Incomplete "Paste Special" dialog box

[neildorf]

I am having an issue getting a cell formula to be copied as a formula. Instead, when I copy / paste I get the value of the origin cell.

Example, where below the first column is A and the second is B: The cell in the first column 3rd row (A3) has a formula of +A1+A2, which correctly displays the result as 300. If I attempt to click on A3 and then copy / paste to B3, the result I get is the numerical value of 300, instead of the expected result of the formula +B1+B2, yielding the result of 1200.

I have tried also right-clicking to use "Paste Special" to override the paste criteria. Instead of a full dialog box with all the Paste Special options, I only get a s\mall dialog box with a choice to paste as RTF or as unformatted text--that's all.
A B
100 400
200 800
300

This looks like a fairly serious bug, unless there is an obsure setting in options or preferences to fix this.

anyone else see this happening.

BTW I tried drag-n-drop and that is a hot mess, changing the cursor to "object mode".

Help please.

[martin-k]

You receive the full Paste Special dialog box when the copy/paste happens inside PlanMaker.

When you paste from an outside application, you receive a simplified Paste Special dialog box because outside apps don't know formulas etc.

1. Please verify that you are staying inside PlanMaker for the copy/paste. If you make a detour to another program to paste there and copy again, then formulas cannot be preserved.

2. If you can rule out 1. above, then check if a clipboard manager is messing with your clipboard data. Some application accepts the clipboard data in the moment it is copied and modifies it.

[neildorf]

Martin,

I think that you are on to something with your 2nd idea. I am doing the copy from within PlanMaker, not external. However, in the abbreviated Paste Special dialog box, the word "External" appears underneath "source" for some reason.

I have SoftMaker Office installed on two of my systems. This problem shows up on my Crostini (linux container on ChromeOS) install. It is the only issue I have found so far with either TextMaker or PlanMaker. Except for this one issue, everything seems to work fine. I even got printing working once I installed my printer driver under Linux. And I can "pin" the "T" and "P" icons to my ChromeOS app shelf making the launching seamless alongside other Chrome apps.

But I went to my other computer, which natively runs Linux Mint 21.1 "Vera". I tried to replicate the copy/paste issue on TM and could not. I get the full "Paste Special" dialog box. So, I am thinking, to your 2nd point, that maybe the native ChromeOS function to allow copy / paste from Linux apps to Chrome apps might be what is interfering. If this is what is happening, then I suspect that this is not the right forum to pursue a solution.

I store my PM docs as .xlsx, so my workaround would have to be to build new worksheets in Google Sheets, then download and save as .xlsx, then I could access them for text and numerical updates in PM.

I wish there could be an "override switch" that could be enabled or disabled in PM settings that could be set by the user to ignore external clipboards. Maybe in a future maintenance release?

Thanks

Neil

[neildorf]

I just read about a ChromeOS function called "Clipboard HIstory" By pressing the "Search" and "V" keys, a window pops up in ChromeOS with thumbnails of all recent items copied to clipboard.

Sure enough, the operations that I did from within PM to copy a cell or cell range showed up in the clipboard history.
I don't have the disk space in my Crostini container to run LibreOffice, but I suspect that if I did, I would run into the same exact issue with Calc.

So now the cause is confirmed. Funny thing is, I can copy/paste from within TextMaker all I want and because there are not formulas, it's not an apparent issue for TM. Foirmatting and font styles come across just fine.

[neildorf]

OK, now it gets interesting. I went back into PM to try something else.

Instead of using the mouse to right-click copy and then right-click paste, I used the Cut and Copy buttons on the toobar under Home. Low and behold, this time the formulas were copied. Furthermore, when I tried Paste Special this time, the full Paste Special dialog box opened up!

So somehow, merely using the toolbar appears to have pre-empted the ChromeOS universal clipboard. Not only that, but just for kicks I went back and tried the mouse right-click functions to see if I could replicate the clipboard problem. I could not this time; actually the mouse right-click copy and paste functions worked correctly.

I don't know why this is happening, but If I can reliably replicate this every time I open a PM spreadsheet, I can live with this as a workaround.

I wonder if upon opening a sheet, it would be possible to have a simple autoexecuted macro that does a copy and paste (of nothing)?

hmmm

[neildorf]

The above workaround no longer works, so I am back to square one.

[neildorf]

A case of RTFM. At present, it appears as though the only workaround to be able to replicate a cell with a formula and have the forumula relative to the new cell location is to use drag and drop, as described on page 74 of the PlanMaker 2021 manual. However, I found that, if selecting not just one cell, but a range of cells, then holding down the CTRL button while clicking the small black square (in the lower right position of the cell) while dragging to the new cell location works the best. I found circumstances where replicating a range within a column, If you don't hold down the CTRL button, then the cells with just values will increment by one in the new column.

Maybe in a future maintenance release the CTRL-C and CTRL-V function keys could be remapped by the user in PlanMaker options, so that the operation would not be interfered with by an external clipboard (such as in ChromeOS). Is this a feature in the 2023 Beta?

[SuperTech]

Chrome OS is actually not a supported Linux distribution, and this problem is seems more related to operating system only.

[neildorf]

Gentlemen:I just upgraded from Office 2021 to Office 2024 and hoped that the PM cell replication issue brought to your attention last year had fixed itself. It did not, but after further investigation I have concluded that, contrary to what was previously determined, this problem is not purely a ChromeOS issue. How did I determine that?

There is an open source linux standalone spreadsheet application that has been around for many years, called Gnumeric. I went ahead and installed this on my Linux (Crostini) container alongside SM Office 2024. (sudo apt-get install gnumeric)

Low and behold, Copy and Paste functionality in Gnumeric, running in a Linux container under ChromeOS, does behave exactly as it should, just as it (or PM) would under a pure Linux installation such as Linux Mint. Formulas replicate as formulas, not text. ChromeOS clipboard buffer doesn't get in the way as it does for PlanMaker, where only text is recognized in the copy buffer.

So there is something very unique about the PlanMaker implementation that I am convinced could be corrected with a little investigation.

Could you please at least look into this as a courtesy?

I chose SM Office in part because of cross compatibility with Linux and Windows, without needing to purchase different licenses for different products. If you were to include the Android platform along with Windows, Linux, (and Mac which I don't use), then I would use one of my 5 license keys for Android version under ChromeOS. But for whatever reason it is treated as a separate product, so I would like to try again to seek a resolution to this issue.

If anyone else is frustrated with this snag, there are now two workarounds.
1) as mentioned before, click the mouse on the square at the lower right of the cell (or range of cells) in question and drag to another range
2) Install gnumeric and build the foundation of your spreadsheet in gnumeric, with all cells replicated as you desire, then save as .xls, then open up and continue your work in PM.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for the additional information.

As you mentioned earlier that on your Linux everything is working fine and the problem is in ChromeOS only. So, maybe ChromeOS handling Gnumeric and PlanMaker differently.

As ChromeOS is technically out of scope for us, I am sorry to inform you that we can't do much here.