Deleting Newest Sheet Erases all Defined Ranges

Hello, I’ve encountered an odd error. I’m not sure if it’s human error, but here goes:
(attachment below, tldr: deleting sheet4 deletes all defined ranges, even ones never linked to it)

  1. The “results” sheet references tables using defined ranges. This workbook has existed for months, as have most of the ranges in the list.
  2. Today, I added some disposable sheets (sheet3, sheet4) to paste outside data. As it was over 2k new string values, I broke it up into chunks and used a couple of new defined ranges to help with transposing, sorting the data, deleting duplicates… I was doing all of this on disposable sheets so that I didn’t accidentally modify the existing data on the “tables” sheet.
  3. When it was all ready, I transposed the data from the new ranges into two of the original ones, “NamesTable1” and “NamesTable2”, and deleted the now-empty ranges.
  4. All looked good: Formulas were all still functional, and “sheet4” was now empty; so I deleted that sheet. On deleting the sheet, all defined ranges disappeared from the list, even those that did not receive new data (nor were at all referenced) during this process.
  5. Assuming I accidentally pasted some references, I rebuilt the two NamesTable ranges by pasting them to new columns as plain text, and then re-pasting those values back into the data ranges as plain text. This did not fix it, and I still couldn’t delete the empty sheet.
  6. Trying to narrow it down, I selected all cells in sheet4 and cleared all contents in case I somehow missed some content. No change. I deleted all columns to force a complete refresh of the sheet. No change.
  7. Deleting “sheet4” still deletes all defined ranges. I also tried moving “sheet4” to a blank workbook to see if it had somehow inherited all of the old ranges, but then neither file had defined ranges.
  8. Deleting “sheet3” has no effect, which is unsurprising since it was only used for text to columns shenanigans and never used any defined ranges.
  9. I did not look at any xml or user profile stuff, as I wouldn’t know where to begin.

I can rebuild the ranges I need, but I plan on repeating the good parts of this process in the future and I’d rather know if it’s a bug, or some error on my part.

Thank you for taking a look!

Names_errorcopy.xlsx (91.0 KB)

Opening the Names_errorcopy.xlsx from your question, I see two named ranges: Names (#REF!), and �SFRI�UR ($Tables.$A$24). I also see NamesTable1, NamesTable2, NobleGrouping, NobleHouses, OrgTable, and Table5 database ranges.

Deleting Sheet4 from the document does not delete any of those. Using Version: 7.6.1.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: f5defcebd022c5bc36bbb79be232cb6926d8f674
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19045; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: ru-RU (ru_RU); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded

Indeed, using an external file format (XLSX) as a primary file format is not recommended.

Ah, yes. It was originally started on another device that only gave me access to Excel. I had forgotten about that and never made the format transfer. Deleting those two named ranges fixed the reference chain, so functions still work properly after deleting Sheet4, but the defined database ranges still disappear. I’ll assume it is a format conversion error and rebuild the file with a native file format.

Thank you so much for taking the time!

For the record:
Version: 7.5.4.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 36ccfdc35048b057fd9854c757a8b67ec53977b6
CPU threads: 4; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19044; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-CA (en_CA); UI: en-US
Calc: CL threaded