I prepose that an option is added in the options dialog to remove this prompt.  
I am not too sure how well completly removing this would be...  I will bring 
this issue to the attn of the rest of the qa team.

O.K.  There are basically 2 ways of solving this problem.  First may I point 
out that if MS Word is your defult file format then no warning should be 
displayed when you save to it/close.

Danny R. Faught suggested:

"I agree with what I perceive the request to be.  Here's how I would word it:

1) Create a new text document.
2) Save the document in one of the Word formats (perhaps any non-OOo format).
3) Close the document.  I get a dialog that says "Saving in external formats 
may have caused information loss.  Do you still want to close?"

If the user is going to be warned about this, it needs to be when they choose 
to save in a non-native format.  Ideally, it would say exactly what formatting 
would change that the document actually uses, and then it would display the 
file exactly how it would look after importing the document.

Seeing the warning about something not directly associated with closing, the 
way it works now, is confusing.  I'd rather not have a warning at all.  Most of 
the time when people save in a different format, they know exactly what they're 
doing.

One other possibility - the program could track whether the file was also saved 
in OOo format.  I often will save in OOo format, then also export to another 
format in order to send it to someone else.  No need to warn the user if the 
same source file is already saved as an OOo document.

But again, the easist fix in the short term would be to remove this warning 
dialog entirely."

and I agree with this, but I would suggest that:

- a warning is made when they choose to SAVE (not close) in a non-native format.

-- If possible say what formating would be lost. / display a preview at the 
users request?

-Recomend that a copy is saved as OOo, just in case? unless it just has been, 
then no warning.

All warning boxes should have a tick box "Never show this warning again" and 
should have choices in the options dialog box to chose if warnings on/off.

May I also say that this is not a priority 1 (fatal crash, makes OOo useless in 
some respect, kills the world stock market, armageddon, etc) so I have set it 
to priority 3.  Please vote for this issue and encourage others to vote if you 
feel this is important.

HI->CJ: I heard somethink like you are involved in this case.

Getting up on my soapboax now. This is not compulsory reading and I won't take 
offense if you flame me or ignore it altogether. 'nuff said:

The solution is to get rid of these requesters alltogether. 

Put them out of their missery.

This is something M$ invented to scare the bejeezes out of those daring to 
save in a non M$ format. They cause a lot more harm (FUD) than good. They are 
not in the OpenOffice spirit.

If a concensus can be reached that these requesters are to be removed then the 
change should be trivial, I'm sure. :-)

Telling the user that he'll loose some spreadsheet information when saving in 
text format is just plain silly. Saving in JPEG looses a bit of info. Saving 
in M$ Excel might loose you something(haven't figured out what yet). 

I have a spreadsheet where I can't figure out what openoffice feature I use 
that isn't persistable in M$ excel. In fact, I get these silly requesters just 
loading the spreadsheet and quitting *without* making any changes.

If the decision is to keep these requesters, where will the discussion, use-
cases, scenarios, bug-fixes, improvements, etc. end? 

These requesters is a pit of bottomless missery:

"Should OpenOffice display a requester when as soon as I use an open office 
feature that is not saveable in the format of the current spreadsheet or only 
when I save?"

"Could you make a complete list of OpenOffice features that are not 
persistable in format X?"

In fact, I have nothing nice to say about these requesters at all.

So there!

>But again, the easist fix in the short term would be to remove this warning 
>dialog entirely."

Go team! :-)


BTW, I *love* OpenOffice! It is a great product! Otherwise I wouldn't care 
about this.

Øyvind

I know this warning is annoing, but for users who aren't aware of what they are
doing when saving for example in TXT format it is helpfull. For oo.o 2.0 we've
changed the defaults and the wording of the warning. It might make sense to have
a "Do not show this dialog again" check box.

This option would help those finding this warning annoing, but also helps users
who aren't aware of the fact that saveing in different fileformats might causes
data loss.

CJ->MAV: What do you think about the idea of having an option on the dialog
where users are asked in which file format they want to save?

