Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 59745
Cell notes do not move when cells are sorted in Calc
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:14:39 UTC
If you sort a bunch of cells, the position of the notes for those cells does not change, which can leave the notes very far from the cells that they describe (maybe not even on the same screen) with very long arrows. I would suggest moving the notes so that their position relative to the cells they describe is preserved during the sort (with some adjustment to avoid having any notes move off of the edge of the spreadsheet). This approach may be imperfect, but the current approach is very annoying if the region being sorted is large.
for me the notes are moved with the cells when using Data->Sort... can you give a step-by-step description?
Created attachment 32819 [details] Demonstrates the problem. Column A is before sort (notes on A2 and A101). Column C is after sort.
I've added an attachment that demonstrates the problem (before and after sort). I simply created a column full of numbers ranging from 100 down to 1. I then put a note on the first and last cell. I copied the A column to the C column, selected cells C2-C101, and did an ascending sort (which flips the rows -- top moves to bottom an vice versa). If you hold your mouse over cell C2, the arrow for the note points all the way down to around row 101.
confirmed on Windows XP Pro SP2 with OOo 2.0.1: the note fields seem to stay in place of their original creation thus the arrow pointing from the note field to a new note (mark) position can be very long.
Hi, not a bug but an enhancement. Frank
I do not agree that this is not a bug, but just a enhancement, if you work with a large amount of data/rows the use of notes become pratically unusable. It's very different from a simple "annoying" issue, it's a real problem. As many other features or issues, this one is not very relevant if you use OOo at home or for non critical jobs, but if you intend to promote OOo as a real alternative for Office use this has to be considered important. I spent a lot of time in my organization in creating spreadsheets that work with large amount of data and are frequently sorted, or have rows inserted or deleted. We are used to WORK with OOo, not to use it for the books and movie collections! I want to guess that this would be fixex very soon.
Hi! I'm new around. I have this very boring problem of having all my notes showing themselves but in the window I'm looking in after a sorting. Everything is alike as described. fst wrote down that it is an enhancement...is it a joke or not? If yes, could you explain why and what can be done to settle the notes where they can be viewed without spending the rest of the day to move them around. Thank you.
Can please someone set this back to DEFECT?
I agree with Vagula, this is definitively a DEFECT, or if you prefer, a bug. It's not possible to work with Calc if you are used to make large use of cell notes in the way that Calc currently handles them. Please do something !
This probably goes without saying, but I agree with everyone here that is asking this to be classified as a DEFECT rather than an ENHANCEMENT. Of course, I probably wouldn't have gone to the trouble of submitting this bug if I didn't find it to be a huge pain in the neck. The OOo definition for defect says: "Defect is a problem with an existing feature that is either not developed to spec or does not work as designed." OOo 1.1.4 did not have this problem (I just checked), so OOo 2 is either off spec (hence a defect), or the spec changed in a retarded way, or the spec was too ambiguous to prohibit behavior that makes calc unusable. Any way you look at it, something that used to work well now works badly. It should be fixed.
*** Issue 67076 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Hi, it's an enhancement as it is not specified that the note position on a sort has to change too. But it's specified that the note position and size has to be saved. So it's clearly an enhancement even if you think it's a defect. Frank
I was used to hear these magic words from Micro$oft... "this is not a bug, it's a feature"; it looks like here we're going to something similar now, just a little different. Maybe tomorrow another version of OOo will write only lowercase and someone will tell us "writing also uppercase is not a defect, it's an enhancement..., we're considering for future versions" Meanwhile some M$ Office users are laughing about this...
Hi! Frank, With all my respect, your kind of logic scares me a bit. It seems that many of us don't understand it. I guess when we do a sorting of a group of cells, those with attached note, have their note following them, not left behind. Saving the position and the size of the note, doesn't make the note follow the cell when it is moved around. Lets see it from a practical point of view: enhancement or not, in fact, the result is : it's not working properly, period. It's so disturbing for me that I'm figuring out to stop converting to calc. Thanks anyway. P.s. May I suggest, should you consider asking to one of your colleages if his logic fits yours.
Be sure this is discussed with development before set to enhancement.
This bug still occurs in OOo v.2.0.4 Will it ever be considered or it will be remain a P99 priority ? It is an *important* feature for who use OOo in enterprise environment. What we have to do to make this be comprehended by (you) develepers ?
Problem still persists in OOo 2.1.0. Will it never be solved ?
