Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 11594
static autofilter data ranges imported from .xls
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:15:02 UTC
Hello everybody, dear developers! I refer to Issue#8883 but could not reopen it. I noticed the behaviour and found the bugreport. Yes it has to do with a too small data area but: I have to add that i've found that the problem with the autofilter at least in my case have been systematically with imported .xls files. The autofilter datarange seems to be stored expicitly in in the .xls and gets imported as several defined BuiltIn_AutoFilter_[1-n] dataranges that seem to override the OOo's data range that is generated dynamicly when enabling autofilers. Every former .xls user will have problems using the autofilters. Simply deleting the n BuiltIn_AutoFilter_[1-n] entries lets autofilter work properly. So I would think this issue could easily taken care of by letting the importer not create the fixed data ranges?
That's not that easy. Excel supports one auto-filter per sheet. Calc only supports one auto-filter per document, if you don't use database ranges. So the Excel import has to define these ranges explicitely to be able to insert multiple auto-filters into one Calc document. A solution would be to first collect all filters, and if there is only one in the document, to not create a DB range. By the way: Using the DB ranges allows Calc to handle multiple filters in ONE SHEET, that is impossible in Excel.
assuming ownership - see also issue #10995
marking as started
Hi, great to read about your thoughts. Now I played a little with data ranges and autofilters. (multiple filters per sheet are realy cool) Seems to me that the problem is mostly about a *autoRANGE* functionality. As a regular user I would say static data ranges defined by the importer tend to be irritating. I still think it might be better not to define them at all. The constraint simply is that in calc only one *autoRANGE*-autoFILTER per document is supported. If this changes later great, but I don't think a static importer workaround will be satisfactory. Since an average user might not be aware about a *static* data range that is defined at import time and will experience a, in their perception, non-working auto-filter after they add some more data into their spreadsheet that will not be within the datarange anymore. So for the time being lets not import multiple Autofilters? (Only one with autorange funcionality?)
I don't think removing any functionality from the filters is a good idea. Why delete an auto-filter on import, if we *can* import it (with explicit DB ranges). And - in Calc the recommended way to perform filter/sort/subtotals is to define a DB range first... I guess >90% of all Excel documents with filters contain only one. So my suggestion with the auto-range-if-only-one-filter should work in most cases.
All right, "auto-range-if-only-one-filter" does it for the most I agree. It will be temporarily anyway right? The moment calc eventually handles more autoranges it would probably need some modification. BTW: An idea to point the users attention to the existence of static ranges might be to mark the filter range of filters on the sheet. Similar to the blue frame that is shown when the range is selected in the define data range dialog. I agree that the user should rather be aware of the ranges than relying maybe mere thoughtlessly on automagic.
Checked in the fix for issue 10995 today which takes care of the case where only one AF is present as discussed.
@noidea: You should open a new issue with your idea of marking filtered areas (set the issue type to enhancement).
I filed enhancement 11870 (marking static data rages / filtered areas). Thank you all!
The outstanding issue from this bug is the creation of multiple autofilters. The fix for issue 10995 and the enhancement request in issue 11870 take care of the rest. This should be closed as a duplicate of issue 12666. *** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 12666 ***
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