Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:04 am Post subject: Excel to Calc import and Page setup values
I'm not sure whether this relates to bugs 389 or 390 but I'm recording our experience at Patrick's request. Trust this helps.
This concerns the importation of Excel files into Calc and the associated 'pitfalls' we discovered and worked around. I cannot put it as strongly as 'bugs' in OOo or NeoOffice/J.
Scenario
We begin with an Excel workbook file (Mac OS 9.2 running Excel 98) with multiple worksheets. When used in Excel, the user has saved for each sheet a Page Setup printing value at 70% to ensure that their spreadsheets printed on one side of A4. Subsequent testing shows it is quite possible to set this page setup value independently with different values for each worksheet in a workbook.
On opening the workbook in NeoOffice/J, this 70% value appears to be of no consequence and is not shown in Page Setup value in the different worksheets. The consequence for the user is that when the sheets are printed from NeoOffice/J, a default value of 100% appears to be assumed and, instead of getting everything on one page ("like it was before in Excel"), the spreadsheet is printed over multiple pages. User assumes there is a problem with NeoOffice/J and calls me.
Workaround
On each sheet independently, in NeoOffice/J, select menu item Format>Page, then the Page tab. Chances are that the page format is showing User defined. Change this to match desired paper size (in our case A4) corresponding to the Page Setup value in OS X.
Switch to Sheet tab and select either Fit printout on number of pages "1" or Scale = 70%.
Print out now appears as it did when printed from Excel under Mac OS 9.
User is happy.
*****
Observations
Opening the same original Excel document in OOo 1.1 X11 for Mac produces a slightly different result in the Format>Page>Page tab. Here the Sheet size "arrives" as A4 (derived from the OS X Page setup value through X11's affinity with the OS' current default values perhaps?) but, again, the Format>Page>Sheet tab>Scale value is set at 100%, not 70%.
It seems to me that if the 70% or other scale values stored independently for each sheet in the Excel workbook file (as shown when consulting Page Setup in that application on each sheet) could, on import to NeoOffice/J (OOo.org generally?), be assigned to the Format>Page>Sheet tab>Scale value, this would more directly "solve" the issue without need for further user intervention.
Firstly, I'm delighted that the de-"bugging" of my users "bugs" has come in useful elsewhere. I must also credit Patrick for asking me to record my findings in this post for others to reference.
Excel appears to the uninitiated (i.e. me) to define the page size based on the range of columns and rows in a spreadsheet (maybe?) and users accept that they must therafter fiddle with print settinsg to get their desired result on 'n pages' etc. (And subsequently forget they ever took that step...)
It's only later, when the spreadsheet/workbook is taken out of its hidden, underground native environment and imported into something like OOo/Neo that those long-forgotten user 'tweaks' in Excel are once again exposed for what they are - a necessary tweak.
Now, before anyone flames me, I'm no spreadsheet guru (in fact, I loathe them with a passion) but I just don't think this a bug in OOo/Neo but rather the result of an "accepted practice" used in MS Excel by seasoned users without a second thought and who just believe that that's how Excel (et al) should work! It seems to me that "Fit to page" conceals a bunch of stuff that we users have always just taken for granted but which makes an absolute nonsense of any font sizes we might have chosen earlier in the spreadsheet creative process.
Each case I have seen (so far) has been traced back to a user-defined percentage or 'fit to page' setting for printing in Excel and, therefore, OOo and Neo/J are innocent!
I would be happy to be educated by those who undoubtably know better than I.
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