Bug 43784 - Show infobar when document has broken linked files
Summary: Show infobar when document has broken linked files
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: LibreOffice (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
Inherited From OOo
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard: BSA target:24.2.0
Keywords:
: 105006 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 158114
Blocks: Infobar Files-Linked
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2011-12-13 03:13 UTC by Harald Koester
Modified: 2023-12-22 11:17 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


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Description Harald Koester 2011-12-13 03:13:22 UTC
Steps in order to reproduce the bug:
[1] Create a new text document (Document A) and insert some text.
[2] Save and close Document A.
[3] Create a second new document (B).
[4] Set option "LibreOffice Writer, General, Update link when loading" to "On request".
[5] Insert a section as a link to Document A. The content of Document A is displayed inside this section of Document B.
[6] Save and close Document B.
[7] Rename Document A with file manager.
[8] Open Document B. 
[9] You are informed, that the document contains links to external data and you are asked if you like to update the links. Click Yes.
[10] The borders of the section inside Document B are displayed, but its content is empty.

If you choose at step [4] "Always" the behavior is equal except step [9] is not performed.

Expected behavior:
Before step [10] I expected an error message, in order to inform the user that the linked file does not exist.

Platform (if different from the browser): 
              
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; de; rv:1.9.2.24) Gecko/20111103 Firefox/3.6.24
Comment 1 Florian Reisinger 2012-01-21 09:31:43 UTC
Hi!

You are right, there is no error message...
Comment 2 Thomas Hackert 2012-01-21 09:41:24 UTC
Hello Harald, *,
I can confirm it with Debian Testing AMD64 and LO 3.5.0 RC1 ... :(
HTH
Thomas.
Comment 3 Harald Koester 2012-11-27 10:56:56 UTC
Bug still exists in Version 3.6.3.

To my opinion it's not only an enhancement. Particularly if you are asked explicitly to update the link, I expect, that LO informs you, that an update is not possible. 

Otherwise there is the _danger_of_data_loss_. Suppose a case where Document A has been deleted errorneously. Without an error message, also the former inserted text of Document A will be deleted in Document B. Furthermore, especially with a larger document, you may recognize the missing of Document A much more later. So hopefully you have a good backup, so that you are able to reconstruct your documents or you are able to fetch back Document A from the recycle bin.
Comment 4 Harald Koester 2017-09-22 09:01:29 UTC
Bug still exists in version 5.4.1. (Win7)
Bug already exists in version 3.3.0. Hence inherited from OOo.
Comment 5 Yousuf Philips (jay) (retired) 2017-09-22 20:01:37 UTC
In my view, the error should appear as an infobar message, which the user can click the button to open the Edit > Links dialog, as showing a msgbox dialog for such an error would cause alot of problems when there were multiple broken linked files.

UX-Team: what do you guys think?
Comment 6 Heiko Tietze 2017-09-23 04:18:27 UTC
(In reply to Yousuf Philips (jay) from comment #5)
> In my view, the error should appear as an infobar message, which the user
> can click the button to open the Edit > Links dialog, as showing a msgbox
> dialog for such an error would cause alot of problems when there were
> multiple broken linked files.
> 
> UX-Team: what do you guys think?

Fully agree with the infobar. Question is only whether it's a warning (yellow) or error (red). Would say the latter.
Comment 7 V Stuart Foote 2017-09-23 04:24:38 UTC
+1, Infobar--Red--warning of broken links with button action to open the Edit -> Links dialog. Just generic in the warning, the dialog will show them all.

A separate message box for each of multiple links would be annoying--single Infobar warning on launch is enough.
Comment 8 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-08-02 17:22:21 UTC
*** Bug 105006 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-08-02 17:35:48 UTC
Changing the component to the whole of LibreOffice. External sheets can be linked into Calc, and pictures can be linked in most components.
Comment 10 Commit Notification 2023-11-08 20:17:35 UTC
László Németh committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/core/commit/0156cba6e34026f8fa0f2912e503378a5ec2208d

tdf#43784 tdf#158114 sw accessibility: check missing linked graphic

It will be available in 24.2.0.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
https://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds

Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 11 Stéphane Guillou (stragu) 2023-12-22 11:17:01 UTC
See also bug 158831, which requests also showing the information in the Edit Links dialog.

Ideally, such a banner will have a button to open the Edit Links dialog directly, which should be the best dialog to go through multiple broken links and fix them. As Yousuf said in comment 5.