Infinite white boxes

English
#1

When I reopen a spreadsheet it often comes up with a large empty box fixed to the top left hand corner and extending rightwards, finishing in the middle of a column. I asked friends with no success then searched online and it found a thread on this site: Infinite white boxes
Now this same issue was raised back in 2015 but closed the following year as “not relevant or outdated” although the final entry did not present an answer but only a work-around which included the use of MS Office, which I do not have access to.
This was the work-around presented (using Libre Office alone) by Loginmyeye: Tools>Options>LibreOffice Calc>View>Objects>Drawing Objects (Hide) and as he/she admitted “I don’t have an answer–just more clues”.

So I have this problem repeated in Libre Office version 6.0.2.1 in 2018 and have tried this work-around but if I clear the boxes using this method, it does work but if I close the file and reopen it they are back again, so it’s not a FIX.

#2

Could you report the issue, with a sample file for test? Create a bug report

#3

Did you already try a new user profile thoroughly regarding all the precautions?

#4

has anyone found an answer for this?

#5

tdf#117274 was fixed in 6.4.

#6

A possible workaround using LibreOffice is to:

  1. Enable the “Drawing” toolbar from menu “Display → Toolbars”
  2. In this toolbar, click on the “Select” tool
  3. Use this tool to select the annoying white boxes you want to delete (one selection is sufficient to selects all overlapping white boxes)
  4. Press the “Delete” key

Another one is:

  1. Select all (Ctrl+A)
  2. Cut (Ctrl+X)
  3. Click on cell A1
  4. Paste special (Ctrl+Shift+V)
  5. In the “Selection” category, select everything but “Paste all” and “Objects”. Leave the defaults for other settings, and click “OK”
#7

Are you sure you read the bug, specifically its comment 37?

Already wrong files like attachment #155840 can be manually repaired in 6.4 by: - Opening the Navigator - Double clicking on the drawing objects named “AutoShape xx” to highlight them and pressing Delete on the keyboard - Saving the file and reloading in Excel or Calc will not show any of those white squares.

It tells that the fix is to prevent new shapes from appearing. It cannot delete the shapes already created by older broken program versions, and they need to be removed manually.

#8

Sorry if I did not understand what does exactly the patch do.

But the comment 37 you cite only explain how to manually remove shapes one by one, which is absolutely not feasible for some documents, like originally asked in this thread or one I had recently with more than 100 hundred shapes per sheet, on 5 sheets. So I still think that the solutions I gave are realistic for this issue.

#9

Sure, thanks for the procedure. Just edit your post to remove the incorrect “the bug is still here” claim, that’s what my comment is about.

#10

OK thanks for the clarification :-), I have edited my comment.

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