Bug 170321 - CALC - formated text into merged cell splits cells
Summary: CALC - formated text into merged cell splits cells
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
24.8.7.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2026-01-13 09:09 UTC by BDF
Modified: 2026-01-19 23:03 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
CALC - bug 170321 - split merged cells on paste - demo video (862.40 KB, video/webm)
2026-01-13 09:15 UTC, BDF
Details

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Description BDF 2026-01-13 09:09:17 UTC
Description:
When you copy formatted text into a merged cell the cell is split on paste.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. merge two cells
2. go to source with 'regular' (but formatted text; the text in the browser window of this bug report works just fine, alternate: LibreOffice Writer default text style)
3. paste text into merged cell

Actual Results:
The merged cells are split and the text is only inserted into the first cell

Expected Results:
I would expect Calc to keep the formatting of the text as much as possible, but I wouldn't expect it to split a merged cell if I only copied text (be it formatted text or not).
When I copy a single (not merged) cell I would may expect the merged cell to break on paste, but I wouldn't expect so if it's just text.


Reproducible: Always


User Profile Reset: No

Additional Info:
As said, the text needs to be formated, even it does not look like it. The text in the browser window of this bug report does not really look formated (other than maybe small things like font size or font type), but it's enough to split the cells.

The cells also stay split even after save+close+reopen (so it's not just a visual bug)

The browser used to test this was Firefox v146, but it works also Chromium v143 (and more than likely every other Chromium based browser.



Tested systems:

1) Linux
LibreOffice:
- Version: 25.8.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
- Build ID: 290daaa01b999472f0c7a3890eb6a550fd74c6df
- CPU threads: 12; OS: Linux 6.14; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
- Locale: de-AT (de_AT.UTF-8); UI: de-DE
- Flatpak
- Calc: threaded

OS info:
- Operating System: KDE neon User Edition
- KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4
- KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
- Qt Version: 6.10.1
- Kernel Version: 6.14.0-37-generic (64-bit)
- Graphics Platform: Wayland

2) Windows
Version: 24.2.6.3_AA (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 23735e228767740599e3f00b9371b05bcbf243d2
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: default; VCL: win
Locale: de-AT (de_AT); UI: de-DE
Calc: threaded
Comment 1 BDF 2026-01-13 09:15:49 UTC
Created attachment 205029 [details]
CALC - bug 170321 - split merged cells on paste - demo video

The bug in a demo video.

- Cells are merged in the file (border is for better visibility)
- Text is copied from a browser Window showing the start page of Wikipedia
- On paste (Ctrl + V) the merged cell is split
- Then text is copied from LibreOffice Writer (default text style)
- On paste (Ctrl + V) the merged cell is split again
- It doesn't matter if the merged cells are 2x1, 1x2 or 2x2

Ctrl + Shift + V does *not* split the cells.

Expected bahaviour here would still be that the text is inserted without the cells being split.
Comment 2 BDF 2026-01-13 09:20:25 UTC
More testing:

- the cells are also split if there is already text in the merged cell
- The cells are also split if the format is matched *exactly* (so font style, font size, etc. are all the same). Especially in this case I wouldn't the cells to be split at all (this even more as the text was copied from LibreOffice Writer and not some third party text editor)
Comment 3 LeroyG 2026-01-19 23:03:52 UTC
If there are more paragraphs in the source text, one paragraph is pasted in each cell downward.

Reproducible with:
Version: 24.8.7.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 480(Build:2)
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 6.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: es-MX (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded