Bug 97901 - paste special with transpose activated fails with "not enough space on sheet"
Summary: paste special with transpose activated fails with "not enough space on sheet"
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
5.0.5.2 release
Hardware: All All
: medium normal
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks: Paste-Special
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2016-02-16 14:03 UTC by documentfoundation
Modified: 2024-11-15 13:39 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
400x100 sized example ods for MWE (156.69 KB, application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.spreadsheet)
2016-02-16 14:03 UTC, documentfoundation
Details

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Description documentfoundation 2016-02-16 14:03:16 UTC
Created attachment 122688 [details]
400x100 sized example ods for MWE

paste special with transpose activated fails with "There is not enough space on the sheet to insert here" for moderate-size tables (400x100 and transposed). There is enough space, especially it stays within the 1024 column limit and non-transposed paste works.

MWE: open attached ods, select all, cut table, paste special with transpose activated.
Comment 1 Buovjaga 2016-02-17 12:41:35 UTC
Repro.

Win 7 Pro 64-bit Version: 5.2.0.0.alpha0+
Build ID: a6f876d45bd4e41a7143594a6cb11b6893a0f620
CPU Threads: 4; OS Version: Windows 6.1; UI Render: default; 
TinderBox: Win-x86@39, Branch:master, Time: 2016-02-11_00:07:38
Locale: fi-FI (fi_FI)
Comment 2 QA Administrators 2017-03-06 15:20:32 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 3 documentfoundation 2017-03-06 17:35:15 UTC
still present in debian-stretch's lo 5.2.5.1
Comment 4 QA Administrators 2018-07-12 02:44:35 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 5 documentfoundation 2020-05-15 13:28:38 UTC
I can't reproduce this bug anymore. 

Version: 6.4.4.1
Build ID: 1:6.4.4~rc1-1
CPU threads: 6; OS: Linux 4.19; UI render: default; VCL: x11; 
Locale: de-CH (en_DK.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 6 Mehrad Mahmoudian 2020-05-19 08:49:01 UTC
I just faced it. What I have is a file with 36 cols and 14 rows. When I do Ctrl + A and then copy and go to another sheet and paste special with transpose I get the error, but when I manually select the range of the cells that are not empty (36x14) I can paste it transposed. I guess something is wrong with Calc understanding the "area of interest".

Version: 6.4.3.2
Build ID: 747b5d0ebf89f41c860ec2a39efd7cb15b54f2d8
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 4.15; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3; 
Flatpak
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI-Language: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 7 Buovjaga 2020-05-19 09:18:19 UTC
Yeah, I actually still repro with attachment 122688 [details]

Arch Linux 64-bit
Version: 7.0.0.0.alpha1+
Build ID: bdc8cd060dca8a97ef7970d1c0ab30694930beea
CPU threads: 8; OS: Linux 5.6; UI render: default; VCL: kf5; 
Locale: en-US (fi_FI.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Built on 14 May 2020
Comment 8 Roland Kurmann 2021-04-04 07:13:32 UTC
Reproduced with steps of comment 6

Version: 7.2.0.0.alpha0+ / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f1b55d3f8e963069fc798bcf559ae9af2bf18b64
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.3; UI render: default; VCL: x11
Locale: en-US (en_US.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
Comment 9 Roland Kurmann 2021-04-04 18:47:06 UTC
I've investigated this issue. All selected cells are taken into account. Also the empty cells.

Steps to reproduce:

i) Copying columns:

1. Write 1 in cell A1.
2. Select column A.
3. Copy
4. Go to cell B1.
5. Paste
6. --> It works and 1 is in cell B1.
7. Go to cell C2.
8. Paste
9. --> Error "There is not enough space on the sheet to insert here"
10. Go to cell A2
11. Edit > Paste Special > Transpose
12. --> Error "There is not enough space on the sheet to insert here"

ii) The same is valid for copying rows.

