Issue 25710

Created attachment 13299 [details]
Example

Sorry, I did not mean "index" but "table of contents"

I know found the "Tools->update" menu item, but this dot not change anything. 
Why would guess that they would have to find this menu item and update all 
field this way before printing???

reassigned to bh

changed summary from 
"Index (and other fields?) not auto-updated when printing" 
to
"Fields should be updated before printing"

.

Right-click in the TOC and choose "Update" -- that's the fastest way I've seen.

However, you have a point.  Perhaps there should be an automatic update before
saving as well.  It would relieve a writer of bouncing around to indexes and
toc's to update.  Sounds like a good idea unless someone can think of a reason
not to.

The only reason I can think of is the complaints about "Why does it take so long
(you know, a few extra seconds) before OOo saves or prints my document?"  So it
might need a message saying: "Updating indexes, please wait."

Updating before saving is not an issue, but before printing only. And it takes 
only a second to update the index. This is about usability; forget about work 
arounds, I know them but million users does not, and they do not read 
issuezilla or forums either.

I could not believe this one, I could have forgotten all about it milliosn of 
times before printing, stressed before deadline! When I was taught about Word 
they stressed that fields were of course updated automatically before printing!

Printing a report with an index with errors is... a disaster... in my line of 
bussiness!

The fastest way... is when software does things the right way without asking us!

Thanks for a great free suite :)

As priority 1 is not used for features and enhancements, the priority is reset
to the default 3.

This issue is definitely a duplicate of issue 8089.

*** Issue 8089 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

comment from goa103 to issue 8089:
Until this issue is resolved users can find a solution in the
http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=11826 topic. The idea is to
assign an update all document indexes macro to an event. In MS Word it seems
this feature is implemented as an option to the default configuration. To avoid
from patching all my documents I chose to add this macro to my text document
template.

I voted for this issue. It's very annoying that this still not works. I use OOo
headless as part of a document processing pipeline (using PyODConverter and a
system similar to JODReports) so this is a big problem for me.

Changed summary: this issue is about TOC.
+ Added mself as cc
A worthy request, IMO

This is NOT just about table of contents. All indexes like bibliography are
affected and other fields too. Although not as well explained as this, Issue
8089 was better summarized and nearer to a solution. I propose the summary be
changed to:

 Automate "Update All" before saving and printing

Maybe this should not be enforced, but suggested to the user with a dialog (this
was pointed by 8089). Probably a configuration option to avoid the dialog will
be handy.

The solution can be squematized in this:


 BEFORE  (printing, saving, page preview...):

   IF there are indexes or fields in document:

      IF setup is Auto_Update_All:
          Update All
      ELSE:
          Ask user for updating them all now

Now I motivate why I think this issue is important. I am a university assistant
professor that suggests students submitting project documents with OpenOffice. I
receive 5% of them with bad indexes because of this issue.

Issue 40231 --marked as dup of issue 24593-- was talking about automating this
task. I think it was a dup of this issue rather than 24593.

FIVE YEARS LATER - I strongly encourage you to do something about this issue.
Five years!

*SIX* LONG YEARS LATER (2200 DAYS!) - I strongly encourage you to do something 
about this issue.

SIX years!

To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on
my owner to the owner "requirements". 

It is very annoying that this bug report now is 11 years old, but nothing has happened. I can't see any reason why indices shouldn't be updated automatically, since there is no benefit of outdated indices. Update should occur at least on printing and PDF export. Final documents must not have outdated indices.

I am the original reporter of this issue. February 2004. Amazing that this is not fixed. In 2004 I was already disappointed with the development of OOo and had been for years.

I now see that this issue stands after... 11 years. I turned my back on OpenOffice many years ago after many annoyances and years of waiting for fixes. Even important ones. Turned out to be the right decision. The world and the market changed as it always does and OOo didn't move many meters. 

Rest in Peace, OpenOffice. I liked you in the 90s, but this waiting is too much.

BTW much of my word processing is done everywhere on the planet on a tablet with USB keyboard, and the word processor is cloud based or one of several smart apps for fast writing. Should I desire to use my phone or computer instead or at the same time, it is very possible.

And Apache and OpenOffice? ... well... this is a museum.

I am affected by this issue, and find it astonishing that although it has the potential to cause substantial problems for the user, was reported 15 years ago, and requires no debugging or redesign to resolve, it still remains open.

Is there no way to triage this problem to a track of issues that are easy to fix and that significantly reduce the chance the very unwanted effects?

Publishing a document with inaccurate indices is a bad result, whereas a feature such that the application rebuilds indices on major events such as saving, opening, printing, and editing would seem nearly trivial to implement.

I myself received a document that was automatically generated by an external tool.  The tool marks the indices as dirty in the file it creates, which Microsoft users report is detected by MS Office as soon as the file is opened.  Meanwhile, Open Office is completely silent, making not even a warning.

Some users are proposing homegrown macros to solve the problem to compensate for lack of support from inside the application (https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=70662).

But a custom macro adopted by a few diligent users does nothing to protect against an arbitrary user receiving a file with dirty indices and remaining oblivious because the application was lazy.

If a major issues can be partially solved with 10 lines of macro code, then can it be fully solved, in the code base, over a period of 15 years?

Well if you want to dig into this you can do:

Source Code is here: https://openoffice.apache.org/source.html
Dev Community can be contacted at dev@openoffice.apache.org in terms of questions.
We try to answer the question as good as we can.

So far, yes I would like to solve this as so many other issues.