Posted: Fri May 28, 2010 9:39 am Post subject: can't use merge cells button -- it's greyed out on tool bar.
I just found this out -- the merge cells button on the tool bar is greyed out. In the past I could just use f6 and tab over to the button and merge the desired cells. Now I can't do that.
I can highlight adjacent cells with the shift key, but I can't use the merge cells button -- it's always grey. The only time I can use the button is if I highlight adjacent cells with cmd and clicking on the mouse.
Anybody else have this problem and if so, how do I fix it?
I cannot reproduce this bug. Maybe I am doing different steps than you? Here are the steps that I am doing. Can you tell us which steps, if any, are different for you?:
1. Click on a cell and press the Shift-Arrow keys to highlight multiple cells
2. Press the F6 key until the focus is in the correct toolbar. Then press the Tab key until the focus is on the Merge Cells toolbar button and press the Enter key.
While doing the above steps, the Merge Cells toolbar button never gets disabled.
Edit by pluby: Wait. I can now reproduce it using the above steps. It seems that I have to highlight cells with the mouse one or more times to reenable the toolbar button. This looks like a bug so I will investigate what is causing this bug later today.
I noticed this (or something like it), too, but I've been too swamped to investigate why it was broken and when/where it might have broken. (I don't use merge cells that often, so I really had no idea when it might have stopped working.)
Also, *sometimes* I can get the buttons to be enabled when dragging to create a selection, but not always, or even usually.
I have found, though, that the menu command does work all the time, even when the toolbar button is greyed out.
Is "Merge and Center" an OOo-build thing, or is it just new in 3.1.1 everywhere? That function seemed new to me, and I wondered if introducing it caused the breakage. Also of note, and related to that, is if I use the "Merge Cells" menu item, or the "Merge Cells" toolbar button (I added it manually), then when I select a merged cell, only "Merge and Center" is enabled on the toolbar (to unmerge), not plain "Merge".
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
it's working sporadically for me -- i just deleted the button then added back to the tool bar and it stayed enabled for a selection, but then when I went to another row it went off again -- so there's definitely some kind of but that wasn't there before.
The button was always there even in earlier versions.
I observed this behavior as well. Often in a newly opened Calc spreadsheet the "Merge and Center Cells" toolbar button is activated the first time I select cells with keyboard strokes, but not anytime after that.
I can also reproduce this behavior in my Go-oo installation but not in OpenOffice.org 3.1.1. That means that one or more of the OpenOffice.org code modications made by Novell's Go-oo engineers is causing this bug.
I will start investigating this bug and see if I can find which of the Go-oo modification made Novell's engineers causes this bug. If I can find the modification that causes this bug, I will remove it.
Since tracking down the cause may take several days, I found a workaround that you can use in the meantime. If the toolbar button remains disabled when selecting some cells, select the Format :: Merge Cells :: Merge Cell and Center menu. This will do the same action as the toolbar button.
When I have a test patch for you to try (hopefully sometime next week), I will post with links to a test patch for you to try.
Surprisingly faster than I expected, I think that I found the cause of this Go-oo bug and I think that I have fixed it. Can you install the following test patch and tell us if the bug is fixed for you?:
This appears to work for me (10.5.8/Intel), for any manner of selecting cells to merge, and for both ooo-build's "Merge and Center" and the vanilla OOo "Merge Cells" button (the latter not on the toolbar by default due to the ooo-build modification).
However, it doesn't appear to fix enabling the vanilla OOo "Merge Cells" button when selecting an already merged cell (e.g., to spit the cells back apart). Since "Merge and Center" is not what I want to do in most cases, I'd rather remove it from the toolbar and replace it with the standard OOo "Merge Cells", but right now I can't do that and still be able to split merged cells.
