I confirm the warning message is wrong.
But also the warning message appears only one time (the first time you save a XLS file).
The second time you save there is no message... I just figure a bug with one of my user related to this 
problem : 256 column max for XLS file.
This user leave open a XLS each day and fill it during the work time, doing "save" several time a day.
At the end of the work day he don't often close the XLS and rework on it the next day.
He just goes beyond 256 columns and don't get any warning (he probably got one the first time) but 
each Save do not repeat the message, so the got 300 columns but only 255 were saved. 
Yesterday he close OOO and later reopen it's XLS and discovered he lost sevral days of work !

Perhaps shall OOO repeat the (good) warning message at each Save ; or better save more than 256 
columns into XLS...

CCed: dr

AFAIK 256 columns is an EXCEL limitation.

Of course, your dataloss is annoying for you, but please mention that OOo is not
an EXCEL document editor. 

You can "import" a document (.xls, for example), hope that all relevant
information has been imported, save it as ODF and edit it (again and again).
After you have finished all your work, you can export a copy of your document to
to some other document format (and again hope that all relevant information has
been exported). That's the way how those import filters and export filters
should be used. 

@rainerbielefeld
(first sorry for me poor english, i'm french)

I understand your position, but just one warnign at the first save and no more warning for the next save is 
(from my point of view) a problem. The warning must be displayed each time the data override Excel limits.

Second, OOO provide a native system to open XLS document edit them and save them just by doing "save" 
(without asking the user anything) so from the point of view of an end-user : it's (also) an excel document 
editor (save for word).
I understand (i'm a developer) that OOO has it native format (ODT) and that it's best for editing those docs, but 
it also edit DOC, XLS, PPT document ; OOO is also advertising has an Microsoft Office competitor (and it's a 
good thing).

I also understand that OOO can't do better than XLS format, it's OK. But i thought it would be a good thing to 
warn the user each time he save it's doc.

In my example, my user has lost some work (he also have a very bad way to work) and now he will be 
suspicious towards OOO : i dont need suspicious users to promote OOO in my offices ;-)

Sincerely

I suggest that the message is modified to "The document contains more rows and/or columns than supported in the selected format. There will be data loss. Do you still want to proceed?" Yes/No

and that the message should be displayed BEFORE saving (see bug #125526)

I also think this Bug should have HIGHER importance since it causes data loss (columns are lost but the user is NOT warned about it)

Created attachment 83895 [details]
Sample ODS spreadsheet for demonstration of the error message when exporting to XLS

*** Issue 125526 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Reset the assignee to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".