GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 121722
pasting doesn't adjust column width or height when appropriate
Last modified: 2018-04-24 13:36:51 UTC
When you are pasting a full sheet, full column or full row into a new sheet, empty column, or empty row, the column widths and or row heights are not adjusted as appropriate. That is, they should ideally be identical to the source of the paste.
What do you mean with `empty column'? Is a column without content but with formats empty?
regarding whether or not this is an enancement, I assumed that the pasting should have handled this formatting bug. But then again, I didn't write the code, so I'm not totally sure about it. Regarding emptyness, as far as the feature goes, it shouldn't matter if the column was formatted, contained content, or was devoid of both. Pasting a full column or row or sheet should (ideally) make the new copy of the full column or row or sheet exactly identical. It now does this, escept for column width or row heights.
I guess you see pasting a complete column as different as pasting a large number of cells. We are currently pasting all the cells in that column (or row or sheet), so the formatting preserved is the format of all of those cells. THe column width is a property of the column. I am not sure we really want to see different behaviour based on whetehr we are pasting 65535 cells or 65536 cells of the same column. In the former cas e we are not justified to change the column width.
*** Bug 684198 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Feature still appears to be missing. In LibreOffice Calc, OpenOffice Calc and Excel, option to include "Column widths" is in "Paste Special" dialog. Best approximation in Gnumeric is to copy and paste selection, then choose "Auto Fit Width" and/or "Auto Fit Height." One drawback to this solution is that columns that start too narrow have to be adjusted repeatedly as longer entries are added. The ability to copy column widths (and row heights) allows a set of columns (and rows) to be set up once, then copied across spreadsheet as needed. A more versatile capability would be stylesheets - allowing formatting to be changed throughout a spreadsheet or several spreadsheets at once. Gnumeric 1.12.32
*** Bug 777918 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I think we have all the pieces to do this. The internal clipboard actually collects the information and it gets shipped inter-process via xml. Specifically, it would make sense to copy column width when the selection covers the full columns and copy row height when selection the full rows. Both for whole sheet. Paste-special would need an option to do either. Yes, it's mildly inconsistent between 65535 rows and a full column, but it's more a difference between selecting a full column (by clicking on the column header) and selecting a large range which may or may not be the full column. And we don't track that difference and probably never will. In any case, paste-special is there for when the default isn't desired.
A little more work than expected, but done. This problem has been fixed in our software repository. The fix will go into the next software release. Once that release is available, you may want to check for a software upgrade provided by your Linux distribution.