Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 54325
WW8: not possible to ungroup objects from drawing canvas
Last modified: 2017-05-20 11:22:49 UTC
I have a simple document written with ms word 2003, with some drawing. In MSWord, when I make a drawing, the editor encapsulates all drawing elements (arrows, lines, boxes) in a single frame. If I open the document with OOo2.0beta2, I see the drawing and I can move it aroud, as a whole. But I am not able to move the individual items.
Created attachment 29372 [details] zipped ms word document, showing the problem
Tried OO 2.0 beta 3. Same behaviour: it is not possible to edit a drawing in a MS word document. The whole drawing appears as a group and it is not possible to ungroup it.
MRU->OD: the objects from MS's drawing canvas cannot be ungrouped in OO; means: the "ungroup" option will not be offered.
Wanted to reassign to OD.
Title of this issue has "drawing" mis-spelled; hence hard to search for. Could be "not possible to ungroup or edit .doc drawing within a canvas" A Word document I want to edit with Open Office contains many inline figures. As the original submission indicates, I cannot import the .doc file and then edit the drawings with Open Ofice 2.0.3 Since this sort of document is the bread-and-butter of technical docs, I cannot tell my coworkers to change. Enclosed please find a new .doc file (created with Microsoft Office Word 2003 (11.8026.6568) SP2 containing a figure which can be edited inline with Word but which cannot be edited by any way I know with Open Office 2.0.3
Created attachment 38248 [details] Trivial word .doc file containing drawing which OO can't modify
Major breakthrough in understanding. IF the imported drawing is set as "Anchor: As Character" you cannot do "Group: Edit Group", and cannot edit the internal content of the drawing. If you change things to "Anchor: To Page", "Anchor: To Paragraph", or "Anchor: To Character" you CAN do "Group: Edit Group" and then edit the drawing. It lets you select things like lines. After editing you should set things back to "Anchor: As Character", which works best. (After changing the Anchor, you cannot really edit the drawing, because the following paragraph is sitting on top of it so everything is mixed up. But at least it lets you select things in the drawing and mess with them. This is not a work-around, as editing is not practical for this and many other reasons.) What I think would work best is if Open Office did an "Insert: Object: OLE Object: Openoffice.org 2.0 Drawing" and inserted the imported Word figure in that object in an ungrouped form. But that might be major work. It might (I hope) be less work to let users edit the group even when the Anchor is set to "As Character". This would allow minor adjustments. Regards
My "OLE" idea doesn't seem to be a good one. After experimenting, I believe that Microsoft Office needs to have OpenOffice installed in order to let you edit embedded drawings which originated in OO. At this time I don't know any way to enter drawings inline (within a text document) which can both be easily edited and which can be translated to and from .doc files, allowing updates by people using either tool. For technical documentation, this is a significant obstacle to the use of OO. I will ask around in case someone else knows a technique which works. Hopefully this will turn out to be ignorance on my part. My present scheme of starting a document in word, then importing into OO doesn't seem to work.
It is not a problem of import from .doc. Generate a group in Draw, copy it to clipboard and paste it to Writer as "Drawing format". If you anchor it to character, no group options offered. For all other anchor ways you can ungoup it or enter the group.
Please excuse me, it should read: If you anchor it _as_ character, no group options offered.
Pls see my comments 'Tue Nov 13 19:30:01' in Issue 83498!
*** Issue 113921 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Reset assigne to the default "issues@openoffice.apache.org".