Issue 42282

Hi skelem,
thanks for using and supporting OpenOffice.org...

Maybe you could/should disable the second screen in your "driver setup", if you
don't use the second monitor??
I'm not sure if Windows can detect that a monitor is missing in every possible
case...

changed OS from "All" to "WindowsXP"
changed Summary from 
     "popup dialogs appear off screen" to
     "Dualhead: popup dialogs appear off screen if second monitor is not connected"
to meet the findings...

Disabling the second screen is not an option.  The problem happens not only when
I undock my laptop (Windoze moves all open windows to the laptop screen.), but
even if I reboot the laptop standalone.  If I check my Display
Properties/Settings, it shows the checkbox "Extend my Windows destop onto this
monitor" checked when the monitor is available, and unchecked when undocked.

This weekend I took my laptop home, away from the docking station.  Impress
worked fine.  However Writer kept trying to use the non-existant screen
(Format/Character)!  [Fortunately I knew the key sequences I needed to change
font and font size and close the dialog box.]  So Writer seems to remember the
coordinates of the last place it opened the dialog box, even if the display
properties don't support it.  The Display Properties/Settings show the 2nd
display starting at (1920,0), and I suspect that Writer was trying to display
the dialog box in the coordinate space of the 2nd monitor.  The setting seems to
be persistent.  Where is it stored?  In the registry or in a file or with the
document?

I want to confirm this issue.  I too have a laptop that I use with a second
monitor in the "extended desktop" mode while I am in the office.  However, this
weekend I had a major project to work on while at home and when I went to set up
the printer, no printer window.  I discovered the very edge of it on the right
hand side of my screen.  But I could not get to it because I had only the single
laptop LCD and could not fake it out to think their was a second monitor
connected to start the "extended desktop" mode and drag it back over.

In other programs that I have found to do this (very few), I can resize the
screen resolution and it will "pop" those windows back on to the screen.

Basically, OOo is not fully dual monitor compatible.  It does not reset the x-y
location of these windows to be in the active screen if "extended" mode is
turned off.

To test for the problem, set the second attached monitor at the right hand side
in an extended mode (not clone) and use it as the screen for say OOo Writer to
be maximized in (Note: most new video drivers will normally maximize an app to
one of the screens and this style is causing the problem.  Other drivers and
option choices will cause apps to maximize across both screens and this setup
may not result in this problem since it has not been tested).  Use the left
hand, laptop LCD as the "tools" screen and have the tools and other OOo windows
there.  Close OOo, shut down Win XP (may not have to actually shut down system
but that is usually what I do in my routine of the work day) and disconnect from
the external monitor (this is where I go home).  Now start up again, open a
document in OOo Writer and try and go to the print options.  Depending on what
was where in the previous dual monitor mode, it may appear.  If so, try some
other options windows that you used in the dual monitor mode that appeared in
the right hand screen.

Several years ago, I had a similar problem occur in an application and the
workaround for that at the time was to delete an item in the registry (or maybe
it was an INI file) that kept track of the last x-y coordinate of the window. 
This action caused the window to open in the center of the "active" screen (if
in a "extended desktop" it would be the center of the #1 screen)

Unfortunatly, my work had to be done in another word processor.

If you have any questions on this, please feel free to contact me.  I will
continue to test this problem and see if I can get a more consistant
reproduction of the problem.

In a windows environment, this is a item that should be fixed since I will not
be able to convince  the rest of the admin to switch to OOo if they go home and
OOo is not working for them.

.

I found a workaround.  If I right click on the instance on the task bar and
select Move, the cursor will grab the window, even if it's off screen.  I can
then drag the window back to a viewable screen.

I am almost convinced that this is really an nVidia issue, that the display size
isn't re-calculated when undocking/re-docking.

You can close this bug, as a IT'S NOT MY PROBLEM...it's an nVidia driver problem.

It is not an nVidia problem.  First of all, I am using Intel Extended Desktop
and it does this.  Second, of the 100+ programs I use and tested, OpenOffice is
the only one that has this problem.  I have used some software (I think
WordPerfect was one) that did have the problem too but a subsequent patch seemed
to fix it.

