CentOS - Aug 2009 - Serious bug in OpenOffice.org Calc shipped with CentOS

Hi,

Until now I've been a happy user of CentOS. Everything just works(tm), 
and I don't care if application versions are slightly outdated.

Next week I have to give a series of classes for a company that recently 
made the switch to Linux. On schedule is a one-week course for Writer 
and Calc.

And right now I discover that one crucial function of Calc, "fill 
series", doesn't work. Let's say I type "lundi" (monday)
in one cell, so
I can pull Calc's handle to fill other cells with the days of the week. 
Doing the same with "janvier" (january) does so with the names of the 
month. Well, this function is broken in OO shipped with CentOS. And I 
don't have the slightest clue as to why. Tried the same on a more recent 
version of OO in Ubuntu, and it works like a charm.

Anyone has a solution to this? This seems like a major nuisance to me.

Cheers,

Niki

Am Donnerstag, den 06.08.2009, 10:21 +0200 schrieb Niki
Kovacs:
> Hi,
>
> Until now I've been a happy user of CentOS. Everything just works(tm),
> and I don't care if application versions are slightly outdated.
>
> Next week I have to give a series of classes for a company that recently
> made the switch to Linux. On schedule is a one-week course for Writer
> and Calc.
>
> And right now I discover that one crucial function of Calc, "fill
> series", doesn't work. Let's say I type "lundi"
(monday) in one cell, so
> I can pull Calc's handle to fill other cells with the days of the week.
> Doing the same with "janvier" (january) does so with the names of
the
> month. Well, this function is broken in OO shipped with CentOS. And I
> don't have the slightest clue as to why. Tried the same on a more
recent
> version of OO in Ubuntu, and it works like a charm.
>
> Anyone has a solution to this? This seems like a major nuisance to me.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
Just a random guess. Do you have right openoffice.org-langpack
installed?




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On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 10:21:56 +0200
Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Anyone has a solution to this? This seems like a major nuisance to me.
Have you tried OO version 3 from openoffice.org?

-- 
MELVILLE THEATRE ~ Melville Sask ~ http://www.melvilletheatre.com

Nicki
OO is one of the few packages I get directly from the sun/OO site. I  
install it in /opt and it works fine. You may want to remove the  
existing via yum first.

Rob Kampen
407-341-3815

On Aug 6, 2009, at 4:21 AM, Niki Kovacs <contact at kikinovak.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Until now I've been a happy user of CentOS. Everything just works(tm),
> and I don't care if application versions are slightly outdated.
>
> Next week I have to give a series of classes for a company that  
> recently
> made the switch to Linux. On schedule is a one-week course for Writer
> and Calc.
>
> And right now I discover that one crucial function of Calc, "fill
> series", doesn't work. Let's say I type "lundi"
(monday) in one
> cell, so
> I can pull Calc's handle to fill other cells with the days of the  
> week.
> Doing the same with "janvier" (january) does so with the names of
the
> month. Well, this function is broken in OO shipped with CentOS. And I
> don't have the slightest clue as to why. Tried the same on a more  
> recent
> version of OO in Ubuntu, and it works like a charm.
>
> Anyone has a solution to this? This seems like a major nuisance to me.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

Hi,

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 04:21, Niki Kovacs<contact at kikinovak.net>
wrote:
> And right now I discover that one crucial function of Calc, "fill
> series", doesn't work. Let's say I type "lundi"
(monday) in one cell, so
> I can pull Calc's handle to fill other cells with the days of the week.
> Doing the same with "janvier" (january) does so with the names of
the
> month.
Well, as a workaround, it works if you use real dates.

For example, if you fill in 2009-08-03 (Monday this week) in one of
the cells, it will recognize that as a date, then you pull the handle
to to fill other cells, it will open the Fill Series dialog, then you
choose Series type: Date and click OK. Then you can use Format ->
Cells, go to the Number tab and choose custom format "NNN" which will
give you the weekday in your current language.

For the month it's the same, start with 2009-01-01, in the Fill Series
dialog choose Series type: Date and Time unit: Month, click OK. Then
format it as "MMMM" and only the month name will be shown.

I think that's not as easy as you expected, but I believe it's an
acceptable workaround...

I just tested this on OpenOffice.org in CentOS 5, version
2.3.0-6.10.el5, and it works as I describe it.

Other than that, you can uninstall OpenOffice from CentOS and install
the one from www.openoffice.org. I run successfully OpenOffice.org
3.1.0 from the RPMs in www.openoffice.org in both CentOS 4 and 5 in
x86_64 architecture.

HTH,
Filipe

Niki Kovacs wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Until now I've been a happy user of CentOS. Everything just works(tm), 
> and I don't care if application versions are slightly outdated.
>
> Next week I have to give a series of classes for a company that recently 
> made the switch to Linux. On schedule is a one-week course for Writer 
> and Calc.
>
> And right now I discover that one crucial function of Calc, "fill 
> series", doesn't work. Let's say I type "lundi"
(monday) in one cell, so
> I can pull Calc's handle to fill other cells with the days of the week.
> Doing the same with "janvier" (january) does so with the names of
the
> month. Well, this function is broken in OO shipped with CentOS. And I 
> don't have the slightest clue as to why. Tried the same on a more
recent
> version of OO in Ubuntu, and it works like a charm.
>
> Anyone has a solution to this? This seems like a major nuisance to me.
>   
It's awkward and I'd hate to actually teach people to do it this way:
1. Select the column
2. Format > Cells >Numbers tab, category "User Defined".
3. In the "Format Code" space, type "NNN" . 
4. Click on the green check mark.  Click O.K. Your format is now a 
"Date" format.
5. At your worksheet, Highlight the cells in the "day" column. Clear
the
cells to blank.
6. Edit > Fill down, date, day
7. For grins, enter a start value of 5 and an increment of -2
8. You get a column that starts off "Thursday, Tuesday, Sunday, Friday, 
Wednesday..."

For some reason, the 0th day of the week is Saturday and there is no 0/7 
ambiguity as
with many other apps.

If you prefer "Fri" to "Friday" and "Wed" to
"Wednesday", etc, use "NN"
for the format code.
If, you've been drinking too much and want a "," following the
"Friday",
etc., use "NNNN"  :-)