Issue 99542

Summary:	'Edit - Select All' should only select cells range until maximum row / column with with contents
Product:	Calc	Reporter:	hackel137 <rd.openoffice>
Component:	editing	Assignee:	AOO issues mailing list <issues>
Status:	UNCONFIRMED ---	QA Contact:
Severity:	Trivial
Priority:	P3	CC:	elish, issues, rainerbielefeld_ooo_qa
Version:	OOo 3.0.1
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
See Also:	https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50346
Issue Type:	ENHANCEMENT	Latest Confirmation in:	4.1.0-dev
Developer Difficulty:	---

Description hackel137 2009-02-23 15:47:41 UTC

I can not imagine a single use-case for wanting to select all 32,000 rows if
they don't contain any data, so select all should only select the range of cells
that contain actual content.  I believe this is the expected behaviour.  In
Writer, select all does not select any blank pages beyond the content of your
document.  Similarly, in a drawing application, select all only selects your
content, even if it takes up only a small portion of the entire page.

This problem leads to many errors like bug #59453, #74545, etc.

Currently, the only way to select all cells is to try to hunt through your data
to find the correct row and column that it ends, select it and press
shift-control-home (if you happen know this key combination).  This is silly,
since it is exactly the purpose of the select all function.

If you want to copy an entire sheet, similar to how the select all function
currently works, then you can simply right-click on the sheet to copy it, which
is much more efficient.

Comment 1 Edwin Sharp 2013-12-26 17:26:34 UTC

Edit - Select All should select a block of cells encompassing all the cells with data. Including empty cells if data is non contiguous.
Surely, there is no point in selecting the entire sheet.

Comment 2 Rainer Bielefeld 2014-03-14 16:46:35 UTC

I think this is a useful request, but still several things have to be clarified.
(a) also for selection with common row / columns?  I think no!
(b) What if cell cursor behind last cell with contents? O think select until
    cells cursor
(c) what's to do with cells with custom formatting, count as "with contents?
    I think yes

Can you please collect some other special cases with decisions how to proceed? I have this one for April 30th in hold-file

Comment 3 Rainer Bielefeld 2014-03-14 17:04:05 UTC

There is a related "LibO#50346 - EDITING: On select all select only the cells that actually have content"; they did not understand the problem.