Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 70320
Make deselecting sheet-tabs easier
Last modified: 2013-08-07 15:14:30 UTC
If several sheets are selected and data is typed in any cell on one sheet, it is duplicated to the same cell in all sheets, silently overwriting the other data (exact repro steps below) . While this may be desired behavior in some very specific cases, in most situations it is totally unexpected (especially to users that are less technologically advanced) and leads to silent data loss. User may not notice this until it is either impractical to restore from backup or all backup copies contain incorrect data. Please display warning, detailing existing behavior and ways to deselect unneded sheets. I am assigning P2 to this issue as current behavior allows _silent_ data lost when performing common operations. Please consider for OOo 2.1. Repro steps: 1. Start Calc, type "something important" in cell A1 on Sheet1. 2. right-click "Sheet 2", click "Select All Sheets". 3. type "else" in cell A1 on Sheet2. 4. Click Sheet1 and make sure that text typed in step 1 is gone and replaced with text typed in step 3. Also note that no warning is given.
Hi, an action like paste or typing characters is supposed to go into all selected cells or shhets within a spreadsheet document. This is common use for all Spreadsheet applications I know. So this is essential and we will not change this behaviour. If you paste something from the clipboard with all sheets selected, you get a overwrite warning. As selecting all sheets and want to type data into one of them is not logical, I think this Issue should be closed as invalid. Assigned to Matthias for commenting on it. Frank
Competitive Analysis: The behavior is the same as in Excel. UX Analysis: Yes this can be an issue when the user is not aware that several sheets are selected. However, multi-selection of several sheets happens very unlikely by accident. Specification: We will listen to the event of editing at several sheets at the same time and trigger the Help Agent. We just need to find a proper section in the online documentation.
Frank, I agree that other spreadsheet apps behave in the same way when multiple sheets are selected. Complication with Calc is that there is not obvious way to deselect sheets, when all sheets are selected. Other spreadsheet app behave almost in the same way, EXCEPT when all sheets are selected - once you click any sheet all others are deselected. With Calc unsuspecting user having failed to deselect will continue typing the data. Basically my issue boils down to that - provide (intuitive to average user) way to deselect sheets when all sheets are selected. Should I change Summary? Matthias, thanks for support. What do you think of sheet selection/deselection behavior in Calc when all sheets are selected?
I suggest to deselect all other sheet-tab when user clicks any sheet-tab.
kpalagin: +1 nn, Attached is a simple patch which deselects selected sheet-tabs if you click on other than the current sheet-tabs. This patch uses SelectOneTable regardles bSelectOneTable variable (it removes it). Seems like a working one. :) Please review. Set type to PATCH.
Created attachment 56283 [details] proposed patch
Niklas, could you,please, consider this patch and comment on it? Thanks a lot. WBR, KP.
Brilliant! The patch works good here.
Ok. There is one thing we need to fix. When multiple tabs are selected, and the user clicks on one of the selected tabs, it should not clear the selection unless all tabs are selected. But I guess it is trivial to fix that.
Created attachment 60134 [details] revised patch
I added the second patch to CWS "calc49". Following Christoph's suggestion on the ux-discuss list, I also changed the behavior of a click into the empty area next to the sheets from "insert sheet" to "deselect" if several sheets are selected. The related issue 7921 ("Deselect All Sheets" in context menu) is in the same CWS.
reassigning to QA for verification
verified in internal build cws_calc49 For TCS please see #i7921#
Verified in DEV300m49 on WinXP Closing