Cutting off Right side of Document After Saving

[beezerbee]

I was trying to make a calendar for April through August to keep track of my kids' extracurricular activities. I copy and paste editable calendars that I found online, and then fill in the activities. I did this a few days ago and saved the document as an ODT. Then when I opened it, the entire Saturday column was missing. I first assumed I somehow made an error deleting that column and saved without realizing.

I made the entire calendar a second time last night, saving two copies to avoid a similar error. I looked at them today, and wouldn't you know it, both are missing the Saturday column!! Of course that is when the bulk of the activities take place, so I want to cry

I was going to delete the documents, but when I right click, delete, a window pops up saying "Are you sure you want to send this file to the Recycle Bin" and it shows a thumbnail of the document...INCLUDING SATURDAY!

Does this mean I can still somehow retrieve my document intact? I have tried opening in word pad, internet explorer and microsoft paint with no luck. Does anyone have any ideas that might save me from making this stupid frustrating calendar a third time?! I would be so so grateful!

[acknak]

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

Two things come to mind. First, copying and pasting formatted content from web pages often ends up with a weird result. I tend to avoid it. It's easy enough to make a calendar table from scratch, or there are templates and samples around. Better to use Edit > Paste Special > As unformatted text, then re-format in OO Writer.

Second, it could well be that the missing content is still there. Writer does not deal well with tables that are too wide for the page--stuff may go invisible when it goes past the right margin.

What I do in this situation is change the page size or orientation so that the page is plenty wide enough for the table: Format > Page > Page > Paper size: A3, or tabloid, and landscape should do it. After the table is cut back to the final size, then switch the paper size back if you want to print it.

[beezerbee]

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply! I guess I'll be more careful about how I move formatted content in the future. It looked great when I pasted, so I thought I was good to go.

I'm still hoping against hope that the missing content is retrievable somehow. I tried the trick you mentioned about changing the paper size. It simply stretches each column to fit the wider page, but Saturday does not reappear. I try manually dragging Friday to the left, but Saturday does not appear.

[acknak]

Can you attach the document here?

Or, click the email button to the right of this message and I'll reply with an address where you can send it privately.

It might also be helpful to know the page where you got the schedule layout.

[beezerbee]

I really appreciate you sticking with me! Attached is the file in question. Here is the website that I downloaded the originals from. http://www.wincalendar.com/2015-Word-Calendar.htm I left clicked on each link (April, May, June, July and August) in the landscape format. I then copied the calendars all into a single document and began to edit.

[Bill]

The calendars are in tables which have some merged cells. In .docx files, AOO seems unable to select the whole table when there are merged cells in the table. The WinCalendar site supplies .docx files by default. In the April calendar, the bottom row contains two merged cells in the Fri and Sat columns. When selecting the table for copying, the Sat column is not selected if the bottom row is selected. You can work around this by copying and pasting only the rows which don't have merged cells then inserting rows, or by downloading the calendar files in .doc format instead of .docx format.

[Bill]

Another option is to use an online file converter to convert the .docx calendar files to .odt, then work with the .odt files instead of the .docx files.

[beezerbee]

Thank you for your input too Bill. The best outcome for me would be if I can save my previous work by restoring the previous calendar. It sounds like this won't be possible?

[Bill]

Sorry, I'm unable to duplicate what you described in your first post. Using AOO 4.1.1, when I copy from the docx file and paste in an odt file, I don't get Saturday at all. Did you use OpenOffice to copy and paste the calendars or some other program?

[beezerbee]

When I downloaded the documents, it looks like they saved as .docx I then opened them in AOO, and edited. Then they were saved as .odt files. I had no idea anything was amiss until later when I tried to reopen the .odt files in AOO.

[Bill]

Following your procedure, I added some data to one of the .docx files and saved it in .odt format, then closed and reopened the .odt file. Saturday disappeared. I repeated the process, but saved in .doc format instead of .odt format. Saturday did not disappear. If you want to continue using the .docx files, make sure that you save in .doc format instead of .odt format.

As to recovering your "previous work", it may be possible if that previous work was saved in the .odt file, but it would take someone more familiar with the internal structure of the .odt file to tell you how to recover that data.

[beezerbee]

Great, thanks Bill. It's beginning to sound like it would take more time to recover the data than to simply type it out again! I appreciate your time spent helping me, and I will follow your recommendations to avoid this situation in the future. Good karma is headed your way! Thanks again!

[lil-mo]

Ever since I have updated to AOO 4.1.5, after I save my doc and re-open it, the contents on the right side of my document disappear. Can someone help me fix this issue?

[RoryOF]

Please upload a small sample document.

[lil-mo]

@RoryOF I uploaded the original doc and the doc that has the right side cut off.

[RoryOF]

Both seem OK to me. Try selecting the single page icon (leftmost of three little icons at bottom right of OO window). then clicking in the % box in the corner and selecting "full page" or "Page width". If that helps, you can try others of the configurations from the % box to get the exact configuration that suits you.