Bonjour, Eric Belley wrote: > Hi, > > The issue 59745 has been classified as enhancement. Many people > disagree with that decision and the problem is a real one when we use > calc with many notes and we have to sort the sheet. Si cela a été classé comme un amélioration c'est que le développement n'avait pas prévu de traiter les notes lors d'un tri, cela n'en est pour antant pas moins génant. Le fait que cela soit classé comme une amélioration ne dit pas cependant que cela ne sera pas intégré à une prochaine version. Nous intégrons de nouvelles fonctionnalités tous les 6 mois. > > Is there a council to review a decision about an issue or is the > decision final forever? La décision est prise par le développeur de la fonctionnalité. Le community council ne statue pas sur cela. > > Would you be kind enough to take a look at this and inform me about > what options we have in such a case. Les moyens de faire que cette fonctionnalité soit développée sont les suivants : - amener un nombre de votes suffisant pour que des ressources soient allouées plus rapidement - amener des ressources pour que ce développement soit réalisé. Remettre un développement qu'il soit correction de bug ou amélioration ne se fait jamais de façon légère. Nos ressources sont limitées et nous essayons de les répartir au mieux. Certaines issues ont plus de votes que celle-ci mais ne sont pas pour autant traitées plus vites car soit elles nécessitent de gros développement, soit d'autres développements sont plus importants. Cordialement Sophie Gautier Responsable du projet francophone Membre du Community Council http://fr.openoffice.org
*** Issue 72872 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
*** Issue 75478 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
This is a defect. Any sensible interpretation of the 'position' of a note *to a cell* will take it as indicating the position of the note *relative to the cell*. This is not currently preserved, which makes notes unusable under normal operating conditions.
*** Issue 76735 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Hi, Frank Please consider re-scheduling this RFE to milestone 2.3 or at least 2.4 Reason: there is no workaround for this issue, even with macros. Mike
*** Issue 80174 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
totaly agry with most of you - its a defect its sad, to see this issue opened for almost 3 years ;(
in some cases this problem makes OpenOffice totally unusable ;(
A comment on the bug, issues this bug causes, and a workaround that works (with some issues) but breaks my mother's heart when I use it. 1. It is the same issue as 80174, 63671, 67076 and 61253 where the same thing happens on adding rows/cols, resizing rows etc. Notes are being tied to an absolute position (that of a particular cell that was once-upon-a-time near the 'noted' cell ) rather than a position always relative to the 'noted' cell. 2. It is especially egregious for finance and accounting use. For example, at the beginning of every year finance people may add 14 more columns (12 new months, year and budget) to large spreadsheets. Almost all cells have notes and all notes are effectively lost as they are so far off screen they are not viewable. For this reason I am casting 3 of the 5 votes I was given on registering, for this bug. 3. A workaround: (which feels a bit like mentioning the name of Lord Voldemoort and offered slightly tongue-in-cheek), is: before adding rows or columns, close the spreadsheet, open it in Excel, add the rows or columns in Excel, then close it again and continue work in OOO. Notes are handled properly, ie positioned relative to the 'noted' cell, in Excel. It is not perfect, as not all formats are transcribed perfectly, but it is better than losing access to the notes. Of course if you don't have access to excel... 4. The argument above that this bug is really an 'enhancement' because the present behavior is as per specification is simply an argument that the bug is in the specification not in the coding. I think both specification and coding issues ought be addressed here.
A Real Workaround! (& excellent repair!) Copy / pasting the affected cells, even in situ repairs the position of the notes. (Moving the cells does the same). Method 1 - Fine So after inserting/deleting the new rows/columns, the notes are all in the wrong place. Select the cells affected by the insertion (eg all cells below the new lines inserted) do a control-C followed by a control-V, which copies and pastes the cells in situ (in their places). The notes are now where they should be. Method 2 - Gross For large sheets, you can just select the whole sheet (click on the top left corner of the sheet) and do the same control-C followed by a control-V, which copies and pastes the whole sheet in situ. Analysis copy/paste and move handle note positions correctly, insert/delete rows/columns, sorting etc do not. I have only verified this in 2.3.1. Effect If I had found this repair years ago my children would not know so many curse words. Hope this is helpful to some other irritated souls!
copy/paste solution is a great solution, but (!) after the use of copy/paste method you get the wrong size (heigth and width) of note in the right place.. verified on OOO 2.1
Agree. That appears to be a bug in copy/paste that happens whether the cells are being pasted to the same place or not, and is independent of the bug under discussion here. For me, at least in 2.3.1, the new size of the note after copy/paste is still acceptable. In fact this issue is filed as bugs 64665 and 50266, and is classified as "Defect". Yet this much more serious (and painful) 59745 is classified as "Enhancement". It is this great variety of the human intellect that makes us such an interesting species.
