Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 7747
Impossible to select all with menu 'Edit -> Select all' if document starts with Table
Last modified: 2014-03-21 13:06:07 UTC
test case test case one create a text document with two or more seperate tables select all (ctrl + a) only one table will be selected second test case create a text document with two or more seperate tables click and drag to try and select more than one table only one table will be selected
Dennis thanks for taking the time to post this issue. Duplicated on Win NT 4.0 SP6a, OOo 1.0.1. Thank you for using and supporting OOo. Steps to reproduce this issue: 1. Start Writer. 2. Create a table at the top of the page. 3. Enter some text. 4. Create another table. Try to select the entire document. The problem seems to only occur if you have a table at the very beginning of the page.
Created attachment 2862 [details] Test case for select all problem.
actually on my win98se it happens if the table is at the bottom, or in the middle...or at the top... try creating multiple tables and the problem will probably be reproduced thanks
Duplicated on Win NT 4.0 SP6a, OOo 643.
problem still exists in 1.0.1 for fun: create a table with a lot of stuff then create some regular text below it then try to select the regular text and the table by clicking and dragging -won't work :(
Reassign
Reassigned to MRU
"Select all" does not work when a table is at the very beginning of the document. That's an old problem (as old as Writer's tables... sbout nine or ten years), which is not fixable. Complete redesign of table concept will be necessary (about one year of development).
Now to the original problem described at th top of the issue: Ctrl-A in a table does not mean to select "all tables". It means "select all of the table". Do the following: place the cursor in a table cell which has text content. Hit Ctrl-A once -> ALL text content in the table is selected. Hit Ctrl-A again -> whole table is selected. If hit Ctrl-A for a third time, the whole document content is selected. That's the way Writer's "Select All" feature works. Exception: the case I mentioned above... (not nice, but nothing to do, sorry)
Closed, not a bug.
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There IS a problem here. Selecting the entire table with either mouse movement or using Ctrl-A, Ctrl-A works just fine. With it selected, it can be moved, copied or drug to a new position, however, when using drag-n-drop or Ctrl-X (delete), we are left with a blank table. To remove it, I have to select every row and then use "Delete rows." Expected behavior: Drag-n-drop should remove the table completely (no blank table), as should Ctrl-X. If this is not reopened, I will open a new issue for this as an enhancement.
*** Issue 31471 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
hmm. ------- Additional comments from mru Fri Dec 6 04:01:46 -0700 2002 ------- ... (about one year of development). any progress ? :) as this is closed as wontfix, i wonder - will this be fixed in 2.0 ? quite a lot of duplicates, seen in production environment... ok, i'll see if i have any votes left :)
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I think that this issue should be fixed. It is a bug, it is functionality that does not work as expected and should be addressed at some point. It has been more than two years since this issue was first submitted. The original reason for not doing it was that it would take more than a year of development to fix it. Simply because it is hard to do is not a reason to not do it. That said, I'm not in a position to fix it myself or get someone else to do it, so I leave my rant here as my vote that ignoring this known (and repeatedly submitted) issue is not the way to handle it.
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My issue 59913 has been set as duplicate of this one. "WONTFIX" is not the right way to handle such problems. I vote for fixing this bug.
You can't just Closed/WontFix this issue. The users found this bug all the time. A table at the very top of a document is very common, e.g. invoices. This make bad user experience because they don't know why they can't 'select all' or drag to select the whole document (an error message when they try to do so would help). And there's no way they can fix the situation. After putting that table there, they can't insert a paragraph before it. We know you have to fix it some day. Please make a decision about it and set a target for it. Thanks.
Then go ahead and provide a patch/find someone willing to implement this/pay someone to implement this. As stated above: This is a huge effort without much gain. The few ressources available will be used t fix other ("real") bugs. But certainly a patch will not be rejected. Setting "OOo PleaseHelp" target to make it easier to query for such issues. And of course you can add a paragraph before that table. Just put your cursor to the very first position in the very first cell and press enter. Voilà.
I think that You should fix it. It is a real bug! Why do you think that it's not a bug?
We do not think that it is not a bug, but currently the effort is much too high to justify a high priority which will prevent implementation of other important features bugs (a crash has of course a much higher prio than this, e.g.)
So how should I understand this comment: ------- Additional comments from mru Fri Dec 6 03:08:49 -0800 2002 ------- Closed, not a bug. ? Well, this defect is too hard to correct - I unterstand this. But this is a real bug. So I can't understand the WONTFIX Resolution. Maybe there should by written something else. But what?.. There is no such Resolution value to describe the situation. :-(
""Select all" does not work when a table is at the very beginning of the document." This IS a real problem! WONTFIX is not a solutions; also not if it can't be fixed very soon.
*** Issue 67693 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
A workaround that works for me: a) Place the cursor before the first character in the leftmost table cell of the first table row and press Enter. You have created a paragraph before the table. b) Hide this paragraph: Select Insert -> Fields -> Other, select the Functions tab and select "Hidden paragraph". In the Condition box, type 1. Close the dialog box. Now, Ctrl-A works on the document. When converting the document to PDF, the hidden paragraph vanishes. I guess this means that when printing the document, the hidden paragraph will not be printed, either. One problem that remains is the following: The hidden paragraph is displayed in Writer itself, giving a false impression of the page layout. You can choose not to display hidden paragraphs (deselect View -> Hidden paragraphs). But note that at long as this setting is deselected, Ctrl-A does again not work.