I suspect there is a problem on how popup windows are implemented in OOo.  I am
not say it is wrong, just not compatible with the dualhead/extended desktop.

BTW, thanks for the workaround.  Now to remember it when I have that problem again.

I just tested the work-around and must be missing something.

First off, the "Move" option is only available when the main OOo window is NOT
maximized.

Also, the move option only permits moving the main OOo window which is on the
active monitor where it should be (btw, the main OOo window will move from the
secondary extended monitor to the laptop LCD when the extended monitor feature
is turned off - this is working like it should).

However the many of the popup windows (for example: File/Properties,
Insert/Frame, Format Charater) open off the viewing area when in single monitor
mode.  Right clicking the instance in the task bar and selecting "Move" only
moves the main OOo window.  Should another instance appear when one of the
daughter/popup windows open? Is there a setting in Windows that will show an
instance for every single window whether it is a primary/main window or a
daughter/popup window?

This continues to make it impossible to move our mobile office to OOo. 
Hopefully OOo 2.0 will have this fixed.

Allan

Installed and started to use the OOo 2.0 beta.  Was working on a project far
away from my second monitor (forgetting about this "little" problem) and
discovered that OOo 2.0 beta also has this problem.

Dear Everybody,

I'm having this problem, as well.

Laptop with WinXP Prof + OOo 2.0.2 + sometimes two displays.
My Observations:
* Writer on the right - tooltips appear on the left (at least the scrollbar ones)
* Writer on the left and dialogue boxes moved to the right - after turning the
right display off and rebooting, the dialogue boxes do not appear anymore on the
left, but after connecting the right display again on the right.

Well, if you know, what happens, you can live with not provoking the
consequenes, above. But it would be very to resolve this display stuff, because
two screens ease working with large documents a lot.

Kind regards - Tobias

I can verify that this bug happens with OpenOffice 2.0.4 and Windows XP SP2

*** Issue 42282 has been confirmed by votes. ***

Any idea how to reset the stored window positions? I tried resetting various
WindowState entries in user registry and resetting the cache but didn't help.

I had to change my dual-head configuration slightly during display driver update
and even though I have 2 displays connected some of the popups don't appear
anywhere.. As an example, I'm not able to open print dialog right now which is
pretty major problem.

I'm using OO 2.2.1 and have the same problem on WinXP SP2 Laptop. My Laptop have
an ATI 7500 mobile grafikcard. 
In addition e.g. the File Menu popup on either screens, If I set the Writer on
the right screen to fullscreenmode. That is not nice for usability.

Thanks
Sascha

something for JW?

TM->JW: please have a look, thanks !

Might be a duplicate of 46549.

You can move an offscreen window by holding Alt+Spacebar and then pressing 'M'.
Now you can use the cursor keys to bring the lost window back.

*** Issue 92930 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 94179 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

I was able to get around this problem for the moment by searching through
C:\Documents and Settings\<my login>\Application
Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office\Views.xcu
for entries of the form
<prop oor:name="WindowState" ...>
 <value>XXXX,YYY,,;;...</value>
</prop>
where the XXXX was >= 1920 (the width of my screen when I only have one). Of
course I did this when Writer wasn't running; I changed the XXXX to something
smaller (generally just knocked the first digit off), started Writer, and the
missing dialogs reappeared.

The same problem happens with OpenOffice 2.4.1 on Ubuntu Linux.

After monitor configuration change I have to close all open OpenOffice
windows and quick starter, then start it again, and only then all pop ups
appear on the correct monitor

*** Issue 98995 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 99834 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 102144 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 102944 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

OpenOffice 3.1. Windows XP. Dual monitors. 

If I click -> Insert -> Indexes and Tables -> Indexes and Tables... 

The UI acts as if the modal dialog has popped up, but it has NOT. No dialog is 
visible, and the application no longer accepts input in the main window. The 
system is fine, I can resize the window, just not type text or commands into 
it. Only OO is affected-- acting in the same way it would if a modal dialog was 
displayed. 

The only thing I can do is kill it via task manger. 

