Open Office Question

[sasha_feather]

I am having this thing where my work looks fine in Open Office (ods), but when I go to save it to xls format, my pie charts disappear and are just blank squares! What is going on?!

ALSO where is "track changes" feature in Open Office??

*remembers to breath*

Comments

[erda]

I can't help with the xls thing as I'm not even sure what that means, but I think you can track changes by clicking Edit->Changes->Record

[sasha_feather]

OK, thanks!

.xls is Excel file format (spreadsheets).

[were_duck]

I don't really know anything about spreadsheets, but I do notice that there are about 8 different versions of that file extension available in Open Office. Did you try them all? Also, is there a reason it can't just stay a .ods file? Or, doesn't googledocs have a spreadsheet function? try uploading it there to test the file extensions.

[j00j]

Okay, sorry, I've finally had time to sit down with this. This is where Track Changes is, I think (I haven't tested this through the whole way, but it looks right on the version I have):
http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/tutorial/Change_A_Document_Red_Lining_Or_Tracking_Changes.html

Will check on the weird pie chart issue shortly.

[j00j]

oops, I see someone already answered that part! not helpful! hmmm

[j00j]

Okay, let me see. I could not find any obvious bug reports for this by googling, but let's see if we can troubleshoot it a bit.

-Are the pie charts disappearing as you save it to XLS, or are you only seeing that they are gone when you go to open the XLS version? e.g. are they staying in the ODS file, and are they then visible in the XLS file when opened in Open Office, and are they visible in Excel if you have it? Am trying to figure out at which step the problem is occurring.
-I am wondering if it's possible that the charts are still there and have just disappeared behind something, though it doesn't seem possible to send a pie chart to back behind the spreadsheet or something weird like that (using the "Arrange" menu), just behind other objects.

Also, I just tried to replicate this error on my computer (Open Office 3 on a MacBook running OS 10.5.8-- which versions are you dealing with?). I can still see the pie chart I created, but in the XLS version opened in Excel (2004 for mac) the colors have disappeared and it's all the same shade of blue. If I open the XLS file in Open Office, the colors are still there. Hmm...

[sasha_feather]

e.g. are they staying in the ODS file, and are they then visible in the XLS file when opened in Open Office, and are they visible in Excel if you have it?

Nope! They are only visible in the ods file. Well there are a couple of charts visible, and I thought about this: they are ones that I made fresh, rather than copy-pasting from a different, compiled-data ods file that I had been working off of. Those are the ones that mysteriously vanished. The fresh ones, internally created, persisted.

You know I feel less anxious just talking through this, so thanks. :)

[j00j]

Talking through this stuff often helps, in my experience of doing tech support. Hm. What if you made a converted to XLS copy of the other ODS document you were pasting from? See if the charts are okay in that, then copy-paste them into your new Excel document where those charts were disappearing? I don't know exactly what you're doing with the data, so I don't know if it's actually a viable option, but it seems like it might be a workaround.

Also, this is a weird thing, so it might be worth submitting a bug report to the open office community if you feel up to it sooner or later-- it might mean that they will later figure out what in the code is causing this wackiness to occur.

[sasha_feather]

So, jesse_the_k and I figured this out just now, and apparently it is a known bug for ubuntu (or Windows, apparently) and open office; the way to fix it is to "paste special" and to then choose "gdi metafile" instead of "Star Object descriptor" (I am working in Ubuntu right now, but I assume it's the same/similar in Windows). I am taking your advice and copy/pasting from xls versions of the files. Thanks for your help!