I assume this is another ooo-build bug, but I can't check the behavior against OOo 3.1.1 because apparently I didn't download OOo 3.1.1 when it was released, and only Windows builds of 3.1.1 are still available for download
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
However, it doesn't appear to fix enabling the vanilla OOo "Merge Cells" button when selecting an already merged cell (e.g., to spit the cells back apart). Since "Merge and Center" is not what I want to do in most cases, I'd rather remove it from the toolbar and replace it with the standard OOo "Merge Cells", but right now I can't do that and still be able to split merged cells.
And where is this toolbar button that you talk about? AFAICT, the Go-oo engineers did not create a new toolbar button, they renamed the existing Merge Cells toolbar button and modified the code to do the centering.
I cannot reproduce the problem that you describe with the Merge and Center Cells toolbar button. If I select a range that has merged cells in it, clicking the "Merge and Center" button unmerges (or breaks apart) the merged cell.
I cannot reproduce the problem that you describe with the Merge and Center Cells toolbar button. If I select a range that has merged cells in it, clicking the "Merge and Center" button unmerges (or breaks apart) the merged cell.
Although I cannot find the "Merge but not Center" toolbar button that you describe, the Format :: Merge Cells :: Merge Cells menu is the corresponding menu and it works fine for me. Also, whether I have merged cells using the "Merge and Center Cells" or "Merge Cells" menu, if I highlight a range that fully includes merged cells, the "Split Cells" menu is enabled.
What steps, if any, are you doing differently than me?
I cannot reproduce the problem that you describe with the Merge and Center Cells toolbar button. If I select a range that has merged cells in it, clicking the "Merge and Center" button unmerges (or breaks apart) the merged cell.
Right, the "Merge and Center" button is enabled and works, but "Merge Cells", if present on the toolbar, is not enabled. To (re-)add the plain "Merge Cells" button, customize the toolbar (Tools:Customize:Toolbar, or just choose customize from that little menu at the right edge of the toolbar), scroll down until you see "Merge Cells", and check the box next to it.
Then select some cells, click "Merge Cells" instead of "Merge and Center". Now "Merge and Center" is still enabled to allow splitting, but "Merge Cells" is not.
(What I want to do is have only "Merge Cells" on my toolbar, not "Merge and Center" or both, just like stock OOo [at least 3.2] has.)
Hope the steps are clear now.
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Right, the "Merge and Center" button is enabled and works, but "Merge Cells", if present on the toolbar, is not enabled. To (re-)add the plain "Merge Cells" button, customize the toolbar (Tools:Customize:Toolbar, or just choose customize from that little menu at the right edge of the toolbar), scroll down until you see "Merge Cells", and check the box next to it.
There is no such toolbar button in the Formatting toolbar's Customize menu. That is why I asked where it is.
There is no such toolbar button in the Formatting toolbar's Customize menu. That is why I asked where it is.
So after poking around, I found the real steps for adding the Merge Cells toolbar button that you see. It is not in the Customize dialog's default list for that toolbar so once you are in the Customize dialog, you must do the following steps:
1. Click on the Add button.
2. In the dialog that appears, select Formatting :: Merge Cells and press the OK button
Once I added this toolbar button, the solution to your issue: you need to add the "Split Cells" toolbar button using the same steps.
Toolbar buttons generally match the menu that you can select and in Novell's Go-oo engineers split OpenOffice.org's single "Merge Cells" menu into 3 separate menus. You had set your toolbar to display buttons for two of the those menus but you were missing the third "Split Cells" menu.
There is no such toolbar button in the Formatting toolbar's Customize menu. That is why I asked where it is.
So after poking around, I found the real steps for adding the Merge Cells toolbar button that you see. It is not in the Customize dialog's default list for that toolbar so once you are in the Customize dialog, you must do the following steps:
Whoops, since I had already added it once, I had forgotten that it wasn't just in the list and unchecked to begin with.
pluby wrote:
Toolbar buttons generally match the menu that you can select and in Novell's Go-oo engineers split OpenOffice.org's single "Merge Cells" menu into 3 separate menus. You had set your toolbar to display buttons for two of the those menus but you were missing the third "Split Cells" menu.
Yay Go-oo
Thanks for tracking this down, and sorry for the wild goose chase
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
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