GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 346631
Sequence pasted as long number
Last modified: 2010-01-26 01:49:58 UTC
The sequence of numbers 17 724 19 241 18 009 21 438 22 606 23 892 25 080 25 754 21 240 22 511 21 872 16 610 is pasted into 1.7.x as 1.77241924118009E+059 but correctly pasted as a sequence under 1.6.3 (to parse later using Text to Numbers) However the parse function does not work correctly under 1.6.3 but works correctly under 1.7.0
I don't think there has been any changes for that between 1.6.3 and 1.7.x However, the way it works is a little tricky because we have to distinguish you wanting that string pasted into one cell and having it split. If you include the end-of-line, the get the text-to-columns stuff you want. If you do not, it is pasted as a string.
I think that if the Paste Special was active (see my bug report 346630) I could decide if I want it pasted as text. Gnumeric should assume (as it does correctly) that if I'm pasting a number it should be pasted as a number. However looking at the sequence I pasted it shouldn't be recognized as a single number (there are groups of 2 and 3 digits). If Gnumeric understands this then it should ask me if or how I want to parse it.
Whether or not to accept it as a number is a separate decision, but rejecting it as a number doesn't solve your problem as that would just cause it to be accepted as a string! (And, for the record, you can force that by prepending a single quote.) It has in the past proven quite useful to be very liberal in terms of what to accept as numbers, so I think we will keep that. I'll have a look at 346630 soon. If you were to include the final newline does Gnumeric bring up the text- to-columns interface for you?
"(And, for the record, you can force that by prepending a single quote.)" That's a good tip, but I would have to start editing a cell, type the single quote and then paste the string... That is a good workaround for a single line of values If I copy data from two consecutive lines with numbers it does bring up the T2C interface. But the problem is that since I'm copying specific data from a PDF I can't select a square area with just numbers...
reopening as requested information has been provided.
Excel and OpenOffice handle pasting a string like "17 724 19 241 18 009 21 438 22 606 23 892 25 080 25 754 21 240 22" just like we do. Excel has paste special enabled, but all choices give the same result as plain paste.
However, Excel 2003 lets you choose the text import wizard if you press the little clipboard icon beside the pasted cell.
We obviously don't want to change anything here. So either this is a WONTFIX or a duplicate of bug #346630. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 346630 ***
This is not a duplicate of 346630. It was a real bug. But it has been fixed. I'm using build 1.9.16 and all works as expected. The sequence is pasted as expected and the Text to Columns works correctly as well. You can close this as FIXED.