Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 92779
.xls file (sharing) is missing user and sharing status information
Last modified: 2015-03-03 11:20:04 UTC
When opening a "Shared" Office 2003 Excel sheet file (.xls) with Calc 3.0b2, a lot of basic information is missing. When I look at "Tools => Share Document..." 1. Calc doesn't show me the other Excel 2007 users in the dialog. I do see my own Calc user Information. 2. The "Share this spreadsheet with other users" checkbox is unchecked. Under Excel, this corresponding checkbox is checked. 3. Excel 2007 users don't see me as a "User currently accessing this spreadsheet". The good news is Calc doesn't "block" shared access to Excel users of this same .xls file as 2.4 does. Without the rest, I don't know how much of the "shared" behavior I should trust when editing (shared).xls files. We use the "shared" feature to schedule access to test equipment, and edit group project status reporting (we use this feature heavily).
Created attachment 57239 [details] Screen Shot: Excel vs Calc Share Dialog
Created attachment 57240 [details] Sharedialogs; Oo-Calc shared, then Excel 2007 opened
3.0 looks better, but "Tools->Share Document..." is still broken. I attached a picture of Excel vs Calc Share dialog for this issue. The excel file is saved in Excel 2003 .xls format. Image File: Oo Calc Sharing 3.0.0 - In both dialogs I should see myself listed twice, once for Oo-Calc, and again for Excel 2007 file opening. Also, Oo-Calc should not be opening this file for exclusive access since Excel already has it open. Oo-Calc also appears to get the date wrong (pointing to incorrect data?). Image File: Oo Calc Sharing 3.0.0 Screen B - In this image I asked Oo-Calc to "Share" the spreadsheet, saved the file, then opened the shared file with Excel 2007. This time in the Oo-Calc dialog I am showed twice in the sharing dialog (correct action), though the date/time is incorrect for one of the entries. Excel 2007 still doesn't show the Calc user in it's share dialog. After exiting Excel, Oo-Calc still persisted in showing the Excel session, which should have disappeared after I closed Excel. Comparing Oo-Calc 3.0 to Oo-Calc 3.0b2, we're moving forward we just aren't there yet.
After reading comments in http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/ , I'm inclined to believe there is no "good" solution to using MS xlsx file format as it will be trial and error even with MS XLSX specification. I won't hold my breath waiting for ooCalc to be compatible with MS XLSX file sharing format, though ooCalc does appear to read the XLSX file contents just fine. (I researched to see if I might want to take a crack at code modification for "sharing"). I did verify that Linux ooCalc and Windows ooCalc "shared" file locking appear to work together in OO's native .ods file format as described in Help. I also verified Excel 2007 can't understand or use ODS files.
*** Issue 126147 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***