LibreOffice Calc 24.2.1.2 won't put text in cells

r_widell · April 10, 2024, 12:46pm

I don’t know if it’s an upstream problem or specific to openSUSE, but LibreOffice Calc decided to quit accepting text in cells of an xlxs spreadsheet this morning.

I have an Excel spreadsheet that that’s used for financial reporting at my VFW post. I went to make some entries this morning and discovered that I can no longer enter text in the cells where I’ve previously been able to place text. It looks like it’s going to accept the input, but when I advance to the next cell, the input disappears. When I go back to the previous cell, it’s now blank.

I also notices some strange formatting issues the other day, dollar signs that should be in a particular cell are only partially visible, but at the very right edge the cell to the adjacent left of the subject cell. (I hope that makes sense)

Is this a known issue, or do I have data corruption problems? Everything seems to be in order based on the HW checks I’ve performed.

Thanks,
ron

john_hudson · April 10, 2024, 8:53pm

It’s certainly not a known issue. I have the same version of LibreOffice as you and I cannot replicate the issue. Years ago when confronted with formatting problems in an Office file, I resolved them by saving the file in a different format and reloading it. If there is no visual basic in the file, this should present no problems.

r_widell · April 11, 2024, 7:23pm

To my knowledge, there’s no Visual Basic but that’s not conclusive. I got this file from another VFW Post and have never used Visual Basic.
I will say that saving the file as .ods and reloading didn’t help. But i did notice that entering text in a cell and advancing to the next cell (tab key) didn’t cause the floppy disc icon to get the little red dot which normally indicates that change has occurred to a document. For some reason, LibreOffice Calc thinks I didn’t do anything.

ron

john_hudson · April 12, 2024, 8:48pm

The other option to look at is Cell Protection; check Tools>Protect sheet to see if it has protection on. If protection is on, then cells can be protected. If Cell Protection is not on, it should not be possible to protect any cells.

r_widell · April 13, 2024, 4:26am

There’s clearly something funky about this particular file. I put it on a thumb drive and tried it with LibreOffice Calc 7.3.7.2 in Kubuntu 22.04LTS. I could put text into cells that wouldn’t accept text in openSUSE, but there were different cells that wouldn’t accept text.

I then tried that same file in Excel 2021 under Windows 10; absolutely no problem at all. Even all of the weird formatting issues were gone. So I made a few changes, saved the file with Excel, and then opened it with LibreOffice under openSUSE, Weird formatting was back as were the “locked” cells.

I’m going to give up. I still have the original “template” that I got 7 years ago, so I’ll start a new file for this year and manually enter the data for January-March. If I still have issues I’ll try to completely purge LibreOffice and re-install.

Thanks for the suggestions.

ron

john_hudson · April 13, 2024, 9:09am

Very strange. It might be practical export the sheet as CSV and then reimport it and create a fresh sheet - unless this strange behaviour prevents saving to CSV.

r_widell · April 15, 2024, 12:44pm

While the inability to enter text in certain cells only manifested in the latest sheet, the weird formatting has propagated to all sheets. That’s why I’m planning to trash the entire file. Some random bit(s) got flipped somewhere (no ECC memory on this laptop) and I now have a corrupt file (speculation here).

ron

pavinjoseph · April 15, 2024, 1:19pm

If it’s a bit flip or some other corruption, you should be able to compare the hash and restore from snapshots/backups.

List snapshots, assuming the config name is home:

sudo snapper -c home list

Assuming snapshot #40 and #50 are good and bad, do a diff for your file:

sudo snapper -c home diff 40..50 /path/to/your/file

Restore known good file:

sudo snapper -c home undochange 40..50 /path/to/your/file

r_widell · April 15, 2024, 10:50pm

That would probably work if the home FS was btrfs. I installed openSUSE on this machine back in 2010 (I think it was 11.3) and btrfs was way too novel for my taste. All of the filesystems are ext4.

I do have backups of the file, but I didn’t notice the weird formatting until after the backups had been overwritten with the “corrupt” file.

It’s not the end of the world. I still have the correct data. There will be some extra work involved to rebuild the file, but oh well.

I will have to reconsider my backup regimen.

Thanks,
ron

r_widell · April 18, 2024, 8:37pm

OK, I have concluded that the issue is with this version of LibreOffice, not a corrupted data file.

