Bug 36582 - "Find and replace" finds/replaces text deleted with "record/track changes"
Summary: "Find and replace" finds/replaces text deleted with "record/track changes"
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Writer (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: high normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
: 65056 128982 147570 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: Track-Changes Find-Search
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2011-04-25 06:41 UTC by Tomasz Kucza
Modified: 2024-10-18 07:56 UTC (History)
16 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Screenshot of Word and Writer side by side after following the steps (167.76 KB, image/png)
2020-04-26 10:16 UTC, NISZ LibreOffice Team
Details

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Description Tomasz Kucza 2011-04-25 06:41:49 UTC
If you turn on recording and showing changes in document find and replace will replace even things already deleted. Example:

1. Create new document.
2. Write "This is a document".
3. Turn on showing and recording changes.
4. Delete the word "document" so you have "This is a".
5. Replace document with "file".
6. The document will contain: "This is a file." instead of "This is a".
Comment 1 Tomasz Kucza 2011-04-25 06:43:03 UTC
PS. In point 5 I mean "Use search and replace to change word 'document' to 'file'". Sorry for being vague.
Comment 2 gleppert 2011-04-25 11:19:23 UTC
I tested the bug as described. I can confirm the bug on my system. 

Furthermore, the bug is even more serious than described:

* First problem as described by Tomasz: The replace deleted word is active/undeleted after search&replace. This actually destroys the written text.

* Second problem: After hitting "Replace all" a couple of times, it will keep replacing the deleted text with the new text. The dialog never displays "Word not found" and hence does not stop.

Due to the reason that data can be actually made unusable/unreadible, I change the importance to high/major. I hope this is okay. 

System: Ubuntu 10.4./Gnome,  LibreOffice 3.3.2 PPA, Intel 32Bit
Comment 3 Björn Michaelsen 2011-12-23 12:07:33 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 4 chuck598 2012-02-11 19:30:57 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 5 gleppert 2012-03-19 09:45:16 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 6 stfhell 2012-10-15 19:55:15 UTC
Still a problem in LO 3.6.2.2. In summary: When "Show tracked changes" is active, "Find" will find text that has been deleted with "track changes" activated. "Find & replace" will replace already deleted text. When you do "Find & replace" with activated "track changes", it will replace the same (already deleted) text again and again. "Replace all" works insofar as it replaces each occurance only once.

Actually it can be useful if "Find" also searches tracked deletions - after all you use "track changes" to be able to keep deleted text in the document. But I think it's usually not what you want. So you would have to disable "show tracked changes" just to do a "Find". I cannot imagine a situation where you would like already deleted text to be replaced by newly inserted text.

It's definitely a bug that LO does not at least move the cursor behind the replaced text when you choose "Replace" in the "Find & replace" dialogue with "track changes" activated. That leads to the same text being replaced again and again.
Comment 7 Michael Stahl (allotropia) 2012-12-18 17:22:53 UTC
please somebody tell me which OOo/LO version did not have this bug.

i can reproduce it going back to OOo 3.0.1, so doesn't look like a regression.
Comment 8 stfhell 2012-12-18 20:08:47 UTC
I can't remember that this has ever worked differently. The corresponding OOo bug was filed in 2007 for OOo 2.3:
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=82591
Comment 9 Björn Michaelsen 2014-02-28 12:45:56 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 10 Michael Stahl (allotropia) 2014-02-28 12:49:27 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 11 Xisco Faulí 2014-07-30 09:46:46 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 12 QA Administrators 2015-09-04 02:49:51 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 13 Xisco Faulí 2015-09-04 09:22:21 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 14 QA Administrators 2016-09-20 10:32:28 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 15 Gerry 2016-09-22 20:24:53 UTC
Bug still present in Version: 5.1.4.2
Build-ID: 1:5.1.4-0ubuntu1
Comment 16 Timur 2017-04-20 15:51:27 UTC
*** Bug 65056 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 17 QA Administrators 2018-04-21 02:33:50 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 18 Gerry 2018-04-21 07:30:31 UTC
This bug still exists in LO 6.0 and is still very annoying. 

Example:
If you work with long documents in a team, track changes is often enabled. If you then, for example, replace the British "ise" / "isation" with "ize" / "ization", then you end up with lots of rubbish in the document. LibreOffice Writer does also replace the string in all deleted words and displays the replaced string as not deleted (!). In other words, everywhere in the document are nonsense "ize" / "ization" strings, which you have to manually clean. -> extremely annoying and time-consuming bug!  

Version: 6.0.3.2
Build-ID: 1:6.0.3~rc2-0ubuntu0.16.04.1~lo2
CPU-Threads: 4; BS: Linux 4.4; UI-Render: Standard; VCL: gtk2; 
Gebietsschema: de-DE (de_DE.UTF-8); Calc: group
Comment 19 Gerry 2018-04-21 08:07:07 UTC
IMHO there are two possible ways to fix this bug:

Either:

(1) Writer should not find search strings in deleted text at all (meaning text deleted in Track Changes mode)

Or:

(2) Writer still finds search strings in all text (including deleted text in Track Changes mode) and also replaces them, but replaced text should be flagged as deleted.

Solution 1 is preferable to solution 2. However, if solution 2 is easier to implement, IMHO it would be also okay.
Comment 20 QA Administrators 2019-04-22 02:56:36 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 21 Gerry 2019-04-22 07:33:27 UTC
The bug is still present in v 6.1.5.2. I don't have the most recent LO release at hand, so please can somebody test this against the newest version?

Generally, I hope that this bug receives some attention. In every larger project (with track changes), I encountered issues related to this bug that I had to clean manually. Is a fix so complicated?



Version: 6.1.5.2
Build ID: 1:6.1.5-0ubuntu0.18.10.1
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 4.18; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
Locale: en-GB (de_DE.UTF-8); Calc: group threaded
Comment 22 Timur 2019-11-24 17:48:34 UTC
*** Bug 128982 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 23 NISZ LibreOffice Team 2020-04-26 10:16:33 UTC
Created attachment 159953 [details]
Screenshot of Word and Writer side by side after following the steps

Still happens in:

Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
Build ID: 151d95376a13907553032efc271fb0a7a27c9782
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.3 Build 9600; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win; 
Locale: hu-HU (hu_HU); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: CL

Also: this behavior is the same as in Word.
Comment 24 Hussam Al-Tayeb 2020-04-26 12:30:21 UTC
I cannot re(In reply to NISZ LibreOffice Team from comment #23)
> Created attachment 159953 [details]
> Screenshot of Word and Writer side by side after following the steps
> 
> Still happens in:
> 
> Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
> Build ID: 151d95376a13907553032efc271fb0a7a27c9782
> CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 6.3 Build 9600; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL:
> win; 
> Locale: hu-HU (hu_HU); UI-Language: en-US
> Calc: CL
> 
> Also: this behavior is the same as in Word.

I cannot reproduce this issue in Microsoft Word. I have an Office 365 subscription and I only use .docx files.
Comment 25 Hussam Al-Tayeb 2020-04-26 12:34:37 UTC Comment hidden (no-value)
Comment 26 Heiko Tietze 2020-04-27 11:11:00 UTC
Clearly a bug to me, deleted content is still gone even when TC is on (comment 19, option 1). Don't see need for input from UX.
Comment 27 Lars Jødal 2021-10-14 12:22:50 UTC
Using LO 7.1.6.2, this is also a problem for me. If show track-changes is on, search-and-replace will find text in deleted text, replace it with NON-DELETED replacement text, and can then start over, replacing it once again.

As a result, search-and-replace is effectively unusable when track-changes are shown (something that I as a user can only learn the hard way). IMHO, the importance is higher than the current setting of "normal".

Two possible solutions were mentioned in comment 19:

(1) Writer should not find search strings in deleted text at all (meaning text deleted in Track Changes mode)

Or:

(2) Writer still finds search strings in all text (including deleted text in Track Changes mode) and also replaces them, but replaced text should be flagged as deleted.

A possible third could be:

(3) In search-and-replace mode, deleted text is not found (i.e., option 1 in this case), while in search-only mode, deleted text is found if track-changes are shown (i.e., option 2 in this case).

The advantage of option 3 is that it is still possible to search in all the text that is seen on the screen. But I have no problems going for the most simple solution: Option 1.


Version: 7.1.6.2 (x64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 0e133318fcee89abacd6a7d077e292f1145735c3
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 18363; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: da-DK (da_DK); UI: da-DK
Calc: threaded
Comment 28 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2022-01-01 13:32:40 UTC
reproduced in:

Version: 7.3.0.1 / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 840fe2f57ae5ad80d62bfa6e25550cb10ddabd1d
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.4; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-AU (en_AU.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 29 Lars Jødal 2022-01-03 05:26:49 UTC
(In reply to NISZ LibreOffice Team from comment #23)
> Created attachment 159953 [details]
> Screenshot of Word and Writer side by side after following the steps
> 
> Still happens in:
> 
> Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha0+ (x64)
> [...]
> 
> Also: this behavior is the same as in Word.

As noted by NISZ LibreOffice Team, the behaviour is very much similar i Word: Also in Word, Search & Replace while showing track-changes, does search within deleted text and replaces with non-deleted text. Just tested with MS Office 365.

I can see why it can sometimes be relevant to search also in deleted text, e.g. to find where you (or a colleague) deleted something. And if you do not want this, just turn off showing track-changes. But I fail to see why anybody would want already-deleted text to be part of replacing. (Even before the problems of doing more than one search & replace, leading to several instances of the new text.) Well, failing the see the use could be just my lack of imagination. So:

Can anybody come up with a case where searching within deleted text and replacing with new text would be the intended behaviour? 

Put another way: Can anybody see a reason why this would NOT be a bug (happening to be shared by LO and MS Office)?

PS: Word notes the user that "We are through searching the document" after one pass, so the user will at least know that if s/he continues replacing, it will be in text that had already been considered. This will stop most users from repeated replacement, but does not change the question how replacing at all in deleted text could be the intended behaviour.
Comment 30 Hussam Al-Tayeb 2022-01-03 05:37:16 UTC
Please don't spread incorrect information.

It does not resemble the Microsoft Word behavior. I just tested on both
Sharepoint and desktop MS Office 365.
Please test again. You probably did not understand the bug.
Libreoffice replaces the deleted text with each recursion while
Microsoft Office does not replace deleted text.
Comment 31 Lars Jødal 2022-04-04 13:27:30 UTC
(In reply to Hussam Al-Tayeb from comment #30)
> Please don't spread incorrect information.
> 
> It does not resemble the Microsoft Word behavior. I just tested on both
> Sharepoint and desktop MS Office 365.
> Please test again. You probably did not understand the bug.
> Libreoffice replaces the deleted text with each recursion while
> Microsoft Office does not replace deleted text.

Just tested once again with Word from MS Office 365, confirming that a variant of this bug is indeed present in MS Office: Opening some text, deleting with track-changes on and shown, and then using search&replace: the searched text is found also in the deleted text and replaced with non-deleted text. I have reported it to MS Office as a bug.

Well, to get back to the point of a LibreOffice forum: The bug is still present in LO 7.3.2.2
Comment 32 Buovjaga 2022-12-19 11:49:18 UTC
*** Bug 147570 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***