Table cutting off instead of splitting across pages

[LuisQuartz]

Hi. So I’m making a document that includes lots of tables, and one of the tables is behaving weirdly. I’m pretty sure it’s a bug, but if anyone knows of some obscure setting that may be causing this, please let me know.

I have set most tables to be able to split across pages. However, this one table only properly splits across pages sometimes, and other times it simply gets cut off instead of splitting, leaving part of the table invisible.

When you select the table, you can see how much of it gets cut because the highlighting appears outside the bounds of the page where the cut off rows would be.

The weirdest part is, if I mess around with it until it splits properly, save, and then reopen the file, it will be cut off again.

Setting the tables to not split across pages of course solves this, but there are some tables that I really want to be able to split to prevent large spaces being left unused.

Fortunately these other tables don’t seem to glitch like the first one I mentioned, but I’m still worried they could get cut off at some point without me noticing and result in a loss of data once it is exported to PDF (when exported, there seems to be no trace of the cut rows at all).

I’m attaching the ODF so you can get a look at it too:
Weird Table.odt (38.7 KB)

One last thing to mention is that I recently updated the program’s version (hadn’t updated for a while, and two major versions had come out since). I’m currently on version

So yeah, does anyone know what’s going on with the table and how to fix it? I had pictures showing what exactly is happening, but can only add one attachment.

[anon87010807]

Thanks for posting the actual document as well as posting a screenshot. Many people don’t upload the real document.
The table looks fine in LO 7.5.1.2 on Ubuntu Linux, there’s no page overflow. But when I paste some text into the None cell in the Misc part of the table, it wraps to the next page, and when I then undo that, the Misc part doesn’t move back to page 1. There’s something odd there. It might be a conversion problem (wild guess). Did you get this from an MS Word document or was it ever saved as docx?

[LuisQuartz]

Hi, thank you for the quick answer. That table does some weird things, like splitting partially. Here’s one of the screenshots I couldn’t attach earlier:

The document was always odf, but I did update LO version between creating it and noticing the problem.
I tried making a new document on the latest version, setting the margins and columns with the same value, and then pasting the tables and text into it from the old document. The table continued behaving like that.

Do you think remaking everything from scratch would fix it? I mean like recreating everything on the newest version without copy-pasting anything, manually re-adding each style setting.

[Grantler]

See attached “repaired” version.
I copied the damned table into another (new) document, then deleted the original table entirely. After that I set in a new table and copied the left column (of the original table) back to the renewed table.
On my machine it worked okay.
Cheers
.
WeirdTable_RepairedMiscData.odt (40.4 KB)
.

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@LuisQuartz

Do you think remaking everything from scratch would fix it?

Try my method and hope, that the weird table only was a singularity…

[ajlittoz]

Can’t reproduce here: LO 7.4.6.2, Fedora Linux 37, KDE Plasma desktop. But I noticed sometimes in the past “glitches” in page break handling when in multi-column context (your Pokédex page style is 2-column).

Not related to your present question: avoid direct formatting as it will play nasty tricks on your back sooner or later and will prevent you from “comfortably” tuning your layout and formatting. Character styles are your friends to “diverge” from appearance dictated by paragraph style.

@LuisQuartz

The document was always odf

I wouldn’t bet on this. I found a Character_20_style in applied character styles. Such a name betrays either a pollution by M$ Word or a provious formatting problem.

@LuisQuartz

then pasting the tables and text into it

Paste as unformatted text to avoid importing formatting hazards with data.

[LuisQuartz]

@Grantler

Try my method and hope, that the weird table only was a singularity…

It works as long as the rows are allowed to split. But if that option is turned off, the problem returns after simply adding and then removing a line break above the table.
WeirdTable_RepairedMiscData.odt (37.8 KB)

@ajlittoz

I wouldn’t bet on this. I found a Character_20_style in applied character styles. Such a name betrays either a pollution by M$ Word or a provious formatting problem.

