Table formatting disappers after every OOo restart- urgent

[atulkakrana]

I am thankful for ur help regarding my spell check isssue...

Now i am facing a bigger problem..

I insert a table into a document...Write text into it....nd save the document..

But whn i open the document again...there is no table......it disaapears...leaving only the text spread to 2-3 pages...

I mean next time whn i open the same document containing Table... i dont see any row or column...its gone nd now the content of table is spread over the pages....

pls...help me pot...as i hav to meed some dead lines regarding some documents....

[Jon]

Hmmm. Kind of tough to answer this one. I've never seen this behavior in the Windows version of OOo, nor heard of anyone else having this problem.

[Phil]

Hi,

to help you, we need to know what OpenOffice version you are using under which operating system.

Also, we need some details:

• Do you insert the table in a new (empty) document or into an existing one?
• Do you create the table with the insert table function of writer or do you paste it from some other application?

Maybe you can post the document(s) in question or post a screenshot. That would make it easier to help you.
Also a detailed description on what you are doing may help.

KR, phil

[Hski]

I have a similar problem. Using winxp, and OO 2.3.1. Every time I format a document, and save it, even using "save as" , then close and open the program, the formatting is lost!

[Phil]

Every time I format a document, and save it, even using "save as" , then close and open the program, the formatting is lost!

Does this also apply to tables or also to normal text?
To what format do you save it?
Is it a new (empty) document that you create, or do you open an existing one?

[Hagar Delest]

To Hski and atulkakrana, please read the Survival Guide for the forum, especially that thread : Tips for a better description of the problem. As said, please provide the format used. If you can reproduce that in a sample file, upload it here.

[Hski]

I am using win xp pro, Open office 3.2.1, 1 mg ram.

The document I've mentioned was previously created, has lots of tables, and some lines created using the "draw" function. The document was saved in the xp format. When I open said document, it goes through a conversion (per the message on the bottom of the opening document) and then opens. Once opened, any formatting that I applied previously, like deleting lines, adding lines, moving drawn lines around, resizing, is GONE. This happens if I "save" or a "save as". The program also often slows down quite a bit (laggy) and often crashes. This is a recent document and was a PDF conversion to Word using a commercial product to do so.

The only programs I've added lately, is Windows Defender, and the XP update for .NET3.

Hope you can help.

Thanks

[Hagar Delest]

Is it really a table? or a bunch of drawing lines that are intended to look like a table? (resulting from the PDF import). Can you clear the original document from any sensitive data, and upload it here (see Upload attachment tab at bottom)?

[Phil]

You could try to save the document as an .rtf file, load it again, and then save it as .ods or .doc file.
Sometimes this may help, as the conversion to Rich Text Format may clean up the document.

Beside from that I agree with Hagar - conversion from PDF very often creates strange structures in documents.
Often the converted documents also don't work in MS Office.

The easiest way to help you would certainly be to have the file.
If you don't want to disclose it, maybe you can replace all the text using regular expressions?

Try Find & Replace with Match case & More options - Regular expressions ON:

Search for ([:upper:])
Replace with X
Replace all

Search for ([:lower:])
Replace with x
Replace all

Search for ([:digit:])
Replace with 9
Replace all

You'll need to check through to make sure it's caught everything - e.g. it won't touch fields.

[Hski]

here is the document. Thanks!

[Hski]

not sure if the attachment worked. here it is again

[Hagar Delest]

No document at all.

Preview you message before posting to check it is here. Have you browsed your HD, selected the file and clicked the Add the file button?

[Hski]

Yes, browsed to the document again, clicked "upload attachment" tab. It doesn't seem to be uploading. It's 292kb in size. I'm not having much luck here...any ideas?

[Hagar Delest]

Yes, it should be less than 128 kB. Then use a file sharing web site (like mediafire.com).

[Hski]

ok...try this:
http://www.mediafire.com/?3zmrz1j0ujt

[Hagar Delest]

I've inserted a table somewhere (page 18/25 to be precise, between 1.10 ans 1.11), added some text and saved. Opened it again and no problem.

I see that the file is based mainly on sections instead of tables. That's the problem importing a format that is not intended to be imported (PDF). You get a lot of things without any coherence.

But I wonder why I don't see any loss of tables or formatting. Can you make a PDF of the original .doc file (if possible with MS Word and PDFCreator or another virtual printer) so that we see what it should look like with MS Word and a PDF of the file you get after you make your modifications?

[Hski]

here's the original PDF (minus the letterhead). http://www.mediafire.com/?7wlxbfkd0aw

I wonder why you had no problem saving changes and I did? I'm using the latest version of OO.

