Serious Autofilter Defect?

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eh5869
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Serious Autofilter Defect?

Post by eh5869 »

There is a serious bug in Autofilter which destroys hidden data without the user being aware of it.

It was first reported in January 2002 (yes that's right over 7 and half years ago!) as a defect but the developers obviously believe that destroying data is quite acceptable as they changed it to an enhancement request and refused to change it back. It has dragged on over 2 further issues which is quite unbelievable if it was so true. From the issue comments it is obviously causing major grief especially amongst for those who championed the installation of it in companies and organisations.

This illustrates it quite well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ArppPlckA

The gory details on the issues can be followed here:
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2977
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=33851
http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=89232

If anyone can bring any influence to get this finally resolved there would be a lot of grateful people out there!
Last edited by TheGurkha on Fri Jul 17, 2009 9:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Removed all caps from title.
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Villeroy
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by Villeroy »

The first issue #2977 you linked is embarrassing, indeed. It shows that OOo has something like an audience, but no community at all. You can not discuss, specify and resolve things within a horde of angry chimps.
The developers did the one and only possible thing. They kept cool and quiet.
Since nobody came up with something reasonable, they defined a new specification for the required enhancment and solved the issue according to the new spec. According to the old spec it was not a bug since it behaved exactly as specified and coded.

I can paste cells over a filtered range without overwriting the hidden ones.
Furthermore, I can offer a set of macros to make the drag&drop behave similarly. Actually, I can not handle drag&drop by means of macro code, but it works well when you replace the built-in menu commands Edit>Fill>Down|Up|Right|Left with 4 of my macros.
http://ooomacros.org/user.php#188206 provides an sxc spreadsheet (OOo version 1) with full documentation and playground sheets for testing. Unlike Excel, it skips all invisible cells, regardless of the direction or rows/columns being hidden or filtered.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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eh5869
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by eh5869 »

Villeroy wrote: I can paste cells over a filtered range without overwriting the hidden ones. Furthermore, I can offer a set of macros to make the drag&drop behave similarly.
That sounds great but this should be the out-of-box behaviour. As you will have observed from the issue comments there are people who have installed OO within an organisation (probably against resistance from the MS fans) only to have their users find such issues, and not having your expertise to resolve this, have had to admit defeat and purchase MS office. Such organisations will not be willing to experiment again and you can be sure their Chief Technology officers will inform their peers in other organisations - that's if they weren't sacked as a result of the debacle!
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Villeroy
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by Villeroy »

So what? This is a 99.9% user forum. As a user, all I can offer is the linked macro suite. Even if the developers would hang off more frequently in this place, your comment would not lead to any action.
We all know that OOo, like any other software, is not good enough for most users who are in need a free clone of some other software (free as in beer, the rest of our freedom does not matter anyway). But this is an illusion. There will never be any clone of your favourite software, let alone a free one.
Regarding Excel/Calc, I see no reason why any Windows user desparately needs to replace a legally working copy of a fairly recent version of Excel. Apart from the obscure file format it produces, it's a far better program, even XL'98 has some advantages over Calc 2009.

IMHO, starting a "campaign" to force the developers in this or that direction is counterproductive. They have to ignore any such attempt. For instance, I'm shure the devs do not read anything from "jclutterbuck" who seemingly started a personal crusade on this since many years. Someone else may explain the difference between "defect" and "enhancment" to this poor soul.

Do you know that http://go-oo.org distributes another branch of the OOo code tree? They may be seen as "pioneers" of OOo development, constantly adding Microsoft features, up to the point where some of their documents do not work in OOo anymore. Furthermore, the amount of new bugs seems to exceed the new features. I would classify that branch as "experimental" but they deserve some merits. I don't think, they have what you want, but you may get some more information about the why, when and how.

Btw, contrary to the subject line, the issue has nothing to do with autofilter. Like in Excel, autofilter is one method to filter a range. The problem affects anyhow filtered ranges plus manually hidden rows and columns. As far as I know, Excel does not preserve all of them under all circumstances, which is certainly more surprising if you are used to preserve hidden data under similar conditions in the same app.
And contrary to your subject line, it's not a defect. It has not been coded to work like you want. It works exactly as coded.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by Dave »

eh5869 wrote:If anyone can bring any influence to get this finally resolved there would be a lot of grateful people out there!
No-one here can do that any more than you can. We are all in the same boat, so yelling at each other doesn't do any good.

David.
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by Villeroy »

Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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localizer
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by localizer »

Hi everyone,
I'm new to this, so I'm risking stating something foolish, but I have tried to reproduce that bug and I could not. In fact, all data remained correct, and did not get overwritten. Am I missing anything?

I wish I knew how to post pictures, but I don't so I try to describe what I did:
I created a 3 column list
In A I randomly entered a, b, c.
In D I entered values for each of a, b, and c
I then applied Autofilter on A and sorted by "a". "b" and "c" became hidden.
I then changed topmost cell value, copied its contents and pasted in the rest of the filtered records.
Then I removed Autofilter and all records in "b" and "c" were in tact, while all records in "a" held newly pasted values.

To me it seems to work fine. I have done the same thing in Excel 2003 and got same results...

Yuri
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Villeroy
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Re: Serious Autofilter DEFECT

Post by Villeroy »

As already mentioned and tracable in the issue tracker, the issue has been fixed for copy&paste.
The problem still exists when you drag&drop or when you drag down/up/right/left or when you do Edit>Fill>Down/up/right/left or when you do a paste-special.
Please, edit this topic's initial post and add "[Solved]" to the subject line if your problem has been solved.
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