Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 61075
Fields from Endnote skipped during Word import in OOo 2
Last modified: 2013-08-07 14:42:49 UTC
Look at the attached files. In the MS Word document (from Word XP, Danish edition) I added a few references in the footnotes using EndNotes insert reference feature. This adds fields to the footnote. After the reference I add ", page 2" etc. This fields were imported by Writer 1.1.x as pure text (better than nothing), but in Writer 2.0.x the fields are just skipped, leaving my ", page 2" alone in the note. I have attached some evidence :)
Created attachment 33504 [details] Original Word XP document
Created attachment 33505 [details] Imported into Writer 1.1.5 (It works)
Created attachment 33506 [details] Imported into Writer 2.0.1 (Doesnt work)
Created attachment 33507 [details] PNG image showing file imported in Writer 1.1.5
Created attachment 33508 [details] PNG image showing file imported in Writer 2.0.1
It is a kind of User-defined field. This cannot be imported as is, but we can import it as user field with correct content and name.
*** Issue 61437 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Just to add my support for this bug, it would be great if OO could just import/save these fields as they are, so that it is possible to collaborate on manuscripts that use Endnote through OO writer.
assigning to hbrinkm
I have encountered the same problem and this is really awkward as many scientists use EndNote to manage their references and include them in their manuscripts. As long as I cannot see these fields I cannot use OO to work on these documents. I have used OO for quite a while now but this problem forces me to go 100% back to Word. I would appreciate very much if anything could be done about this problem. Thanks a lot in advance PS If needed I have example files. I won't attach them for now as there are already files attached.
By the way, I think this is a problem that must have been caused by changes in one of the recent versions. I cannot check or prove this, but I have just checked some older manuscripts from autumn 2005 and January/February 2006 and these documents also contain EndNote fields and I have no recollection about having had any problems with this. So either this is a problem in the newer OO versions or EndNote has changed their field format and this caused the problem. If somebody wants to check this, I could produce example files from these older manuscripts Cheers Oliver
It worked in OOo 1.1.5 so we are talking about a regression in 2.0.x
I'll just agree with some of the previous respondents. OO _must_ not damage EndNote fields (they don't necessarily have to be editable inside OO, but it can't destroy them, as it does now). I use MS Word and EndNote at work, and I can't change that. I was using OO to work on the same docs at home. I don't want to, but it looks like I'm going to have to buy Word to use at home when I need to work on docs from here.
I am really surprised this old issue has not been fixed yet. I think OOo is losing plenty of users in academia because of this. As long as you cannot use it to open manuscripts sent by other collegues, OOo seems useless (even just for printing such a document, all references are missing...). Even if the fields are lost, an import of the text of the fields as was done in version 1.1.5 of OOo would be more than appreciated. Thanks in advance.
It would be very nice if OOo could do this, for any kind of Word field. Even if it just ignored the code or represented it as the actual characters used, that would be fine with me.
This is an extremely important issue in the academic sphere. It prevents most acadenics and researchers from using OO and in turn from using open source systems like Linux.
Unfortunately this still isn't fixed in version 2.2
I agree with "dfd", in a mixed academic environment, documents with EndNote cannot be read by those team members using OpenOffice. Please implement this feature, so that scientists can be convinced to convert to open-source software!
I'm quite amazed that this bug, a regression as it worked in older versions, has been known for one-and-a-half years and has not received any attention of the programmers. I'm not complaining about it not being fixed, this is a problem of priorities, but there also has not been any discussion on this being an issue to repair (has worked before), how to perhaps fix this, etc. and this is not only a problem with EndNote, also Bibus fields seem to disappear (when created under OO, exported to Word, reimported). So I guess this might be a problem with all Reference software using fields. Thus this is not only concerning a few EndNote users, but anybody who wants to write a text that includes literature references.
