Help! Inserted shows 100 times

[benlev@aol.com]

This is an ongoing problem with Open Office. I inserted a document as a picture and marked it as a Figure. When I generate the Table of Figures is shows that I have 129 figures all with the same name. When I go to the location where the figure is inserted and delete the figure, I see Figure #2 under it. I delete that and Figure #3 is under that. It is like the figure is pasted there 129 times and each figure is numbered as it's own figure.

This has happened several times in the past and I posted about it with no solution. I can simply delete 128 figures one at a time to fix this but this has to be resolved. This causes a lot of crashing?

Can someone help. Willing to hire if it can be done immediately. The file is too big to attach. Likely because of the extra figures. I can send via email. BenLev@aol.com

I am ready to give up on OO

[RoryOF]

I have just made a test file with text, illustrations, and a table of illustrations, which I saved in .odt and .doc formats; only one instance of each illustration on reopening either file.

In your previous report of such a problem, John_Ha noted that you had /Edit /Changes /Record turned on and postulated that this might have caused the problem.

Try the two attached files - they both work correctly for me.

[benlev@aol.com]

Guys, I'm desperate for help here. This OO problem is a disaster AGAIN. I have a document that is finished but I cannot use. It crashes as I open. Can someone help??? US +1 919-420-0924. Email - BenLev@AOL.com

Thank you

[RoryOF]

John_Ha and I are analysing your document. My immediate suggestion is that you turn off /Edit /Changes /Record and accept what it has recorded. I remark that _you_ have written the document, therefore _you_ should know what you have written, so there ought not be need for tracking changes, which is most often used for such tracking on collaborative documents.

[keme]

Not having access to the file in question, I try a shot in the dark:
Could it be that the source of your "document as a picture" is at fault? You may have selected a source which consists of multiple overlaid images.

How did you insert the picture?

• Insert - Object (inserted an actual document object, which behaves somewhat like a picture until you double click to open it)?
• Insert - Image - From file?
• Copy from other application (which one?) and pasted into your document?
• Some other procedure?

If Writer needs to assess text wrap around 100+ overlaid objects simultaneously, I can understand that it hangs or crashes.
That is one of the many possible situations which developers will most likely not consider as a potential issue, and which is not obvious to test for before releasing a new version.

[John_Ha]

Ben sent me the files and I responded by email. Also see a very similar? identical? problem in Ben's previous thread Re: [Solved] Paste one figure shows 1000 times

A thought. The files make extensive use of User defined fields. I have no experience of using them and do not know whether they might be a contributory factor.

Ben

The files are badly damaged and, as you will have seen, I asked Rory to help me as I could not seem to do anything with them, not least because they hanged for ages on my PC.

Please see the attached files where I have extracted all the user text from the files.

Without knowing the full history of the files it is difficult to diagnose what has happened. However, I can make some recommendations.

1. The files have been heavily edited - hundreds of times. Heavily edited files seem to get "tangled" and become unresponsive.

2. You have Edit > Record Changes ..., switched to ON and a whole bunch of changes ready to be accepted. If you are inadvertently leaving Record changes set to ON that is a recipe for disaster as you store every keystroke ever typed in the file!

3. I strongly suspect that you have sent the file to someone who has used MS Word to record changes. We have seen examples where recording changes with both Writer and MS Word causes corruption very similar to what I see in your file. We are not entirely sure whether AOO or Word does the corruption. Note the repeats of Frame 6 and Frame 61 below - there are hundreds in the file and hundreds of similar repeats of graphics items.

Edit: It is strongly suspected that these errors occur when MS Word? AOO? is used to add a comment to a range of text, perhaps while Record changes is set to ON. Do not use this feature.

Code: Select all

<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame6" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" draw:z-index="0">
	<draw:text-box fo:min-height="0.9654in">
		<text:p text:style-name="Figure">
			<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr2" draw:name="graphics1" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" svg:height="0.9654in" style:rel-height="scale" draw:z-index="0">
				<draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/1000020100000609000000DF61C6D969.png" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
			</draw:frame>Figure <text:sequence text:ref-name="refFigure588" text:name="Figure" text:formula="ooow:Figure+1" style:num-format="1">26</text:sequence>: First Data Activity - Garcia Phone</text:p>
	</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>
<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame61" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" draw:z-index="0">
	<draw:text-box fo:min-height="0.9654in">
		<text:p text:style-name="Figure">
			<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr2" draw:name="graphics11" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" svg:height="0.9654in" style:rel-height="scale" draw:z-index="0">
				<draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/1000020100000609000000DF61C6D969.png" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
			</draw:frame>Figure <text:sequence text:ref-name="refFigure589" text:name="Figure" text:formula="ooow:Figure+1" style:num-format="1">25</text:sequence>: First Data Activity - Garcia Phone</text:p>
	</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>
<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame6" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" draw:z-index="0">
	<draw:text-box fo:min-height="0.9654in">
		<text:p text:style-name="Figure">
			<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr2" draw:name="graphics1" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" svg:height="0.9654in" style:rel-height="scale" draw:z-index="0">
				<draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/1000020100000609000000DF61C6D969.png" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
			</draw:frame>Figure <text:sequence text:ref-name="refFigure590" text:name="Figure" text:formula="ooow:Figure+1" style:num-format="1">24</text:sequence>: First Data Activity - Garcia Phone</text:p>
	</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>
<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr1" draw:name="Frame61" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" draw:z-index="0">
	<draw:text-box fo:min-height="0.9654in">
		<text:p text:style-name="Figure">
			<draw:frame draw:style-name="fr2" draw:name="graphics11" text:anchor-type="paragraph" svg:width="6.6929in" svg:height="0.9654in" style:rel-height="scale" draw:z-index="0">
				<draw:image xlink:href="Pictures/1000020100000609000000DF61C6D969.png" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
			</draw:frame>Figure <text:sequence text:ref-name="refFigure591" text:name="Figure" text:formula="ooow:Figure+1" style:num-format="1">23</text:sequence>: First Data Activity - Garcia Phone</text:p>
	</draw:text-box>
</draw:frame>

