I want to search for some text in my Calc spreadsheet, but - it also has some hidden columns which I want to ignore. Unfortunately - I don't have the option to tell Calc to do that, and it will find many matches for which it will just show me a zero-width active cell where the cell in a hidden column is located. Now, I understand some users _would_ want to find contents in hidden columns or rows; but certainly many, if not most - don't. So this should at least be an option.
maybe a **partial** solution: Entries hidden by ⇒ Data ⇒ Filter ⇒ (Standardfilter AutoFilter) are not visible by Search&Replace.
(In reply to Werner Tietz from comment #1) > Entries hidden by ⇒ Data ⇒ Filter ⇒ (Standardfilter AutoFilter) are not > visible by Search&Replace. Oh, that's interesting, I hadn't noticed! That means, that there's probably already some code in place for filtering, and the implementation would be more of a "copy and adapt" rather than "from scratch". But it also means that maybe that too should be subject to the effect of an option of "search hidden rows/columns".
Bug 85175 requests "Find & replace should (optionally) show hidden rows/columns containing found target", Bug 120098 wants to "Add ability to search for hidden text" (Calc and Writer work similarly)