Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

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gpas
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Joined: Tue Jun 07, 2011 1:07 am

Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by gpas »

I have been plugging away the last week on an assignment for my math Uni course. I've writing my assignment in Open office and doing all the math formulas with the formula plugin. To my horror open office has suddenly taken it upon itself to destroy all of my formulas leaving a series of placeholders with red text saying things like "object 45" on them. Can my formulas be saved?
Open Office 3.2.1 Linux Mint
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RGB
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Re: Help!! Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholde

Post by RGB »

Most probably your formulas are there, but an option to not show objects was accidentally applied. Go to Tools → Options → ... Writer → View and check the option to show pictures and objects.
There are two types of people: those who believe that there are two types of people and those who do not.

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gpas
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Re: Help!! Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholde

Post by gpas »

Hi,

Just tried that. Box is checked. I unchecked and checked again and it didn't work. :( God I really hope I haven't lost all my work.

I've got a dual boot machine and the problem is in both Linux and Widows. Boxes with Object #No and a unplugged symbol. Tried exporting to RTF, XML etc nothing seems to work.
Open Office 3.2.1 Linux Mint
gpas
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Re: Help!! Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholde

Post by gpas »

I should probably now take this opportunity to warn anyone thinking of using Open Office to avoid it. I cannot believe it would just destroy my document. Now that measly £90 for Word seems like a drop in the ocean. I guess I've paid the price for trusting substandard software.

Sorry for the rant but this document has taken me ages to write. I really hate Oracle right now!
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Help!! Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholde

Post by Hagar Delest »

Sadly, you're not the first one: [Issue] Missing objects and footers.

I know it's too late but backups are the only lifesaver here. Have you checked the backup folder of the profile (see [Tutorial] The OOo user profile)?
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
gpas
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by gpas »

Thanks for your reply Hagar,

yes I checked the backup folder, but nothing. I'm shocked to learn such a critical bug was known about 12 months ago and has not been repaired. Do Oracle realize people use this software for assignments and essays? They should either debug their software prior to release or not release it at all as it's not fit for purpose. I will now have to work like mad to get my essay rewritten and submitted on time.

I've just bitten the bullet and forked out to upgrade to Microsoft Word and I'll obviously do my bit to warn others of the pitfalls of the dangers of using this broken application.

Java is next in my course, isn't Oracle responsible for that too now...? God help me if this dogs dinner of a package is anything to go by!
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by Hagar Delest »

The problem is that such a bug is not easily reproducible. Since you are very few to experience this, it may some corner case specific to very few configurations, hence the difficulty to tackle it.

Note that the bug report in the other thread is rather different. I think that there is no report for this very problem. It's the 3rd I see IIRC.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
mwltruffaut
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by mwltruffaut »

The same thing happened to me. I spent about a week on a document with many, many formulas. Today, I opened it and found that many formulas had been replaced with placeholders and some hadn't. Bizarre and devastating.
OpenOffice 3.3 on Windows 7
halfknot
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by halfknot »

Happened to me as well.

Never again, OpenOffice.
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by Hagar Delest »

If you were using OOo 3.0 (your forum signature), this is a really deprecated version. Even if new releases may not be free of this bug, they should be at least more reliable.
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
halfknot
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by halfknot »

It was actually 3.4.1, but I was too lazy to check. If you couldn't fix this bug in *years*, I say you should just give up on the project and start doing something else. Or at least prompt users with a huge warning message when downloading - UNRELIABLE ! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK !
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RoryOF
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by RoryOF »

Of course, you have backups, so that the most you lost is the last editing session?
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Hagar Delest
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Re: Formulas replaced with "Object 41" etc placeholders!

Post by Hagar Delest »

I use OOo/AOO since 2006 and have never faced this problem. Using mainly Writer at work 6hrs a day 5 days a week with documents containing hundreds of tables, dozens of pictures. Average size is between 3 and 10MB, up to 500 pages.

There are very few topics about that so there is a problem indeed but surely caused by a corner case. That's the most difficult situation, how to find the root cause???
LibreOffice 7.6.2.1 on Xubuntu 23.10 and 7.6.4.1 portable on Windows 10
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