Issue 127021 - Cannot open file in oo
Summary: Cannot open file in oo
Status: CLOSED DUPLICATE of issue 124704
Alias: None
Product: Calc
Classification: Application
Component: open-import (show other issues)
Version: 4.1.2
Hardware: All Windows 10
: P5 (lowest) Normal (vote)
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: AOO issues mailing list
QA Contact:
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2016-06-30 11:23 UTC by icegood1980@gmail.com
Modified: 2019-07-23 22:17 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: DEFECT
Latest Confirmation in: ---
Developer Difficulty: ---


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Description icegood1980@gmail.com 2016-06-30 11:23:32 UTC
Open office hang while trying to open file in attach

Expected result: show error on whatever it is but never hang.
Comment 1 icegood1980@gmail.com 2016-06-30 11:25:54 UTC
failed to asdd attach. Get link to it instead:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4mLkzBXmYycQy14M2o2Y2wwbzg/view?usp=sharing
Comment 2 oooforum (fr) 2016-07-01 13:32:36 UTC
Your document is an XLSX.
It doesn't open with the MS-Excel viewer.
Result: blank page.
So, AOO can't make it better.
Comment 3 icegood1980@gmail.com 2016-07-03 10:52:30 UTC
What? Given xlsx opened in Excel 2013 very great. With which Excel do you try to open it? Besides, other simplier xlxs ones opened in aoo too. 
xlsx is open format (you may change extension to zip and extract plan text inside) so i don't see any reason to not support it well...
Comment 4 orcmid 2016-07-03 18:04:30 UTC
(In reply to oooforum (fr) from comment #2)
> Your document is an XLSX.
> It doesn't open with the MS-Excel viewer.
> Result: blank page.
> So, AOO can't make it better.

The document opens where it is stored on Google Drive just fine.

Downloaded, it also opens in Microsoft Excel 2016 on the desktop.

It also opens with LibreOffice Calc x64 5.0.0.5.

With Apache OpenOffice 4.1.2, the application appears to be stuck at "Loading ..."  On Windows 10 Pro x64 I needed to use the Task Manager to shut down AOO and then clear the open-file lock.  (It was using 17% of my cpu and slowly growing memory.)
Comment 5 orcmid 2016-07-03 18:29:24 UTC
(In reply to icegood1980@gmail.com from comment #3)
> What? Given xlsx opened in Excel 2013 very great. With which Excel do you
> try to open it? Besides, other simplier xlxs ones opened in aoo too. 
> xlsx is open format (you may change extension to zip and extract plan text
> inside) so i don't see any reason to not support it well...

The structure of the OOXML files in a .xlsx package is very complex.  That it uses Zip as a carrier is the least of the problems in importing it correctly.  The same goes for .odp files produced by OpenOffice Calc.  ODF and OOXML and *very* different.

In addition, the problematic file is 3MB, so it is very difficult to trouble-shoot it enough to see what the problem is.

I did manage to save the file, from Excel 2016, to .xls format.  That opens in Apache OpenOffice.  One peculiarity is the presence of a comment whose text is a GUID.  This does not appear when opened as read-only in Excel 2016 (a default precaution for internet-downloaded files when first opened).

If I open that .xls in Excel 2016 and save that as .xlsx, Apache OpenOffice fails the same way it does on the original .xlsx.

Observation: The original .xlsx has no creator, but it does have a last-modification author.  Was the original file produced by some software means other than from Excel itself?

Conclusion: Calc cannot open the file.  It is not clear what feature of the file is problematic for Calc.
Comment 6 damjan 2016-07-03 19:23:37 UTC
The file opens for me eventually, after 70 seconds of waiting. FreeBSD 10.3 on AMD64.
Comment 7 icegood1980@gmail.com 2016-07-27 11:11:16 UTC
"Was the original file produced by some software means other than from Excel itself?"

Yes, it was. We used 3rd party library (from axolot) to be able to produce excel for other users.
Comment 8 orcmid 2016-07-27 21:52:42 UTC
(In reply to icegood1980@gmail.com from comment #7)
> "Was the original file produced by some software means other than from Excel
> itself?"
> 
> Yes, it was. We used 3rd party library (from axolot) to be able to produce
> excel for other users.

It appears that there is some sort of edge case in the production from the third-party library that trips over a situation AOO Calc was never designed nor tested for and now results in excessive conversion time in Calc. 

It could also be that there are discrepancies related to what version of the OOXML spec is being produced against by the third-party software.

This is a classic interoperability problem and, while it can be considered a defect in the AOO implementation, there is really no way we can get to that with such gigantic files.

I think the important consideration is that there is little chance of a change in Apache OpenOffice XSLX import in the foreseeable future.  You might consider a workaround if it is important to open those files in Apache OpenOffice.  In particular, using Microsoft Office to open the .xlsx and save it in .xls format should provide a remedy so long as unique features of .xlsx are not being depended upon.  

(An alternative would be to endure the incredibly-long file-open time and then save the result as a .xls or even .ods from Calc.  But I think using Excel to do the .xlsx -> .xls is more likely to maximize fidelity as well as being much quickler.)
Comment 9 karko 2017-02-04 14:04:20 UTC
Seems to be a duplicate of the issue #124704.
Comment 10 oooforum (fr) 2019-07-23 19:15:43 UTC
According 
> Seems to be a duplicate of the issue #124704.

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of issue 124704 ***