Unable to move page breaks in Page Break Preview

[Alex_Rast]

This problem has actually been encountered once before on this forum - look for the thread "Page Break Preview - Unable to drag blue lines" from 21 April 2008 onwards. However, the poster in that thread was unable to supply debugging information and so it appears the matter was dropped. However, I've had the same problem. Here's the symptomology.

For any spreadsheet, you enable "View...Page Break Preview". Now, according to the manual (in Help):

"Since the automatic page break does not always take place in the optimal position, you can define the page distribution yourself.
1.Go to the sheet to be printed.
2.Choose View - Page Break Preview.
3.You will see the automatic distribution of the sheet across the print pages. The automatically created print ranges are indicated by dark blue lines, and the user-defined ones by light blue lines. The page breaks (line breaks and column breaks) are marked as black lines.
4.You can move the blue lines with the mouse. You will find further options in the Context menu, including adding an additional print range, removing the scaling and inserting additional manual line and column breaks."

However, I cannot move the blue lines with the mouse, or with any other pointing device, nor does the cursor change as it passes over the lines themselves. This behaviour is global across all spreadsheets, whether new, or created a long time ago, or imported from another spreadsheet program such as Excel. This has happened for multiple versions of OpenOffice. The current version I am working with is:

OpenOffice.org 3.0.1
OOO300m15 (Build:9379)

It is the Red Hat version running under Fedora Linux Release 10, Kernel Linux 2.6.27.29-170.2.79.fc10.i686

I've uploaded a sample file which nicely reproduces the problem on my machine (contains 6 pages, I've already set it to start in Page Break Preview) at
http://intranet.cs.man.ac.uk/apt/people/arast/
Despite the URL, this should be an open-access page. Tell me if you have any problems accessing the file from the link on that page.

I should emphasize, however, that the behaviour happens on all files, so it's not file-specific.

Thanks for any help you can provide.
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Alex Rast
The University of Manchester

[peterroots]

Hate to say this, but I can move the blue lines in your file!
Mouse over the blue line goes to a double headed horizontal arrow and I can click and drag - rather as you are assuming you should be able to do.
why?
Well, I am on a slightly more up to date version (3.2.0) running on Ubuntu 10.4 so perhaps a version problem? Or perhaps a Fedora vs Ubuntu variant problem? Or perhaps a broken install?
Two things may be worth trying - can you update your version in Fedora? If not you could try and download the redhat version direct from the OOo web site and see if that solves it.

I assume it is the same on Fedora, but on Ubuntu you can use the Ubuntu version and also install the OOo version alongside it and use either (for testing). you may get probs with your menu only having one or other so a little editing may be required to get both working unless you run one from the terminal (ok for a quick try out though)
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Kubuntu 11.10 LibreOffice3.4.4

[Alex_Rast]

Yes - I expected that my file would probably work in other peoples' systems. My suspicion, for what it's worth, is it's something related to my environment.

Here's the answer that I got from our sysadmin in re: OpenOffice versions:

"OpenOffice 3.2.1 is the latest version from two months ago that is still not stable enough even for the newest version of any operating system, while your operating system is from two years ago."

So I guess that upgrading isn't an option

I suspect though, that this isn't the problem: OO has already been upgraded at least once on this machine, with the same effect being manifested. I haven't found any listing of such a bug in OpenOffice, and I think we can expect that if it's not a known bug, it's not been fixed.

Has anyone else seen this problem who knows where it might come from?
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Alex Rast
The University of Manchester

[patrr]

Hi.
I ran into the same problem (OO 3.2.0 under Ubuntu 10.04) and noticed that I can't move the blue lines only if Format/Page/Sheet/Scaling mode is set to "Fit print range(s) to...".
However, if Scaling mode is set to "Reduce/enlarge printout" I can regularly move the blue lines as the manual says.
Hth

[Alex_Rast]

Sorry, I just checked this; mine is already set to "Reduce/Enlarge".

Still a mystery
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Alex Rast
The University of Manchester

[Alexisj]

*Problem:
Cannot move Page Break in Page Break Preview mode.
Can drag and move the blue lines defining the print range (boundary)
Cannot move drag the blue lines with-in the print-range boundary.
The cursor does turn into a up-down arrow and click-dragging appears to work but once mouse button released nothing happened, page break stayed in original position.

*Testing
Page Break can be moved if Format>Page>Sheet>Scaling Mode: set to Reduce & Enlarge Printout.
Page Break cannot be moved if "Fit print range to Width/Heigh" or "Fit print range on number of pages" is selected.

*Solution
Downgrade from 3.3.0 to 3.2.1m18 (Build 9502)
Now Page Break can be dragged in all modes and works as expected.