Bug 169999 - Hidden fields and footnotes - footnote anchor hidden, but not footnote text
Summary: Hidden fields and footnotes - footnote anchor hidden, but not footnote text
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
25.8.3.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: QA:needsComment
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-12-16 10:48 UTC by Stian Øby Johansen
Modified: 2025-12-31 03:13 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments

Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Description Stian Øby Johansen 2025-12-16 10:48:04 UTC
Description:
I have a couple of documents where I make quite heavy use of hidden sections. After some LibreOffice update in the last 6 months (I’m not able to identify the exact one) there has been some change to how these fields behave. The issue I am having is that footnote text continues to appear even though the footnote anchor is found within a section that is hidden.

The way I have them set up is that all text I want to be able to hide is encapsulated in sections with the checkbox “Hide” checked, and “With Condition” set to “Hide==1”. I also have an invisible “Set variable” field as the first character of my document that sets the Hide variable to 1 when I want the text in the fields to be hidden (or 0 when I want it to be visible).

Here are two example documents demonstrating this behavior:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/51mhu4vbu69bduipaq2oa/TEST_HideOff.odt?rlkey=cidglbz9m4159wtq2d4laes2q&st=5ifyg2vj&dl=1 (With Hide==0, showing all text)
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mqmil8625lvge91ktni80/TEST_HideOn.odt?rlkey=nsurkxygz6u407d2380ymmc7z&st=t13u8m0m&dl=1 (With Hide==1, correctly hiding the body text, including footnote anchor, but not the footnote text 1)

Earlier, at least in the early spring, footnote text would hide if the footnote anchor was hidden.


MY LibreOffice version info:
Version: 25.8.3.2 (X86_64)
Build ID: 8ca8d55c161d602844f5428fa4b58097424e324e
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (build 26200); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: nb-NO (nb_NO); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
(I see the same behaviour on LibreOffice for Linux/Ubuntu).


Other users have reported similar issues, see this thread on ask.libreoffice.org:
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/hidden-fields-and-footnotes-footnote-anchor-hidden-but-not-footnote-text/129490

Notably, one user reports that footnote text hides correctly in this version:
Version: 24.2.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 51a6219feb6075d9a4c46691dcfe0cd9c4fff3c2

Thus, the regression must have happened between those versions.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add a paragraph of text with foonotes.
2. Set the paragraph to hidden.

Actual Results:
The paragraph text (including footnote anchors) are hidden, but the footnote text at the bottom of the page remains.

Expected Results:
The footnote text at the bottom of the page should be hidden together with their respective footnote anchors.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
The issue was first reported/discussed in this thread: 
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/hidden-fields-and-footnotes-footnote-anchor-hidden-but-not-footnote-text/129490
Comment 1 Stian Øby Johansen 2025-12-16 10:50:55 UTC
One more tidbit that should be added, form the ask.libreoffice.org thread (https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/hidden-fields-and-footnotes-footnote-anchor-hidden-but-not-footnote-text/129490/3):

User ajlittoz reports the following:
"It seems that the faulty behaviour appears after some editing in the text. At first when I opened your document, everything was as expected. But when I added a hidden paragraph (to see if it makes a difference), I got the glitch."


Thus, saving, closing, and then reopening the file will ensure that the footnote text stays hidden. Therefore, it seems as if I have stumbled upon a minor bug that can be circumvented by re-opening the document.