I rolled back to 7.5.4.1 and all issues were corrected. I can got back to placing text in cells and the text stays there. All of the weird formatting issues have self-corrected, In short, it’s now working as I expect. While 7.6 may have corrected some items, it definitely broke things for me.

Since it appears to be an upstream issue, I’ll work to remove any proprietary data from the file and see if any of the LibreOffice Calc devs want to see why this file causes issues. In the meantime, I’ve locked the 7.5 version in Yast so I don’t have to deal with attempted “upgrades”.

Thanks again,
ron

matbhm · April 21, 2024, 4:26am

Try the actual Version 24.2.2.2!?!

r_widell · April 21, 2024, 5:18pm

Where do I find the repository which holds this version? The latest version I see in Yast, with the repositories normally installed is 24.2.1.2.

ron

hui · April 21, 2024, 5:27pm

The actual version in OSS repo is

ich@laptopneu:~> LANG=C zypper se --details --match-exact libreoffice

Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S | Name        | Type    | Version      | Arch   | Repository
--+-------------+---------+--------------+--------+-----------
  | libreoffice | package | 24.2.2.2-1.2 | x86_64 | repo-oss
ich@laptopneu:~>

matbhm · April 21, 2024, 7:10pm

The package Version 24.2.2.2 is from the OSS-Repository. It may be that you have received the package from the LibreOffice Repository. As of today, package version 24.2.3.1 is available on the LibreOffice repository.

r_widell · April 22, 2024, 4:41pm

The default set of repositories on my LEAP 15.5 installation includes “Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15”, which seems to override the main update repository. I get:

:~> LANG=C zypper se --details --match-exact libreoffice
Repository : Time since last refresh
Update repository of openSUSE Backports : 13 h 40 min
Non-OSS Repository : 13 h 40 min
Open H.264 Codec (openSUSE Leap) : 13 h 40 min
Main Repository : 13 h 40 min
Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15 : 13 h 40 min
Main Update Repository : 13 h 40 min
Update Repository (Non-Oss) : 13 h 40 min
Note: Running with user privileges. From time to time run 'zypper refresh' as root to make sure
the repository metadata are complete and up-to-date.
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…

S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
–±------------±-----------±------------------------±-------±------------------------------------------------------------
i | libreoffice | package | 24.2.1.2-150500.20.3.11 | x86_64 | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
v | libreoffice | package | 7.6.2.1-150400.17.20.1 | x86_64 | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
v | libreoffice | package | 7.6.2.1-150400.17.17.3 | x86_64 | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
v | libreoffice | package | 7.5.4.1-150400.17.14.1 | x86_64 | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
v | libreoffice | package | 7.5.4.1-150400.17.12.4 | x86_64 | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
v | libreoffice | package | 7.4.3.2-150400.17.3.8 | x86_64 | Main Repository
| libreoffice | srcpackage | 24.2.1.2-150500.20.3.11 | noarch | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
| libreoffice | srcpackage | 7.6.2.1-150400.17.20.1 | noarch | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
| libreoffice | srcpackage | 7.6.2.1-150400.17.17.3 | noarch | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
| libreoffice | srcpackage | 7.5.4.1-150400.17.14.1 | noarch | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15
| libreoffice | srcpackage | 7.5.4.1-150400.17.12.4 | noarch | Update repository with updates from SUSE Linux Enterprise 15

So 24.2.1.2 is the latest version I’m offered.

It turns out it doesn’t matter; it’s a feature, not a bug. The cells in question had a data validity attribute (which I didn’t realize) which was ignored by Excel and LibreOffice until 24.x. With 24.x it was decided to be pedantic, but not throw an error, so no indication WHY the data wasn’t accepted. Healthy discussion about this on bugzilla.

Still no explanation why the formatting is messed up.

Thanks,
ron

matbhm · April 23, 2024, 12:35am

No! The Version for Leap 15.5:

http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/LibreOffice:/24.2/15.5/

It’s 24.2.3.1!

r_widell · April 23, 2024, 5:39pm

Thank you for providing the URI for the LibreOffice repository.

ron

Svyatko · April 26, 2024, 4:54am

No, this is Experimental repo. LO 24.2.3.1 & 7.6.4.1 are available from Experimental repos.

https://software.opensuse.org/package/libreoffice

LO 24.2.1.2 is available from Main repo for Leap 15.5.

system · May 26, 2024, 4:55am

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