[Hagar Delest]

Here are both the .doc file and the PDF of how it looks. I just modified the font of the table page 6.

http://www.mediafire.com/?8x0gcixjtjm

[Hski]

yes, I can see the font change on p.6. But see the difference between the original pdf and my doc file (after page 15). I "corrected" the differences, saved, and none of the changes were saved.

I inserted the page 6 table you saw, it wasn't on the original...and it saved ok when I did it. On other things, when I deleted sections or added them, it didn't save.

Ideas? Should I uninstall OO and install a fresh copy?

[Hagar Delest]

Should I uninstall OO and install a fresh copy?

No, you won't have better results.
First, you import a PDF document. Again, this format is not to be imported for edition. It's based on graphic layout of the page, no text flow as you can see in a word processor.
Second, you use the .doc format, which is closed (no specification available). So you're cumulating 2 operations that induce a loss of information.
If you want to reproduce the original file, start from a blank document (using the native .odt format), and recreate the document, creating the tables and so on.

[Hski]

Thanks for your help. I'm wondering if your reply considered that I used an online commercial service that coverts from PDF to Word format, so when OO opens the document, it sees it in .doc (for Word). And what are your thoughts on the fact that OO often crashes when I'm working on this document?

Thanks!

[Hski]

oops...forgot to add: what would explain that the changes I make are visible on screen and in print preview mode, and continue to be visible and workable, even after multiple saves, but seem to disappear after the file is closed? I would assume if it was a question of the program not being able to handle it, then it would appear onscreen as such?

Thanks again.

[huw]

what would explain that the changes I make are visible on screen and in print preview mode, and continue to be visible and workable, even after multiple saves, but seem to disappear after the file is closed? I would assume if it was a question of the program not being able to handle it, then it would appear onscreen as such?

Writer will let you apply formatting that it cannot save in your chosen filetype. A simple example would be opening a TXT file, applying headings, lists, italics, bold, colour, etc. and then saving it back to TXT. The formatting would all be "lost".

In your case maybe Writer can read certain DOC formatting but not write it back to DOC, or perhaps you are applying something that it cannot write to DOC.

[Hagar Delest]

I'm wondering if your reply considered that I used an online commercial service that coverts from PDF to Word format, so when OO opens the document, it sees it in .doc (for Word). And what are your thoughts on the fact that OO often crashes when I'm working on this document?

I just say that IMHO, importing a PDF is a lost battle. That's all. Note that even OOo is implementing such feature for the 3.0 version BTW.

But PDF is based on the graphical layout of the document, not its text flow. Therefore, the import will produce a lot of shapes and separate items that may confuse OOo because it has to handle too many things (hence the crashes you experience I guess).

I'm quite sure that pasting only the text and doing the formatting yourself would have taken you less time than trying to fix it with an import tool.

[Hski]

I'm quite sure that pasting only the text and doing the formatting yourself would have taken you less time than trying to fix it with an import tool.

I have to laugh...because I said the same thing to myself...but since I paid for the conversion, and seems SO close, I wanted to make it work. Plus, I want to determine if it's a flaw in the program and/or my computer, so I'd still like to figure it out if possible.

[Phil]

I just say that IMHO, importing a PDF is a lost battle.

Basically, I completely agree to this view and also to your technical arguments.
However...
The fact is that MS Office can handle the converted PDF files much better than OOo can. So from the users perspective, this is seen as a disadvantage of OOo, and I understand that Hski would like to see that OOo offers the same level of compatibility as MS Office does (or even more).

Of course the problem is also that there are two conversions: PDF -> MS Word -> OOo.
We can hope that the direct import of PDF files targeted for OOo 3 will work better!

KR, phil

[Hagar Delest]

However...

Yes, I know, I know. I guess that this is the very reason why OOo is developing the PDF import feature.

The fact is that MS Office can handle the converted PDF files much better than OOo can. So from the users perspective, this is seen as a disadvantage of OOo, and I understand that Hski would like to see that OOo offers the same level of compatibility as MS Office does (or even more).

I agree, it's the only reason why I kept discussing that issue.
Note that OOo reads correctly the .doc file. I've opened the .doc file with MS Word and exported as PDF (with PDFCreator) and here it is: http://www.mediafire.com/?83xmmng1xgs. I compared it with the PDF produced by the imported .doc in OOo (see my previous uploaded file) and the result is quite the same.

So the problem is about changes that are not correctly saved. Rather weird. Have you tried to save in the native .odt format? Could you describe a specific formatting that is lost? We could check if we can reproduce it also. But it may be related to the numerous items that could overlap each others.