Bug 166821 - rectangular shape arrange settings (foreground/front and background/back) messed up after saving odt file, closing writer, opening the odt file again.
Summary: rectangular shape arrange settings (foreground/front and background/back) mes...
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.2.3.2 release
Hardware: x86-64 (AMD64) Linux (All)
: medium minor
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-06-02 07:43 UTC by Som Eguy
Modified: 2025-12-28 16:09 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Som Eguy 2025-06-02 07:43:27 UTC
Description:
rectangular shape arrange settings (foreground/front and background/back) messed up after saving odt file, closing writer, opening the odt file again.
This can be easily repeated over and over again. Read my detailed reproduce steps below to reproduce the bug / know what's wrong, specifically.

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Create shapes (e.g. rectangles)
2.Add some text into the shape(don't know if the text is relevant)
3.add an image
4.arrange the shapes to be in the fron or back
5.save the .odt file (written from scratch, not taken from .docx or anything like that)
6.close Writer
7.open the saved .odt file
8.Bug occurs: foreground and background ("fg", "bg") settings of some shapes are changed
9.repeat steps 4 to 7: step 8 (bug) still occurs.
10.Workaround found: arrange the shapes as desired (fg, bg), then select all of them (might be difficult if have perfectly overlapping, transparent shapes, like I did in some cases - there, select the bg shapes first, slide them under the fg shapes, then shift + select the fg shape, repeat with further fg shapes. uh, what a chore!). *Group them*
11.Repeat fg / bg settings of the shape group (maybe unnecessary)
12.save file
13.close writer
14.open file: now arrange settings stayed as set in previous writer session.
15.push to git repository
16.pull repo on another device
17.open file on that device: arrange settings remain correct.

Actual Results:
8.Bug occurs: foreground and background ("fg", "bg") settings of some shapes are changed
9.repeat steps 4 to 7: step 8 (bug) still occurs.

Expected Results:
12.save file
13.close writer
14.open file: now arrange settings stayed as set in previous writer session.

and also
15.push to git repository
16.pull repo on another device
17.open file on that device: arrange settings remain correct.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
[Information automatically included from LibreOffice]
Locale: en-US
Module: TextDocument
[Information guessed from browser]
OS: Linux (All)
OS is 64bit: yes

KDE neon

Operating System: KDE neon 6.3
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.11.0-26-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-7500 CPU @ 3.40GHz
Memory: 31.3 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

nvidia driver branch 570 (recommended 550 creates flickering in some full screen games, 570 fixed this. no problems experienced since. more fluent games, too. probably irrelevant, though)
Comment 1 Andrew Kopf 2025-06-02 23:46:12 UTC
Hello Som Eguy,

I can not reproduce the bug in the Windows version below. 

Version: 25.2.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: bbb074479178df812d175f709636b368952c2ce3
CPU threads: 22; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (10.0 build 26100); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Comment 2 Jeremy Norvell 2025-06-03 03:22:44 UTC
Thank you for reporting the bug. I can not reproduce the bug in Linux Mint Mate on the versions of LibreOffice listed below.

Version: 25.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 866538a4aeb30a598a6ede3d1763d898eb1920b0
CPU threads: 2; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded

Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 2; OS: Linux 6.8; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:24.2.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.4
Calc: threaded
Comment 3 Som Eguy 2025-06-03 12:08:51 UTC
Hi Andrew and Jeremy

This is weird. It does not matter which device I am using. I also tried uninstalling LibreOffice and re installing just LibreOffice Writer from the "Discovery" application in my KDE OS. The new Writer version is:

Version: 24.2.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 420(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.11; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Ubuntu package version: 4:24.2.7-0ubuntu0.24.04.4
Calc: threaded

The workaround with grouping shapes still works between shapes, but the interaction between a .jpg image and grouped shapes is still inconsistent between Writer sessions. If I could move the image "To Background", like I can with shapes, I think the issue would be resolved for me (i.e., reliable workaround). But that is not possible, apparently.

Maybe the issues I experience has to do with my shapes and images. That looks like the logical conclusion at this point.

Thank you, guys, for the quick response and your time, to test these things out! :D

I will now try the same steps with another completely new document and other images, maybe also .png or so. If that doesn't work I will just switch to .tex Document creation and use MS Word in a virtual machine until that works properly.

Thanks again for the help.
Comment 4 Buovjaga 2025-12-28 16:09:52 UTC
(In reply to Som Eguy from comment #3)
> The workaround with grouping shapes still works between shapes, but the
> interaction between a .jpg image and grouped shapes is still inconsistent
> between Writer sessions. If I could move the image "To Background", like I
> can with shapes, I think the issue would be resolved for me (i.e., reliable
> workaround). But that is not possible, apparently.

To Background/Foreground means:
Moves the selected object behind/in front of text.
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/01/05250500.html
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/01/05250600.html

So it doesn't seem applicable to this report at all as I understand the point here is the z-order of the shapes relative to the image.

A screen recording of steps 1-8 might be enlightening. I tried to reproduce, but did not see the issue.

Arch Linux 64-bit
Version: 26.8.0.0.alpha0+ (X86_64)
Build ID: 640a35801612123fa503fa72e8732cfb7e75caca
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 6.18; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded
Built on 23 December 2025