Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 96472
table copied from writer is pasted as text in impress
Last modified: 2013-01-29 21:47:51 UTC
I have table and writer and I would like to copy it to Impress presentation. I select whole table, copy it, switch to impress, paste -- but instead of table, I get the text of the cells. So it works rather like -> select, convert to text, copy, paste.
When I paste a writer table into impress I get a table , not just text. Are you sure that this is really a table you get from writer? Would it be possible to attach the writer doc you use? Thanks.
@Wg, additional information. When you are writing the text in impress. So this works -> empty page in impress -> paste -> you get the table. But this does not page with text, you are typing hello world (impress) -> paste -> you got the text from the table.
This behaviour is easily reproducible on Windows as well as Linux, and its status as a bug is up for debate, but I can understand how it is confusing to a user in that it produces an unexpected result. To reproduce the users issue: 1) In Write, create a table, enter some text in the table, then select the entire table and copy it. 2) In Impress, select Paste from the Right Mouse Button (RMB)--> the entire table is pasted. Interestingly, it picks up table-formatting as it is pasted -- the pasted table has blue cells and white lines, rather than the black borders of the original table in Write. 3) In Impress, select the text tool and begin typing some text. While the text frame is still active, select Paste from the RMB--> the text in the table is added to the text. The user is correct in stating that in this circumstance the effect of Paste is more like what you'd expect from Paste Special, in that it converts the clipboard content to text. What I found most unusual about all of this behaviour is that to have the exact content copied from Write pasted, the user must select Paste Special from the Edit menu and choose to paste clipboard comments as an "Open Office 3.0 Text Document", which creates an embedded object but preserves the original appearance of the table. See the attachment for illustration of the three different results of the paste command. The behaviour of the Paste function is very context-sensitive, and I think it's difficult for a user to anticipate the result except through trial and error. But the inconsistency of the function according to context should really be a different bug.
Created attachment 59646 [details] Illustration of 96472
The object types "text box" and "presentation object" are currently not able to hold a table. Therefore this is not a bug, but a request for enhancement. But because a native table is available in impress and draw, I doubt that it will get much attention, unless there is a general work to increase the capability of text boxes and presentation objects.