Dear developers! I've opened this file on OOo 1.1.5 and I've seen, that the notes are placed correctly (screenshot attached). Therefore I mean, that it isn't an RFE, but a DEFECT and regression too.
Created attachment 50598 [details] Image was made from two screenshots. In OOo 1.1.5 notes are placed near to the corresponding cells.
Daniel, are we really on track for 2.x with this issue? Please do not simply change target as cell notes is usefull feature and it is important for the note to keep it's relative position. And with our growing installed base the number of suffering users grows by days. Importance of this RFE (it's reallly a bug, even if classified otherwise) illustrated by 37 votes, 4 duplicates and also http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=44282. Thanks a lot for your effort. WBR, K. Palagin. P.S. Based on DMA's finding I set keyword regression. P.P.S. The fact that 1.1.5 is able to display notes correctly tell me that this issue is cosmetic by nature and would not require too much development effort.
I agree with the other commenters that this is definitely a bug not an enhancement.
move target from 2.x to 3.0
Can I ask about status of this issue? There is a lot of negative feedback from end users about currently annoying behavior of notes in Calc.
Dear developers! There is a little time to fix all the issues set fot 3.0. I wonder if you draw attention at this issue - it's realy annoying. Thank you!
is this bug gonna be fixed in the 3rd version of OOo?
I wouldn't be optimistic: a. The announcements for v3 focus on featuritis, rather than fixing things that don't work. b. I get the sense that the person responsible for notes doesn't actually use them. Notes are the buggiest feature in Calc - they lose position, they lose size, they disappear if they lose focus before you enter data, etc. c. It is still marked as "enhancement" despite: (i) working properly in Excel, Gnumeric and KSpread, and even earlier versions of OOO. The only place Notes don't work is OOO. (ii) It has 7 separate bugs filed, all related to the same issue (59745 + 64665, 50266, 80174, 63671, 67076, 61253) & numerous duplicates (72872, 75478, 76735,..) d. Finally, it is not marked as started - still marked as "new", despite being opened in 2005.
It's really hard to accept such a resistance from developers to understand that this is a BUG that really needs to be solved. Latest posts here summarize a clear annoyance by many people and it's really incredible that a BUG (IT'S A BUG!) like this has been snubbed by developers for more than 2 years! Undecidable's post summarizes perfectly the situation, in a very clear way. I am a user and a supporter of OOo since beginning of the project mainly in office/enterprise environment. These kind of things are those that make all care and effort to make OOo well accepted at work very hard. Do you know what it means to have people at work (not-at-home), mabye your boss, telling you: "Why the hell you have made me to compile my 1000 rows spreadsheet with this OpenOffice.org? Now i have all my notes lost around the sheet! Repair it, right now!"
Created attachment 53475 [details] A way to fix this issue, but don't know whether it will lead any problem. If so, let me know please.
yun_jt, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!! To all developers, please see if this patch is OK.
Hey yun_jt, I've tested your patch, and it seems to work pretty well. There are two things I need to mention about your patch: 1) I had trouble applying it (the 2nd hunk failed). It would help to make sure the patch applies against a reasonably recent milestone. 2) We have switched to using whitespace for indentation, so all new lines should use whitespace, instead of tab characters. But these are minor cosmetic issues. Otherwise the patch looks good. You did a great job on that.
This issue is important and listed on the quarterly review for Calc: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/2008_Q2_Review_of_Spreadsheet_Project
Shall we fix integration issues and get this patch into master please? Thanks a lot! WBR, KP.
Daniel, could you, please, enlighten us why this highly voted regression with patch is retargeted? I mean beyond usual "not enough time|resources"? Thanks.
by error...
DR->JUN_JT: the patch does not take horizontal sorting into account (sort by columns, see second tab page in Sort dialog). There, visible notes become invisible, and the position of the notes does not change. Therefore, due to the near deadline for OOo 3.0 code changes, this issue is retargeted to OOo 3.1 again.