There is also a pattern of corruption where ascending numbers go wrong, something like 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 110, 111 etc. Where I would expect 19 > 20, 19 has gone to 1-10, then 1-11 etc. It is as though the first digit is fixed and the second is counting.

4. AOO is effectively dead - you may find you have fewer problems if you use LibreOffice.

5. I guess you re-use the file and edit it to put in different data. If so, you should save the original file as a TEMPLATE .oTt file. You now save the variants as .odt files.

Using .odt files.

I create a new file, type Fred in it and save it as a.odt. I edit it and change Fred to Tom and save it as a .odt. I edit and change Tom to Harry and save it as a .of file. The file has now been edited three times and carries a lot of baggage from those three edits especially when 3 becomes 500!

Using a template.

I create a new file, type Fred in it and save it as Original.oTt. I edit it and change Fred to Tom and try to save it but because it is a Template .oTt file, Writer asks me to give it a new name so I save it as a text file V1.odt. When I want a new file, I go back to Original.oTt and edit it and change Fred to Harry and save it as V2.odt. Note how Original.odt is never changed and does not carry baggage from multiple edits. If I want to edit Original.oTt I must explicitly select saving it as a .oTt file when I save it.

Recommendation

1. Abandon all instances of these files and create a clean, new, empty file from scratch.

2. Save that new, empty file as a TEMPLATE (.ott) and not as a DOCUMENT (.odt) file. eg call it Original.oTt.

3. Open Original.ott and edit it and add new data. Now save the edited file as Document 1.odt. Note that this makes no changes to Original.ott which will be as it was when you first saved it in Step 2.

4. Keep a backup copy of anything you send to someone else.

5. Tell all editors not to attach a comment to a range of characters - only attach a comment to a point in a line.

6. Install the Timestamp Backup extension which is designed for LO but (2018) works with AOO. When you use it, every time you save your file, you save it as normal but, in addition, you save a time stamped version of it in a separate backup folder. You need to delete older versions in the backup folder yourself.

If you send me Original.oTt I will check it is OK and carries no baggage.[/i]

[John_Ha]

Further thoughts.

1. The file contains many sections. Are these necessary? If not get rid of them.

2. The problem is definitely associated with the graphics. When I cut everything after the last graphic and pasted it into a new file the new file worked without problems but the old file was the same.

3. As Ben says, deleting one graphic just brings up a new graphic which you delete which brings up a new graphic ...

4. There are just 5 or 6 images in \Pictures in the unzipped .odt file, not hundreds. The 5 or 6 are referenced hundreds of times.

5. File > Properties > General ..., shows how often the file has been edited - 569 times over 123 hours.

6. Until the problem is resolved I would be tempted to split the document into multiple smaller files - one for the main report, one for each appendix, etc, so that only one file got corrupted. Pull the files together at the last minute. Or use a Master Document to pull them together and export to a .odt file is a single big file is required. See the Writer Guide.

[John_Ha]

And more thoughts. I don't use or even have MS Word so I asked someone with Word to see how the file behaves when opened with Word. They reported as follows:

The documents are manageable in MS Word and it looks like they rely heavily on word-specific layout elements.

One example which I have examined to some extent is two-column layout with column breaks and section breaks. Writer seems to choke on those section breaks.

There may be elements of greater importance to the issue, which I haven't checked for yet.

My impression is that this is? started as? a Word document (a .doc file or probably a .docx file), and that Word does the same to the .odt file that it does to their own OOXML: Introduce and use undocumented "features" unless the user specifically instructs Word to stick to the "strict OOXML" standard.

I am just guessing.

My two bits: Advise the poster to stick to MS Word.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for a discussion of compatibility issues with the "ever changing MS non-standard pseudo standards". Be sure to read sections 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.

[RoryOF]

I forwarded to the OP copies of the files with the changes accepted; these opened quickly on my computers, but the OP reported that modifying the Table of illustrations on one of these gave him 100 insertions of the new illustration. I did not have time to check that this morning, but will later, if I have the energy.