Worked on a spreadsheet for 20 years or so. Transferred it from Excel, and it just freezes. crashes etc
Did you save a copy as ods, or open Excel directly in Libreoffice?
What is your version of LibreOffice and Operating System?
Thanks S
I’m using Windows & latest version of Libre
I opened the Excel spreadsheet in Libre Calc; I currently have 16 recovered .ods files! The latest one is incredibly slow, that is when it’s not responding!
Nick
I suppose that you mean you opened an Excel document in Calc and tried to work on it.
Things will probably go better if you save the spreadsheet in Calc’s native format (.ods) before you try to work on it. After that, ignore the old .xls (Excel) version of the spreadsheet and work only on the .ods (Calc) version of it using Calc.
Gilberto
Can’t get back into Microsoft to change it to .ods
I can’t create hyperlinks into Calc, do you know any good videos. I’ve tried 5 or 6 without any luck
Nick
[Edit] In Calc, simply use the Menu File → Save As. Keep the same file name (so it will be easy for you to recognize), but let Calc supply its own file extension (.ods). Click OK.
You don’t need a hyperlink and I doubt very much that you can use Microsoft to change it to .ods.
I think the OP means that he no longer has MS Office, so he can’t go back and save as ODS from MS Excel, or possibly because his Excel is too old of a version to have ODS save option. I would recommend taking the original MS XLS spreadsheet somewhere a friend has 365. Load it and save it again as ODS from 365 (that is, from modern Excel). Then load that ODS in LibreOffice Calc and try it out.
Ah, if that is what the OP meant, I had missed it. Thanks for pointing that out. And your suggestion to save the file as .ods from a modern version of Excel is a good one.
It would be nice to hear from OP again, to clarify the situation.
Hmm.
Do you have a positive experience saving to ODF from MS Office products? Usually the interoperability is better, if import/export is done from LibreOffice, because we put great amount of work into the interoperability, while MS doesn’t improve it significantly over the years.
What I would ask is if @cheesypt tried to use another version of LibreOffice.
@mikekaganski – You are probably right. It would be better to do the conversion of the original .xls file to .ods while in LibreOffice.
@cheesypt – Have you tried the suggestions above? What has worked for you, and has your original problem been solved?
Not sure who I’m addressing here, but thanks to all for help. Msoft sheet worked [slowly] but they suddenly blocked me, asking for ancient product numbers. As I told Gilberto, I think I’ve lost 20 years work completely. I stripped all background colours & all hyperlinks, but it still freezes constantly - having to recover it every session
Why? Don’t you have a backup-copy of your original .xls-file (before you “transferred” it)? If you have you can start over with a fresh copy of this file anytime you like. And for files I used 20 years I suggest more than one backup…
Wanderer, hi
Got the .xls file; the problem was loading from Libre, after I was kicked out of Msoft. My guess is that Gilberto is right - the file’s too big
How big is it?? (In megabytes or some similar unit.)
Can you open LibreOffice OK from the start menu?
Do other spreadsheets crash or not load?
If they crash or not load, do they open and work OK in LibreOffice safe mode, Start Menu - LibreOffice - LibreOffice (safe mode) - continue in safe mode?
Does this problematic spreadsheet open OK in safe mode? If it does, then two likely candidates for changing might be Skia or OpenCL.
At what stage in the above do the problems occur?
ve3oat - Hi
.xls is 4,510 KB, the stripped-down .ods is 4,139 KB
EarnestAI - Hi
Loaded in 10 seconds in Safe Mode! Made a single tiny change, & the save operation took 20 minutes!
Sometimes Excel “features” unsupported in Calc seem to be better handled by Excel export than by Calc import. No harm in trying the alternate path. Either way, something may be lost.
One class of cases where the save to ods from Excel has a better track record in my book is when Excel “database ranges” with named “field references” are in use. Excel translates this to proper grid coordinates upon export, while Calc gives an error upon xlsx import. (It’s been a while since I last came across this, so things may of course have changed.)
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I would be inclined to open LibreOffice normally, without opening a file, click Tools > Options >LibreOffice > View and tick the box Force Skia software rendering and OK.
After that, see if opening the file is still OK. Then do a Save As [anothername].ods. After that is opening and saving the .ods file quicker?
Thanks again for the suggestion. However . .
14 seconds to load, but 8 minutes to save!
Can’t get any of the c.1,200 hyperlinks to work - is that maybe causing the problem?