Description: When editing a spreadsheet saved in xlsx (Microsoft Office Open XML Spreadsheet) and saving the file, Libreoffice's Calc displays the following message: This document may contain formatting or content that cannot be saved in the currently selected file format “Excel 2007–365”. Use the default ODF file format to be sure that the document is saved correctly. There are several problems with this: 1. the choice of file format might not lie with the person editing the document. A group of people collaborating on a document may have agreed (explicitly or tacitly) to use a particular format. The person editing the document may have no choice. 2. the information is too vague to be actionable. The message says only that information "may" be lost. 3. the information is provided too late. The user has already edited the document (may have invested considerable time) only to be told that some part of their work might (or might not) be lost when the document is saved. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open any .xlsx 2. Attempt to save this file. 3. Observe the dialogue. Actual Results: The dialogue is presented with the above vague message. Expected Results: I expect one of two results: 1. if the user has made changes that cannot be accurately represented in the target file format (Microsoft Office Open XML Spreadsheet) then a warning is presented, in non-vague language. 2. if the user has made no such changes (the in-memory contents may be accurately represented using the target file format) then no warning is issued. Reproducible: Always User Profile Reset: No Additional Info: 1. On a more behavioural point, providing vague information (about things that may be a problem) is dangerous as it teaches users to ignore dialogue messages. If the user has no choice in the file format; the must close the dialogue, but they have no actionable information. 2. There is a checkbox to hide the dialogue in future interactions. This is a tacit acknowledgement that this dialogue is not really about providing a concrete warning, but rather a attempt, using FUD, to encourage users to use ODF-based file formats. While, in general, I support efforts to encourage use of ODF, I have questions over this approach. 3. I believe a better UX would be achieved if the editor were to provide the user with immediate feedback if they do some action (make some edit to the document) that is incompatible with the original file format (Microsoft Office Open XML format, in this case). The UX could warn the user and suggest switching to ODF, the UI could grey-out incompatible features, etc. I believe there are lots of options, here. Providing this information when saving the document is very late, as any incompatible edits have already taken place.
See also bug 125268 comment 37.
This was direct effort of UX team to improve the "Alien Format" warning [1] across all the modules and all the export filters. The strings can be adjusted further, but at some point it becomes meaningless as the set of strings need to pass through localization efforts for translation. The key takeaway of the "warning" being that if you use a format other than LibreOffice ODF (1.4 extended) you could have formatting/interoperability errors when you open it back up again in LibreOffice. Saving to an alien (non-ODF) format is dangerous. Save it first to ODF, then make a copy to save to an alien format. =-ref-= [1] https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/core/+/180713
Thanks for sharing this background. If I may add my 2c-worth. > The key takeaway of the "warning" being that if you use a format other than > LibreOffice ODF (1.4 extended) you could have formatting/interoperability > errors when you open it back up again in LibreOffice. Is there any way to quantify this risk? Put another way, if there are known problems that triggers a failure when round-tripping via OOXML then the warning should only be triggered if the document makes use of that formatting. For example, suppose that ODP supports the colour Olo but OOXML doesn't. If I change the text colour to Olo I would expect to see a warning when saving the document as OOXML. If the concern is that the user's choice of formatting might trigger some unintentional error (the document should be saved accurately using OOXML, but mapping Libreoffice internal state to OOXML is complicated and difficult to get right) then it sounds like any such problems are really just bugs. One might say that the warning is just saying "be warned, bugs might exist", which seems unnecessary. > Saving to an alien (non-ODF) format is dangerous. Could this statement be made more precise: under which conditions is it dangerous? As a counter-example, I imagine a single-page A4 text document containing the words "Hello, world" in Arial 11pt carries little danger of losing information if saved in OOXML. > Save it first to ODF, then make a copy to save to an alien format. Saving first in ODF helps if the person is writing a document that they're then sharing with other people, who are not expected to modify the document they receive. Unfortunately, saving first in ODF doesn't help, if the recipients then modify the document (e.g., some forms of collaborative working). The saved ODF file is now an out-of-date version of the document, and so (likely) of limited use. Cheers, Paul.