GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 331190
Fails to open Excel file
Last modified: 2006-10-27 21:03:23 UTC
Please describe the problem: On the current US gasoline price spreadsheet from doe.gov: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/ftparea/wogirs/xls/pswrgvwnus.xls gnumeric chokes with the error message: "There is already a merged region that intersects File Information!A5:E5" Steps to reproduce: 1. d/l the file mentioned above 2. try to open it in gnumeric 1.6.2 3. Actual results: An empty workfile is displayed. Expected results: The data to be displayed. (Though the Excel file may be malformed, it is opened OK by OpenOffice.org.) Does this happen every time? Yes Other information:
I confirm this behaviour in CVS version.
Created attachment 59413 [details] Problem file -- just in case link goes bad
The MERGECELLS records: MERGECELLS A1:E1 MERGECELLS A5:B5 MERGECELLS A5:E5 MERGECELLS A7:E7 MERGECELLS A8:E8 MERGECELLS B2:B3 MERGECELLS C2:C3 MERGECELLS D2:D3 MERGECELLS E2:E3 MERGECELLS F2:F3 MERGECELLS G2:G3 MERGECELLS H2:H3 MERGECELLS I2:I3 MERGECELLS J2:J3 MERGECELLS K2:K3 MERGECELLS L2:L3 MERGECELLS M2:M3 The overlapping ones are A5:B5 and A5:E5.
The A5:B5 merge doesn't seem to mean anything in Excel. I unmerged A5:E5, and A5 and B5 became separate cells. When one merge is contained within another, we can jus ignore the smaller one.
The file has probably not been written by Excel. There is no metadata, "Workbook" is the only OLE stream, and the usual boilerplate at the start is missing. It goes: BOF_v8, WINDOW1, FONT_v0. Nevertheless, since Excel can read it, Gnumeric should. Excel 2003 says: "File error. Some number formats may have been lost", but opens it.
Excel 2003 accepts overlapping merges. If one MERGECELL has A5:E5 and another B4:B6, the result is A4:E6 merged.
Fixed in the development version. The fix will be available in the next major release. Thank you for your bug report.