This exact same thing AT WORK, AND AT HOME, on a different computer, also with 
WinXP and dual monitor setup. After it happens I can create a brand new text 
document, open it, and the same thing will happen if only that document is 
open. 

After this has happened once, it will continue to happen EVERY TIME I select 
that menu item / dialog. Although other dialogs will continue to work fine. It 
will continue for days, several reboots, etc, until finally, it will work 
again. Occasionally I see the same thing start to happen with a different 
dialog. 

Very annoying bug, makes open office entirely unusable.


-----------------------------------
UPDATE:  After reading the comments, I found that the Alt+Space->Move 
workaround works.  This means the underlying problem is that Open Office 3.1, 
is opening certain dialogs off screen.  Just think how many thousands of people 
have this problem, don't know how to search the bugs, and then decide they 
simply cannot use Open Office as a result.

Considering that it only happens for certain dialogs, most are being opened 
differently/correctly.  Maybe this will make the fix implementation easier?

Clarifying my comment above: The situation described happens when both monitors 
are enabled.  And when both have been enabled for several reboots without 
change.  The dual monitors are configured only using the WindowsXP display 
dialog.

Reassigned

@ tm: Please have a look.

*** Issue 106590 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Problem still exists on Win7 with Nvidia driver. I think, this can't be seen as
an OOo defect. Who should take care of connected Hardware if not the driver or
the system ? If 2 monitors are choosen within the driver settings and 1 is
disconnected, the display is still configured for 2 monitors. OOo doesn't know
if one or two monitors are connected.

TM->CD: Please have a look. I would consider to close this one as invalid. 

@ TM : please consider that this hinders a normal use of OOo (e.g. : I work at
my desk with a second monitor connected to my laptop, then I work in the train
with my laptop only). Other applications do handle this properly (Acrobat
reader, etc.)
An easy to implement workaround would be to have a "Reset Dialogs position" item
in the Window menu.
I have written a simple extension that does this, but it seems to only work
under Linux (at least it doesn't work under Windows XP) 

cd->pl: I am pretty sure that there are similar issues which are assigned to the
gsl team. Could you please take a look and provide your point of view.

no, there are no duplicates that I know of. However for a solution we could
ignore SetWindowState with out of screen coordinates. The first implementation
was thus, however - if I remember correctly - there were people complaining that
they moved the navigator (almost) off screen, switched between documents and it
was back again - due to the fact that stylists share their WindowState.

I guess we can reimplement the behaviour with the addition that we allow
off-screen positions as long as at least 10 pixels or so are on-screen.

cd->pl: Your proposed solution sounds like a good compromise. That should suite
all requirements. 

*** Issue 108143 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 109038 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

*** Issue 82795 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

MRU->PL: this problem has now been confirmed several times (by duplicates and
votes), please take over. Thanks!

fixed in CWS vcl111

if a dialog gets positioned outside the screen from WindowState (which is used
to make dialogs appear where they last did and that causes the problem here), it
is moved into the visible area. If the Window has a parent (like all dialogs
should have), it is centered on the parent.

Restriction 1: the display driver must actually tell the change when
attaching/detaching displays or this won't work or only work after a restart.
Restriction 2: for the decision "window is offscreen" as well as for centering
on parent the size needs to be known. This is unfortunately quite often not the
case; then a "default" size of 50x50 pixel is assumed; this will position the
dialog off center of its parent or partially still out of the screen, but that
is a better situation IMHO than a completely off screen dialog.

*** Issue 71657 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Hi,

I've got a similar matter. I'm using a laptop with a second monitor connected 
when I'm at office or at home.
The point is these external monitors can have different size.
And I often set them as main monitor.
So a dialog box may open out of the screen.

The workaround is to set the monitor size highter than the real one to have an 
"extended" display i can slice. Now I can find out the dialog box who was away.

Sorry : I forgot to precise datas.

I'm using Ooo 3.2 on Windows XP SP3. I'll check if it's solved on v 3.3

please verify in CWS vcl111

Verified fix in CWS vcl111. Will be integrated in OOo 3.3.

*** Issue 56890 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***

Closed, fixed in OOo 3.3.