Normally I wouldn't hazzle you about this, but I strongly urge you to 
reconsider.

>I know this warning is annoing, but for users who aren't aware of what they 
>are doing when saving for example in TXT format it is helpfull. 
>
>This option would help those finding this warning annoing, but also helps 
>users who aren't aware of the fact that saveing in different 
>fileformats might causes data loss.

I claim that users who aren't aware of this:

- don't care
- don't want to know
- don't read requsters with complicated wording. They look for the 
nearest "Cancel/No" button. Failing that they press ESC.
- hate requesters. Here they are slammed with two requesters. One of them with 
three(3!) options "Yes, No, Cancel" :-)


JPEG causes losses. 

Do you see any warnings when saving in JPEG instead of BMP format?

If I load an Excel spread sheet, make some changes, then isn't the only 
reasonable behaviour to purge the document of non-Excel file-format persistable 
information?

>CJ->MAV: What do you think about the idea of having an option on the dialog
>where users are asked in which file format they want to save?

This is already available from the "Save As" requester. Isn't that plenty?



Øyvind

On my soapbox again:

If this sort of feature can't be implemented flawlessly, then it is better left 
out.

The current implementation is not product quality.

Øyvind

The warning on closing will be removed as Danny R. Faught has suggested.

On storing, if user stores his document and explicitly selects a filter no
warning will appear. The warning will appear only in case user introduces any
change to a document opened from a file in alian format and either presses save
button or selects "File/Save" entry. If the user accepts the storing to the
alian format changes the document and saves it again, no warning will appear.
This is exectly how OOo1.1.1 behaves. The only difference is that the error
message is changed according to the issue 26282

>The warning on closing will be removed as Danny R. Faught has suggested.

Super!

>On storing, if user stores his document and explicitly selects a filter no
>warning will appear. The warning will appear only in case user introduces any
>change to a document opened from a file in alian format and either presses save
>button or selects "File/Save" entry. 

IMHO, this is telling the user too late. 

The user should be told up-front which features are unpresistable in the alien 
format.

>If the user accepts the storing to the
>alian format changes the document and saves it again, no warning will appear.
>This is exectly how OOo1.1.1 behaves. The only difference is that the error
>message is changed according to the issue 26282

So, if I open an excel file, make changes that are persistable in Excel file 
format, I should see no requester?

If so, great.

I still think just removing the requester would be better:

- If I get this requester, how do I find out what change I made to make 
OpenOffice put up the requester?

- If OpenOffice incorrectly identifies some change as non-persistable in Excel 
format, then I'm stuck with the requester until OpenOffice 3.0.



Øyvind

As I understand, the idea of the warning is not to notify the user which
features are not supported by the alian format but to let him know that current
saving is going to be done in alian format that does not support all the formatting.

If user opens a document from a file in alian format ( Excel for example ) does
some changes and activates saving, the warning will appear. The changes are not
investigated whether they contain formatting that is not supported by the filter
of not. Such an investigation would be a new feature and I doubt that it will be
implemented without real need just because it should be implemented for all the
alien filters then.

As it was mentioned already a chechbox "Never show this warning again" could
help. CJ have also mentioned that the warning could be switched off by using
configuration. But I agree with CJ that this is probably not something for OOo2.0.

I'm sure you guys are sick and tired of me by now, but here goes.

>As I understand, the idea of the warning is not to notify the user which
>features are not supported by the alian format but to let him know that current
>saving is going to be done in alian format that does not support all the 
>formatting.

Why the requester at all then?

>If user opens a document from a file in alian format ( Excel for example ) does
>some changes and activates saving, the warning will appear. The changes are not
>investigated whether they contain formatting that is not supported by the 
>filter of not. Such an investigation would be a new feature and I doubt that 
>it will be implemented without real need just because it should be implemented 
>for all the alien filters then.

If you guys who *wrote* OpenOffice can't figure out what features are not 
persistable, then what possible hope does the user have of figuring this out?

The requester is useless, he still has to save and then load back in and try to 
guess what got lost.