Could this happen by copying and pasting from Notepad or other programs on Windows (such as a ROM hacking tool) into LO? Because I’ve almost certainly done that. And of course I’ve pasted sprites from GIMP.

I’m certain I haven’t even used Word on my computer though. I’ll be sure to only paste into LO as unformatted text from now on too.

Guess I’ll try remaking it from scratch while making sure not to paste anything in from outside the new document.

@ajlittoz

Not related to your present question: avoid direct formatting as it will play nasty tricks on your back sooner or later and will prevent you from “comfortably” tuning your layout and formatting. Character styles are your friends to “diverge” from appearance dictated by paragraph style.

I’ve been using page, paragraph and character styles, but not table styles because they sometimes alter tables in ways I didn’t intend, and for some reason don’t seem to save correctly on a table like this one:

Could not using table styles be causing the problem with the cut-off table?

[Grantler]

Page style influences display of weird table.
.
I am not sure if your file is damaged or we have found a bug.
When altering the Automatic Width and Spacing of the columns the table is displayed. After saving and reopening the file you have to do the same procedure (once or twice…). See attached screenshot.
.

[ajlittoz]

@LuisQuartz

but not table styles

“Table styles” as they are erroneously called aren’t styles like the others. Instead they are a set of macros which are triggered on various events. The macros will reapply their formatting over and over as direct formatting and will therefore hide what you configured in paragraph and character styles. If the so-called styles are satisfactory as is for you, OK. But if you need custom formatting in your cells, don’t use table styles at all. The feature is not well defined (at least for my taste) and will enforce at any cost its own formatting instead of expected author’s one.

@LuisQuartz

I’ve been using […] styles,

Perhaps but the style inspector shows a high use of direct formatting nearly everywhere. And the applied Character styles are limited to faulty Character_20_Style which I didn’t track but I’m sure you didn’t request it (it was applied as a result of some previous mistake).

@LuisQuartz

Could not using table styles be causing the problem with the cut-off table?

As far as I can tell, no. IMHO I’d rather question some spurious interaction between page break and table insertion in multi-column page though I can’t reproduce under 7.4.6.2 (reminder: you didn’t mention your LO version) as I met a probably similar behaviour with frames in multi-column context (see tdf#154128).

[LuisQuartz]

@Grantler

See attached “repaired” version.
I copied the damned table into another (new) document, then deleted the original table entirely. After that I set in a new table and copied the left column (of the original table) back to the renewed table.
On my machine it worked okay.
Cheers
.
WeirdTable_RepairedMiscData.odt (40.4 KB)

An update on this: your solution fixes the problem completely, even if the Split Rows option is turned off, as long as borders are activated.

I tried redownloading your solution and doing literally nothing other than turn borders on, and the problem goes away no matter how many line breaks I add and/or remove. It doesn’t come back after saving and reopening the file either.

Trying the same on the original weird table document causes the table to partially split when the borders are activated, and be back to being almost completely cut off after saving and reloading.

So this tells me it must be something about that specific table.

@ajlittoz

the style inspector shows a high use of direct formatting nearly everywhere.

@Grantler

Page style influences display of weird table.

@ajlittoz

But if you need custom formatting in your cells, don’t use table styles at all.

Taking this into account, I’ve decided to remake the document, making sure to only format text through styles and paste without without format, and avoiding table styles. I experimented a lot with how I wanted the document to look, which included adding, editing, and eventually removing table styles, so yeah. Something probably got glitchy with all the changes I kept making.

@ajlittoz

you didn’t mention your LO version

Oh, sorry. I meant to add a screenshot but could only add one at the time, so I left just the one showing the table being cut off and forgot to paste it instead.

Now I figure it’s probably because of something that happened while deciding on how to style the tables, but here’s the version details anyway in case it’s useful:

Version: 7.5.2.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 53bb9681a964705cf672590721dbc85eb4d0c3a2
CPU threads: 8; OS: Windows 10.0 Build 19044; UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: en-US (en_US); UI: es-ES
Calc: CL threaded