual behavior was changed.
Comment 6 Rafael Lima 2024-08-07 18:48:43 UTC
FTR Excel and OnlyOffice do not show these items at all.

Although I can see a use for having them visible, depending on the situation this can be a bit annoying.

I propose a popup menu entry (when right-clicling the list of items in the AutoFilter) to quickly toggle this option.