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Reopening issue: Why? Because this is a known problem. There will be a constant stream of discussion on this problem. Need to know where the appropriate code is in the sw package that is causing this problem so it can be examined. James McKenzie
ok, we will keep this issue open. But we could only change the target to something earlier for the case someone could contribute a patch for this. Currently WE do NOT have the resources to fix this.
@mru: Do you have an idea where this problem originates? I can look through all of the sw module code but I really don't feel like doing this. I will also bring this up on the Mac OS X porting list as a issue that needs to be corrected. We have an eager group of developers and would like to bring something back to the mail program. James McKenzie
@mru: I am going to check where and when this problem occurs and test out the workaround. Also, this is as of right now, an issue that I alone am working on, just to clarify this point. James McKenzie
@mru: Confirmed that the workaround does work. Lowering priority as: 1. A workaround does exist 2. This is functionality that 'works as designed'. 3. A tremendous amount of effort will be needed to fix this issue. 4. Selecting all text in a document that has a table at the beginning is a 'special case'. In other words, not all users are expected to do this. 5. This is definitely NOT a showstopper problem. The program continues to function. Also, I will look at the three press for Cntrl-A to select all of the text. James McKenzie
@mru: On the Mac, all Cntrl (or Apple) + A does is select the first cell in the table (top left) then the table and then back to the first cell. Not all text is selected. However, using the workaround allows all text to be selected. James McKenzie
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Note: I've downloaded a text from Project Gutenberg that after I eliminate empty paragraphs is 165 pages of pure text. Ctrl-A, ctrl-shift-end, and ctrl-shift-home do not work. There are no tables in the document. I have verified that there are no issues with my keyboard, and that these same shortcuts work in shorter documents. There are no tables in the document. I came to the forum to see if it was likely that it was simply the new release 2.3.0 that had this problem.
Important detail: The failure of ctrl-A, ctrl-shift-end, ctrl-shift-home cited above is a direct result of using "hidden characters". My first step was to hide the characters in the "front" and "back" material while I worked on transforming/structuring the document. A test reveals that this is the cause of the problem. hidden characters thus seem to make select fail.
Set target as promised to Cor ;-)
@sahiman: This is a separate issue and needs to be in an issue of its own. James
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This issue might be extended to selection of *all* footnotes / endnotes. I can find nothing on-line after an extensive search. Foot/endnotes can only be selected one at a time. I have to revert to MS Word to copy all footnotes (editing several academic journals this is an important task).
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my issue of number 88728 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. I can't figure if there is any attempt to solve this issue. I voted for this issue and I invite all duplicates to vote for it.
target 3.1
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3.x
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Created attachment 62036 [details] Original file screenshot
(Excuse me for my bad English) I test file 7747selectall.sxw with Writer 3.1.0 (OOO310m11 build 9399). Result is still buggy: Ctrl+A selects only first table.
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Ctrl+A (1, 2, 3 times) appears to work except for files starting with a table. But my query (Thu Mar 13 14:40:10 +0000 2008) concerning selecting all endnotes/footnotes is now nearly two years old and has NOT been addressed (I still have to use MS Office to format them - average 100 per file). Can anyone give me a timeline for a fix or workaround? Thanks.
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Just a comment that this is also an annoyance in legal pleadings, which are commonly formatted this way in some jurisdictions. I am not deeply versed in the internals of .ODT, but given that OO.o works along the 'paragraph'/'section'/'table' + styles model, wouldn't it make sense to leave CTRL-A as it exists (with semantics along the lines of "Select All within current object") and just toss on another method to "brute-force select *everything*"?
*[re: previous comment -- legal pleadings may be commonly formatted with a table as the first object in the document.]
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I vote for fixing this bug.
I think this is a very serious problem. In the next version 3.4, please fix this bug.
This bug is still present in version 3.4.1 and it turns out to be immensely annoying! For instance, I can't select the whole text to change the spell checking language.
Created attachment 82045 [details] Simple Sample Still reproducible with server installation of "AOO 4.1.0-Dev – English UI / English locale - [AOO410m1(Build:9750) - Rev. 1546757 - 2013-12-02]" on German WIN7 Home Premium (64bit)", own separate user profile.: 1. From AOO start center open attached sample document 2. click in front of "c" in last text row 3. <control+a> (or menu 'Edit -> Select all') As expected all contents becomes selected 4. Click left from "0" in first text line 5. <Del> <Del> to delete first textline 6. Retry from (2) Unexpectedly only "c" and Table cell "A1" selected, no way to select all
Additional info: --------------- (a) There is a fixed LibO bug or this problem (b) Latest confirmation for AOO 4.1.0-dev, but because of incomplete LCo selector (Bug 123063) no correct information can be contributed. (c) this one is not trivial, the fact that the problem has been fixed for LibO and the number of DUPs and Votes makes this one at least "Normal"
(d) behavior has changed in 4.1.0-dev compared to 4.0.1. In 4.0.1 in step 3 only contents of cell A1 becomes selected
(e) And BTW, I do not know any trick how to select all in Comment 77 Step 6
AOO 4.0.1 on Xubuntu 12.04 64bit Very often I work with documents which have a table at the beginning, so this bug/issue is very annoying for me. I know that in LibreOffice there is meanwhile a fix for this issue. Perhaps it's possible to implement that in AOO too.