Hello,
The default function of paste seems to have changed and I find this change to be for the worse. I have noted the following changes:
- Paste uses the formatting of the cell being pasted to, not the formatting of the cell being copied. There is no option to choose the copied cells formatting, which was previously possible. Before if you wanted to copy without formatting, you would use paste special.
- Attempting to use Paste Special brings up the Paste Special dialogue but it shows the Source as ‘Unknown Source’ and the only Selection is ‘Unformatted text’
- Pasting more than one cell brings up the Text Import dialogue. Again there is no option to copy formatting and frankly it seems unnecessary compared to the previous function of simply performing the paste.
[Update] I have also noted that this changes the characters to the text format (which is a terrible default setting imo) unless you select “Detect Special Characters”. Then it will copy with the characters in the correct format but the cells format is not copied and no formulas are copied. - Paste will not copy to a cell where there is already content. There is not even an option to copy over the existing content.
[Update] This I can not seem to replicate all the time but even if it does copy into a cell with content, the other issues still apply. - Merged cells get a special note because now you can not even copy an empty merged cell range. Now each cell range to be merged must be done individually or a macro recorded. This is very annoying if, for example, you wish to format a table within which two columns are merged throughout. Copying the merged cell range was previously a simply task, now it is onerous to the point of impracticality.
The default funtion of copy and paste has been consistent since I started using OpenOffice back at version 1. Why it has changed with the implementation of LibreOffice is beyond me. Pasting is a primary function of a spreadsheet and this change does not seem to improve functionality.
With that said, I suppose the question is simple: Why has the default function of copy and paste been altered and when will it be restored to the standard function?
If there is reason for this change and I am simply not up to scratch with how to now use copy paste, where is this documented? I have found no note of this change to the default behaviour anywhere in the help files or on this website.
[Update] As stated in my belated reply to the comment, these issues are noted within a spreadsheet without any external sources or destinations. I am also curious if these problems are being encountered by anyone else. I ask because these issues are making my use of Calc very difficult and previously simple tasks now take much longer. If no one else is having the same problems then I must conclude it is something to do with my system or install of the suite. In which case I have alternate steps I can take to try and resolve these issues.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can clear these issues up. I am certain I can not be the only user finding these changes problematic.
Sincerely,
Zorba.