Graphic objects in calc imported from MS Excel with wrong text orientation

[chris-0909]

Hello,

I just imported a large number of MS Excel documents with flowcharts into LibreOffice Version: 4.2.1.1. Most of the graphical objects used for those are imported OK at first sight. However, if I want to make changes of the graphical objects they appear to be in a really odd condition. I can’t select them in groups and, what gives me a really hard time, in some I can’t get the text within the objects into a proper orientation. It keeps being upside down even if the object orientation is changed.

I just attach a sheet with such an object in a calc sheet, you can copy and move them but the odd behaviour stays the same, here the link:

link text

The only workaround I found is to create all objects again in LibreOffice and copy and paste the text, but to be honest I try to avoid this annoying work,.

Can anyone help ?

Cheers

[Regina]

You have to correct it in the file. As far as I know, LibreOffice has no UI for it. Make a copy of the file and work on the copy. The .ods file is a zip-container.

Open the file with an packer e.g. “7-Zip”. You need not unpack it, but simple enter the container. Open the file content.xml in an editor (Unix line end, UTF-8 coding). The information is in the end part of the file. The shape is a “draw:custom-shape”. You can find it by search for its text. It has a child “draw:enhanced-geometry” and that has the attribute “draw:text-rotate-angle”. Currently it has the value 270. Set it to 90. Save and close content.xml, exit the container, confirm content update.

If the drawing objects are not visible, then likely one position is zero or negative. Double-click the object in the Navigator, goto Position&Size in the side bar and set correct values.

I have tested the problem with an .xslx-file generated in Excel 2010. Already the import is buggy. My bug report is https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=76456.

[oweng]

Regina, I can get the provided example to rotate OK via right-click > Position & Size… > Rotation tab > setting the value from 270 to 90. I realise though that this is just one object from a flowchart. Were you referring to an entire flowchart in your response?

[chris-0909]

Regina, thanks for the quick answer.

That does work, excellent. BUT the behaviour of those objects remains bizzare, if I close and reopen the file with libreoffice, the objects are shifted around and are changes in size. To be precise, width and height are exchanged and they are moved to another place, here an example:

link text

I saved the file with a width for the lower two symbols of 3,5 cm and a height of 2,5 cm and all three symbols placed right beneath each other.

Does this make sense, somehow ?

Regards

[Regina]

@chris-0909, I think that there are some bugs. Already the import of an Excel file is wrong. I noticed the wrong position too, therefore my hint to the Navigator. BTW Apache OpenOffice is wrong too, but in a different way.

@oweng: Rotation via Position&Size rotates the whole shape. Excel has the ability to rotate the text field inside the shape. ODF file format allows this, but both LO and AOO seem to be buggy.

[oweng]

@Regina, I misunderstood the problem. Thanks for explaining it.