>As it was mentioned already a chechbox "Never show this warning again" could
>help. CJ have also mentioned that the warning could be switched off by using
>configuration. But I agree with CJ that this is probably not something for 
>OOo2.0.

Do everybody and especially yourselves a favour.

Remove the requester entirely.

Put it out of its missery!

There is no "damage" done if the user does not read this requester. 

There is no need for this requester and the current implementation is terrible.

Off with its head!

I'm sure I speak for the silent majority! :-)

Øyvind

The filter related warning that appeared on closing is removed, I have used a
standalone issue 32675 to integrate the change to OOo2.0 cws.

> Why the requester at all then?
May be I misunderstand the question, but as I wrote already "to let him ( user )
know that current saving is going to be done in alian format that does not
support all the formatting".
Just an example, if user tries to overwrite a file he gets a request whether he
really whants to overwrite it, but he is not provided with the information about
difference of the original file to the new version. It is just a conformation
that the user knows what he is doing. The same situation with the filter warning.

> If you guys who *wrote* OpenOffice can't figure out what features are not 
> persistable, then what possible hope does the user have of figuring this out?
It is not about figuring wich features are supported by the office format and
are not supported by the alian format. It is about providing this information
through warnings, that would require a new code and localized text for each of
the alian filters as I have mentioned. It could be done, but would require a lot
of additional resources. So I doubt that it will be implemented without a strong
request.

>May be I misunderstand the question, but as I wrote already "to let him ( 
>user ) know that current saving is going to be done in alian format that does 
>not support all the formatting".
>
>Just an example, if user tries to overwrite a file he gets a request whether
>he really whants to overwrite it, but he is not provided with the information 
>about difference of the original file to the new version. It is just a 
>conformation that the user knows what he is doing. The same situation with
>the filter warning.

The problem lies in that this requester will *never* be implemented properly 
because it is not cost-effective to do so.

OpenOffice will never be able to tell whether or not a user changed something 
that is not persistable in Excel format and thus not display this requester if 
it isn't necessary.

Also, it is a requester that is almost always superfluous(i.e. Excel will store 
the users spreadsheet fine).

The net result is that loading an Excel spreadsheet, changing something and 
saving, will *always* display this requester.

Since this requester can never be made to behave acceptably(not cost 
effective), it should not be implemented. The only "cost" to doing so is that 
the user isn't warned when he tries to save in a format that is unable to save 
*all* the information.

Excel will always have features that OpenOffice does not have, and vica versa.

I'm repeating myself: this also creats FUD(fear, uncertainty and doubt) about 
using OpenOffice to edit Excel spreadsheets.

Hence my conclusion: remove the requester entirely. There is much to be gained, 
and very, very little to be lost.

Øyvind

Another confusing and potential harmful effect of the current requester:

".... Do you want to save your changes using OpenOffice 1.0 Spreadsheet 
format. [Yes] [No] [Cancel]"

If the user by accident, or because he does not quite understand the question 
presses "yes" and "save", he'll have saved the document with *a different 
name*.

(The requester is pretty heavy reading and it has *three* choices.)

The next time he loads his document all his changes have "disappeared" because 
he does not realise that he saved the document with a different suffix.

Windows can make this problem worse, because there will be two documents which 
*only* differs in suffix. Windows XP has a "feature" that it will hide the 
suffixes of files when displayed in file requesters/explorers.

Øyvind

MAV->CJ: Sending to you as discussed.

.

Will these requesters disappear if I change Tools->Options to "Always save as 
Microsoft XXX"?

If yes, then the workaround is to set openoffice to always save as Microsoft 
format.

Øyvind

Rejoice!

It seems like this requester has been removed in the latest code snapshot.

Is that intentional?

Close bug as fixed?

Øyvind

The latest snapshot being?

Will check in the OOo 2.0 Beta.

(and yes, the qa person has returned from the dead)

1.9.79

I suggest that this PR can be closed, since it is possible to tell OO not to
show the requester again.

CJ: Closing issue, because behavior changed.

.