[Libreoffice-bugs] [Bug 135821] New: copying secondary sheets gives blank/broken graphs

Mon Aug 17 05:31:14 UTC 2020

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135821

            Bug ID: 135821
           Summary: copying secondary sheets gives blank/broken graphs
           Product: LibreOffice
           Version: unspecified
          Hardware: All
                OS: Linux (All)
            Status: UNCONFIRMED
          Severity: normal
          Priority: medium
         Component: Calc
          Assignee: libreoffice-bugs at lists.freedesktop.org
          Reporter: jnqnfe at gmail.com

Description:
i have a recently created document (.ods) with which i've been experiencing
problems with empty graphs upon copying sheets.

as discussed below, there appears to be two component issues:

 1. bugs with respect to correctly copying and adjusting chart data attributes.
 2. a graphics glitch with graphs not showing data referenced from another
sheet.

let's let this bug report serve for #1, and i'll make a new one for #2 that
refers back here for details.

apologies for the large block of text that follows, this took some time to get
a handle on, and i've spent a lot of time re-writing it over and over as things
developed.

-------

the document i created and experienced problems with is about a week old; it
has multiple sheets; each sheet contains graphs, with those graphs only
referencing cells of the sheet that they are embedded within. the first sheet
was copied (via 'move or copy sheet') to create the second, and the new sheet
was adjusted as necessary, including fixing the references of the graphs to
point to the cells in the new sheet rather than the original. additional sheets
were similarly copied and adjusted from others.

when i created the document i was running version 7.0.0~rc2-1 (on Debian). over
the past week or so since then, during which i've edited it, i've updated to
7.0.0-1 and then to 7.0.1~rc1-1.

note that in my testing, unless noted otherwise, i am always asking it to add
the new sheet to the end.

-----------

please bare with me...

earlier on during production of the document, i experienced the following
issues (of relevance here):

 1. when copying a sheet, the charts (and pivot tables) still referred to the
original sheet, requiring manual adjustment (unexpected and time wasting).
 2. there seemed to be a glitch with such charts referencing other sheets, as
they would be blank until you changed them to point to the new (current) sheet
(containing the graph), saved, closed, and re-opened the document. except if
you clicked on the chart, which would temporarily show the lines/bars until you
clicked off of it.

#2 was what i was originally coming here to report, while at the same time
looking into whether it was possible to change the existing charts to use
relative references to make creation of new sheets easier.

however whilst double checking things today in actually putting together a
report for #2 (especially since having installed an updated LO in the
meantime), things got messy. it seemed that:

 1. a whole new issue had arisen whereby charts would be copied without any
data references.
 2. copying of the first sheet in the document however did not exhibit that
problem, and in fact behaviour seemed to have changed with the copied sheet now
automatically adjusting sheet references to refer to the new sheet.
 3. i was no longer certain whether or not the graphics glitch was still
present.

as i experimented more and more whilst writing this report, i discovered that
what behaviour you experience can vary depending upon not only which sheet you
copy from, but where you choose to place it, and furthermore what actions you
have previously taken...

 - initially i was always having the new sheet placed at the back, and
experiencing issues of graphs with no data references, except when copying the
first sheet, as just described.
 - however i then on a whim tried inserting the copied sheet at the front,
which then exhibited the earlier issues, whereby it retained data references,
which pointed to the copied from sheet, and showed no data (lines/bars) unless
when clicked on. however the glitch only affected the two more complicated
(data-series based graphs), while the more simple data-range based ones showed
no such glitch (despite definitely referencing the copied-from sheet).

furthermore, having on a whim just copied a sheet to the front and experienced
different behaviour, i then copied a sheet to the back again as before, and
this time experienced the same alternate behaviour as with copying to the front
(data references to the copied-from sheet with graphics glitch).

so there's significant buggy differences from different sheet-copy actions:

 - you may end up with a perfectly copied and reference auto-adjusted graph.
 - you may end up with a graph that's not reference auto-adjusted, thus
unexpectedly pointing to the data in the original sheet copied from, and thus
experiencing this secondary graphics glitch issue.
 - you may end up with a broken graph that points to nothing at all.

and what you end up with can vary depending upon where you have the new sheet
placed in the set, and upon past such choices.

if that weren't messy enough, on a whim i also created a new document and threw
a few simple values and a chart in and played with copying sheets, and guess
what, everything seemed to work perfectly for it. no matter which sheet i
copied and where the new one was placed, the single simple copied graph always
referenced data on the new sheet. so why on earth is my original document
plagued with issues and this not? i checked a couple of things and it seems to
have nothing to do with whether or not graphs are data-range or data-series
based, nor whether or not sheet names contain spaces...

------

i'll attach a copy of the primary document in question shortly so you can play
with it.

Steps to Reproduce:
i'll attach the document in question, just play with copying sheets and
inspecting the graphs that result.

Actual Results:

Expected Results:
i'd expect consistent behaviour - specifically, when copying an entire sheet,
any references in graphs and pivot tables and such that point to data within
the same sheet, should be auto-adjusted in the new sheet to point to the data
in the new copied sheet.

Reproducible: Always

User Profile Reset: No

OpenGL enabled: Yes

Additional Info:
Version: 7.0.1.1.0+
Build ID: <buildversion>
CPU threads: 4; OS: Linux 5.7; UI render: default; VCL: gtk3
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.utf8); UI: en-GB
Debian package version: 1:7.0.1_rc1-1
Calc: threaded

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