XLS Cell Text With URL(s) Import Incorrectly

Tomb · Newbie Joined: 13 Feb 2004 Posts: 3

I have an number of Excel spreadsheets that contain one or more URLs in text cells. In excel they render as shown below

When I open this in OOo Calc, the hyperlink takes up the entire cell and no longer wraps as shown below

In Excel only a portion of the cell text constitutes the URL. In OOo Calc it takes over the entire cell. Is there any way to make it work in OOo Calc as it does in Excel?

FWIW, Excel will only print the 1st 1024 characters of text in a cell. OOo Calc prints all of them which makes it preferable to Excel for this application if I can solve this issue.

TIA for any help with this

keme · Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2007 1:27 pm Post subject:

Looks like a combination of two bugs, which should be entered in the issue tracker if they're not already there (I didn't check). As far as I can see ...
Bug 1: The Calc import filter for Excel files will apply hyperlinks in cell content to the entire cell
Bug 2: Calc will not break lines inside a hyperlink when wrapping text in cells. Clipping occurs at cell border.

You could try copying sheet content from Excel and pasting into Calc, then editing sheet names manually (careful editing needed if you have references across sheets/files). That may keep the hyperlink in place. Still, the linking text element will not wrap, so you may lose some content in print.

Wandering · OOo Enthusiast Joined: 18 Oct 2007 Posts: 190

There is lots I don't know about this, but this layout looks like a much better prospect for a Writer table than a spreadsheet.

Tomb · Newbie Joined: 13 Feb 2004 Posts: 3

[quote="Ray Clare"]There is lots I don't know about this, but this layout looks like a much better prospect for a Writer table than a spreadsheet.[/quote]

You might be right but we have to work with what has been delivered to us.

As I said in my initial post, Excel also fails because it will only print the first 1024 characters of a cell unless you're working with Office 2007. I was hoping to encourage our customers who use this tool to migrate to OOo to avoid the upgrade expense but I need to get this hyperlink problem solved first. I would also point out that there are actionable functions that an auditor working with this sheet uses that I did not display and Writer is not the best tool for that part of the process.

Many thanks for your comments.