20. Select column 1
21. Copy
22. Go to cell A2.
23. Paste
24. --> It works and 1 is in cell A2.
25. Go to cell B3.
26. Paste
27. --> Error "There is not enough space on the sheet to insert here"
28. Go to D1
29. Edit > Paste Special > Transpose
30. --> It works and 1 is in cell D1. (This case works as there are less cells in a row than a column.

Copying everything is just copying columns (i.) and rows (ii.) combined.

Pasting with skip empty cells of Paste Special does not change the behavior.

The behavior of transposing seems consistent with the "normal" copy/paste. It is not really an issue of transposing.

The solution is just to select and copy/paste/transpose the data that you want.

With the current design of rows and columns in LibreOffice, I think there is no proper solution to this bug report (only for transposing). It would be a hack.

A proper solution should handle the cases in steps 9., 12., and 27. together and keep the consistency.
Comment 10 Noel Grandin 2021-04-06 08:25:21 UTC
It seems to me that paste should take into account how much of the source range is empty when determining space and when copying/inserting.

To be safe, we should probably include some indicator in the source range that says "this is an entire column/row" as apposed to having a source range like A1...XF1

So, this is definitely not a simple problem to solve (because we would have to quite careful about when we trim off empty cells from the source range), but it should IMNSHO, be solvable
Comment 11 QA Administrators 2023-04-07 03:27:49 UTC Comment hidden (obsolete)
Comment 12 ady 2023-04-07 06:04:37 UTC
With attachment 122688 [details] I can [CTRL]+[HOME] and then [CTRL]+[SHIFT]+[END] to select the relevant range to copy (or cut) and then paste with transpose. This is one of several ways to select the used area. The 'paste special > transpose' command works as expected.

The 'paste special > transpose' command is working correctly. The point about what or how to select the relevant area (only) so as to copy+paste is a different matter (not only relevant for this particular case). There are other reports related to what exactly [CTRL]+[A] and/or [CTRL]+[*] and/or other alternative selection methods do when applying some command after the selection.

IMHO, this should be WFM now.
Comment 13 Roland Kurmann 2023-04-07 08:27:42 UTC
Reproduced with steps of comment 6

with LibreOffice 7.5.2.2
Comment 14 ady 2023-04-07 16:38:07 UTC
(In reply to Roland Kurmann from comment #13)
> Reproduced with steps of comment 6

As long as you select the _whole_ worksheet (or an _entire_ column), transpose _will_ fail.

If you select, say, 400 columns by 100 rows, you should be able to use transpose.

As of LO 7.4, we have 16384 columns. If you select more than 16384 rows to transpose, the command has no alternative but to fail.

As I mentioned in comment 12, the rest is not the main issue in this bug report.

So the question is whether someone is still having a problem using transpose when selecting (a rectangle area of) less than (or equal to) 16384 columns by less than (or equal to) 16384 rows.
Comment 15 Glenn 2023-05-10 19:14:58 UTC
(In reply to ady from comment #14)
> As long as you select the _whole_ worksheet (or an _entire_ column),
> transpose _will_ fail.

That's the bug.  It's not unreasonable to expect the app to recognize
that a limited number of rows and columns are populated when the user
attempts a transposition.  If that's not possible, then a better error
message should be displayed.
Comment 16 documentfoundation 2023-05-11 16:43:30 UTC
> As of LO 7.4, we have 16384 columns. If you select more than 16384 rows to transpose, the command has no alternative but to fail.

but I didn't select more than 2**20 rows. Maybe I technically did, but this is so unobvious. The scroll bars also don't extend over 16384 columns when basically all of them are empty, do they?

Maybe the underlying technical reason for this bug is that ctrl-a doesn't select all non-empty cells or the hull rectangle around all nonempty cells. But this is still a manifestation of how ctrl-a does something else than what users reasonably expect it to do, even if they are somewhat aware that the size of the spreadsheet is what it is.
Comment 17 Andreas Heinisch 2024-11-15 13:39:55 UTC
I suppose when you select "skip empty cells" LO should ignore empty source cells and clamp to the actual data area. Could this be a feasable solution?