CALC row height changes with copy/paste

Hello, I have a spreadsheet open and have selected “All” and applied a Height of .30 with a TXT size of 12 pt. When I copy one cell and paste it into another row, the height of the row I pasted in changes to .20. This does not happen all the time but enough to be bothersome.

This was happening in ver 6.4. I updated to ver 7 and it is still happening.

I also noticed that this happens when the row I pasted in was not previously populated.

Is there a way to turn off an auto adjust setting or set a “Default Height”?

Thank you for your assistance.

Update: in response to LeroyG’s findings.

Thank you Leroy very much for testing and responding to this. I opened the file on another computer (Both Win 10 x64) and received the same results. You can see the Copied and pasted item in the screenshot with the adjusted row height.

Thank you again!

Update: Thank you LeroyG for your assistance!

Sorry about long delay. Steps I used to duplicate on a new sheet…

  1. Create New sheet
  2. select all (Cont A) or top left corner above #1.
  3. Change row size to 30pt and text size to 12.
  4. enter in some test text in a few cells.
  5. Save and close (Key step)… I’m saving as 2007-365 xlsx file
  6. Re open file,
  7. Right click on a populated cell and copy.
  8. paste into a cell in an unused row
  9. At this point the row has reduced in size optimizing for text size.

My workaround right now is to only select “Cells” not rows or columns… Seems to stick for me.

Update: Created bug report: tdf#140375

and discovered that this is directly related to row height optimization. The row adjusts according to the size of text that is pasted.

Thanks for the suggestions LeroyG!

Can’t reproduce in LibreOffice 6.4.7.2/7.0.4.2 (x86); OS: Windows 6.1.

Take a look at the guidelines at /UserProfile to see if it can be caused by corruption in the user profile.


Add Answer is reserved for solutions. Please, click edit below your question if you want to add more information.

Could you share a copy of the file (only the sheet in discussion and without sensible data)? Edit your question, and use the paperclip to do that.

See related question with the inverse issue: /question/291817/.

Thanks for being so quick to respond! I reviewed that question but don’t feel it is a suitable solution. On a single sheet with consistent formatting, height should not matter. I copy from same Height to same Height. Some how the default value is tied in somewhere on the back end… We have a checkbox “Default Height” but no way to customize what the default height may be. Ideally, this would be available in the Options somewhere and should not be difficult to add. Thank you LeroyG for all your assistance! I’m not sure there is much more I can do other than what I stated above. Have a good day.

saving as 2007-365 xlsx file

Don’t happen if saving a new file as .ods. So if format is important, don’t save as xlsx.

Things get worst after saving as .xlsx and then as .ods: when reload, you get all empty rows with the default height.

By the way, see LibreOffice Help on Default value for Row Height. It is related to styles.

You can fill a bug report, then share the report number here. Thanks.

@m3mason, Thanks for sharing the bug report number. You can just type tdf# followed by the six numbers, without space.

i added reference to this question in the report.

Quoting @m3mason: “…and discovered that this is directly related to row height optimization. The row adjusts according to the size of text that is pasted.”
That’s not quite correct: If the row(s) where text is pasted in are set to a fix row height (your 0.3’’) this should override the automatic adaption.
The wrong adaption is related to the interim saving to .xlsx - and also occurs if the sheet originally was created by Calc. The reloaded sheet keeps the explicitly set row heights, but new pasting can spoil it.
(Since I don’t have any Excel I cannot judge if MS simply are inapt to manage row heights correctly, or if the bug is one of LibO either concerning the saving to or the loadingf from .xlsx.)
Simply always use the native formats of LibO. Do otherwise only if you love surprises.

@lupp, Thank you for your advice! I guess old habits die hard… When I first started using OO and Libre Office, Microsoft did not support Open Documents (that I’m aware of). So I’ve always set default save settings to Microsoft formats to make it more compatible when sharing. I can see that has changed. (I never had a reason to look into it.) I will consider making a few changes to my routine.

Thanks again!

Hmmm. I also wouldn’t expect MS to seriously support OpenDocument standards.
Firstly its against their strategy of customer lock-in, secondly it’s a fact that what’s called “file formats” cannot actually be just one or another .pocket to put the same thing in. Concepts differ, and the implementation of features coming from “the other side of the sea” is difficult and tends to conflict with basic assumptions of the own design.

This problem is an old one. I outline as follows: I always leave column A empty and in the lines that I need a height greater than the character, in column A I increase the size of the character, even in White. After the file is ready, you can hide Column A or not. Remembering that when copying do not forget Column A.

Thank you Schiavinatto for providing another work around.

For the time being, I will just drag and select the group of cells I will be using while avoiding the selection of rows and columns. This seems to work for now.