Hi, the whole issue of note positions is a big setback for any business users using calc for any kind of finance applications, or document registers. You just HAVE to be able to see your notes on the same page (not 200 rows away) if you have sorted or filtered a list or it is pretty unusable. I was considering filing an issue for the same symptom when you use the Autofilter (notes stay where they were relative to the corner of the sheet, not to the cell they relate to) but as this is almost certainly a duplicate. I think the whole "defect" or "enhancement" argument raging across this issue is a little unhelpful. It is an important usability feature that is missing from Calc that "just works" in almost all other apps. Speaking from 3 years battling for the adoption of OpenOffice.org in a small group of companies, this particular point is a major p.i.t.a. for a number of key users. If anyone can tell me if and how to raise this as an issue that might be acted upon instead of argued over (and no, I don't have the time or skillsets to fix it myself - sorry all you coders out there) I'll gladly post it in the right place.
I don't see why this is considered an enhancement. Why would anybody want to put notes on a cell, then after the cell moves to another position (insertions, deletions, hide) the note does not move? How about a compromise? Give the user some type of option of the note to remain in it's absolute position or let its position stay relative to cell.
yun_jt, please review comments from dr Wed Jun 4 13:14:01 +0000 2008 and see if you can fix the problem he refers to. Thanks a lot for your effort. With best regards, K. Palagin.
The last two if statements in the patch causes a crash if the sort range includes empty cells. Is this line in the first if statement if(pCell1 && pCell2->GetNote(aCellNote) && aCellNote.IsShown()) meant to be this line instead by any chance? if(pCell2 && pCell2->GetNote(aCellNote) && aCellNote.IsShown()) (and the same for the second if stament?) If I swap those pCell1/pCell2 in those if statements, it will still appear to work (still only vertically though) and will not cause a crash with a range with empty cells.
Ah, nevermind, it doesn't work in all cases. Some notes still don't move with that change.
kohei: I didn't use the patch, and already have a working solution for both sorting directions, with empty cells etc.
dr: ah, that's good to know. Is that gonna make it in for 3.1?
yes. see CWS dr66 for a collection of issues regarding cell notes...
fixed in CWS DEV300/dr66 (OOo 3.1) the following scenarios have been fixed: - Inplace sorting by columns or by rows (visible and hidden notes are adjusted) - External sorting (output result to another position) by columns or by rows (visible and hidden notes are cloned and adjusted) - Undo of inplace sorting restores old note positions - Undo of external sorting removes cloned notes - Redo of inplace sorting restores new note positions Not fixed: Redo of external sorting inserts two caption objects for the same note, one is not connected to the cell, will write another issue, once the OOo website is up As a side effect, the following scenario has been fixed too: - Create data range to be sorted, insert a drawing object (e.g. rectangle) completely inside - Sort to another position - Undo Old behaviour: Undo will not remove the inserted drawing object (and redo inserts a new copy above the old object). Now fixed: all drawing objects are correctly removed in undo.
Thank you very much!!!!
For the records: see issue 94976 for the external sort redo problem.
This problem does not seem to affect OOo 2.4.2--at least the sample document no longer shows the problem. Surprising, since the fix here is targeted for 3.1 and not shown as integrated yet.
has been fixed with another (Sun-internal) issue for 2.4.2
back to QA
verified in internal build cws_locales30
cws_dr66 of course
Issue 59745 has been fixed in master version OOo-dev 3.1 .0 (OOO310m7 Build:9393) for Windows XP and can be closed.
Checked and closed by HitekSchool Group 1 as a part of Issue Hunting Party regression check.
Unfortunately, this issue remains an impediment on my system. All new notes are located (and point to a cell) 11 rows above their target cell. Former fixes involved copying the entire sheet and pasting it in place. This no longer works. I suspect this particular spreadsheet (originally created in OOo 2.1) may be perpetuating this annoyance beyond its fix in OOo 3.1. If so, rebuilding it from scratch in 3.1 might work. But it might not, and this spreadsheet is too big to rebuild without a certainty of improvement. Just wanted to let you know that this little 'offset-note' annoyance is continuing into the second decade of the second millennium. ------------------------------------- System info: Linux joesbox 2.6.28-16-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP Wed Nov 11 09:49:32 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux OpenOffice version: OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 OOO310m 19 (Build:9420) (.deb) package version 1:3.1.1-5ubuntu1.1 (karmic-updates)