Corrupted Embedded Items in Writer Docs

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

All of us use writer at work and recently we are experiencing repeated problems where calc spreadsheets used in writer docs start showing up with the plug icon. We need help badly because we have to use lots of these in documents and may have to stop using NeoOffice is this can't be fixed. In particular, I have a document right now in which this just happened. I can't place it here because of confidential content.

Note- This is occurring in all versions, including 3.1.4 patch 4, patch 7 and 3.2 beta patch 3.

Lorinda · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:13 am Post subject:

Can you tell us how the spreadsheets were included in the Writer document? There are several ways to do this, and each behaves somewhat differently. If we know how you are doing this, we may be able to recreate this issue.

Have any of the Calc documents been moved?

I know you can't provide an actual problem document, but can you recreate the problem in a test document that could be safely shared?

If you control-click or right click on the plug icon, does a contextual menu appear? If so, what options are provided there?

Lorinda

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

I can send you the document privately. Private message me your email address.

Lorinda · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:38 am Post subject:

It's probably best to send it pluby (the developer) if that works for him. Can you answer my other questions?

Lorinda

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

Thanks Lorinda. How do I contact him?

Lorinda · Posted: Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:51 am Post subject:

I would expect him to chime in on this thread soon. He can tell you if he's comfortable receiving a private file, and if it would be helpful.

My first guess would be that the link in the Writer files to the Calc files has been broken and needs to be reestablished.

Lorinda

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

OK. I am comfortable sending him these files, just not posting them online. If the links are broken, this is a problem that is now starting to repeatedly crop up. I can send both the version backup just prior to the corruption and then the corrupted one which might help in deciphering what is going on.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

If you cannot attach a non-confidential file, I would like to investigate is where are people accessing these corrupted files?

From what you describe, corruption like this occurs when 2 people try to save to a file at the same time. NeoOffice will use native file locking if a shared volume supports it. However, if you use a shared volume like iDisk or MobileMe or some SAMBA configurations that don't support file locking, NeoOffice will not be able to protect users from writing at the same time.

Also, if some users use OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice to open the save files, those applications do not do any native file locking and will allow those users to overwrite a file that is locked by a NeoOffice user.

Can you answer two questions:

1. Tell us what type of volume that these corrupt documents are accessed from? To do that, right-click or Control-click on the volume icon on your Desktop that these documents reside in. In the popup menu that appears, select the Get Info menu. In the window that appears, copy and paste the General :: Format field's value into your reply.

2. Is anyone in your office using OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice to access the same files?

Patrick
Patrick

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

Here is a greatly scaled down version of a corrupt document with only a few of the items included.

We are not networked. Each person works on their own documents using NeoOffice and we do not share documents. I use OpenOffice sometimes, but not on the attached document which from a colleague.

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

Thank you for the sample document. I unzipped the document to look for the corrupt images and what I found was that none of the embedded objects are there at all. In other words, the objects in the file are not corrupted, they are missing completely.

The bad news is that since NeoOffice uses the underlying OpenOffice.org without modification to save embedded objects, I suspect that this problem will also occur in OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice as well so switching to either of those most likely will not stop this issue from occurring.

So, the difficult part is now to find what actions trigger the OpenOffice.org code to skip saving embedded objects. Below are a list of issues that I have encountered in the OpenOffice.org code that we have tried to fix in the past. Can you tell us of any or all are applicable in your case? I am hoping that what you are seeing is a variant of a known OpenOffice.org problem and we can retool our existing fix to fix this problem:

1. Was the file open for more than a day when the file was last saved before the embedded objects disappeared?

2. What kind of embedded object was in the Writer document? A spreadsheet, chart, presentation, drawing, or math object?

I will probably have more questions after these ones. My goal is to be able to narrow down the range of OpenOffice.org code that might be causing this problem.

Patrick

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

1. No
2. Spreadsheet

pluby · The Architect Joined: Jun 16, 2003 Posts: 11949

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

1. Not sure
2. Not that they can remember.
3. No. Pretty small spreadsheet.

Here is another guess. Some of these may have been old spreadsheets originally created in word documents that were converted to neoffice some time ago. While they have not been problematic to now, could that create corruptions that do not show up until much later?

gbh · Councilperson Joined: Jul 28, 2007 Posts: 172

Maybe this will help. Attached is the document with a few of the spreadsheets from a backup before they would not open any more. Maybe you can see something in them.