I would like to add that this bug also affects BIBUS, one of the very few bibliographic programmes that work properly with OpenOffice. The programmer has made a big effort so that his program will work with both , Word and OpenOffice. And now the use of this very usefull and free program is severely handicapped by this bug in OpenOffice. I have a number of students using Bibus for their bibliographies, and using Word (on institute computers) and OpenOfice (on personal computers) and basically related to this bug, they cannot import the word files with bibliographic fields into OO. I'm trying to use mainly OpenOffice and promote it within the scientific community, but not being able to see neither EndNote nor Bibus field is a severe handicap. Even I, a longterm user and defender of OpenOffice in a still rather MSWord.using environment will have to switch back to Word now. There is nothing I can do, I'll have to abandon OpenOffice because I cannot see the bibliographic fields. What bothers me especially with this bug is that a programmer of a very usefull free programm, hasmade the effort to make it work with OpenOffice, and OpenOffice leaves a bug, that is a regression (as this has worked before) seemingly without comment and concern. When programmers of free programmes do not stick together, where do we go ? Oliver
I would like to add my support for this bug/issue to be resolved. Our research programme is now busy compiling a database of relevant articles and research in EndNote. No doubt once the Bibliographic Manager is integrated into OOo, a few of us will probably want to import our records into OOo. I cannot understand why such a critical issue has not been resolved, given the amount of people (including potential users of OOo) it affects, and the time it has been on the system, as well as the number of votes it has. An appeal to the developers: please make this a priority and get it sorted out. Otherwise we might as well go back to using OOo 1.1.5. Thank you
I reported this bug in 2006 and I say: Don't bother waiting. My experience tells me that OOo will initially save you some money, and then waste your time for years. You will loose hours on trying to get it working, loose years waiting for bugfixes or new features we had in Word since 1995. I gave up. I am now happily working with MS Word and Endnote. WORKING! If time is money (and/or knowledge), OpenOffice is not free. Save yourself.
I concur with sajer: I went out and bought a copy of Microsoft Word specifically because of this bug. I *have* to have bibliographic fields in my documents, and since at work I use Word + EndNote, I have to preserve those fields when I work at home. (And since Writer destroys those fields, I have no confidence that it doesn't destroy other fields as well.)
I just wanted to add that I am very disappointed that this has not been touched. If I can find it, I am going to revert to 1.5. One of the major reasons for using OOo is the ability to switch between Word and OOo, but this field problem makes it fairly unusable. It is extremely annoying to either lose the functionality of fields by saving them as plain text or lose the field information completely if you forget to do this. Making these changes manually in a 100,000 word document is not really a very pleasant prospect.
*** Issue 83574 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
We are very interesed in this issues because we have a Real Estate application that uses Word documents with fields that are filled with database data in order to print some documents as invocies, forms, etc. The main problem that we have to support OpenOffice.org is that the fields are not imported in Writer from Word. This means that any change to the Word documents implies that manually we must recreate all the fields. We don't understand why the Word fields are not imported in Writer. OpenOffice.org Write is a grest application but this kind of support to Office integration applications will accelerate the spread of use.
This issue is one of numerous examples how MS interop thrashes our development resources. The necessity to implement a new import filter for the OOXML formats nearly binds all resources in that area and burns several person years development time that now is missing to fix remaining bugs in the old filter. So we have to select issues in the "old" filter very carefully and we can fix only the most important ones, otherwise we won't be able to finish the OOXML import in time for OOo3.0 Beta. Of course it is always possible to have different assessments for the importance of particular issues - so bear with us if sometimes we have others than you. The pure fact that an issues is one, two, three or more years old does not tell us anything about its importance. This particular issue is unfortunate because it is a regression and so I immediately raised its priority when I became aware of that. That means we try to fix that in the next possible version.
Thank you for elevating the priority of this problem.
fixed
reopen: need to add some QA information
Created attachment 50259 [details] Contains field whose field code contains a "/"
attached document contains .doc with a field whose field code contains a "/". When imported, there should be no text imported from this field.
ready for QA.
Verified fix in CWS sw8u10bf04.
*** Issue 85902 has been marked as a duplicate of this issue. ***
Checked fix in OOH680m8 (OOo 2.4) and SRC680m247 (OOo3 branch).
The fix does not seem to work for Bibus fields : I just tried the new 2.4 release : I opened a test document created using WORD 2000 and Bibus. There were two fields in the text from Bibus for citing a reference and then the field for the Bibliography. Opening this file in OO writer 2.4 has the fields disappearing (as in OO 2.3). I have atached the file Oliver
Created attachment 52342 [details] word 2000 document with field inserted by bibus, which disappear during import in OO 2.4
On my PC (WinXP sp2), if MS-Word is not installed, the fields are changed to text in import to OOo 2.4 Writer. If MS-Word is installed on the computer, the fields are not imported. Regardless, importing only the text without the field codes is not ultimately useful or acceptable for people collaborating on projects with those who use Endnote. I urge the OOo project to fully accommodate these fields. The sentiment expressed by others--that not doing so effectively makes OOo so inconvenient that it is unusable by many.
I don't remember if we mentioned that already in this issue, but we will indeed improve the import later. This issue here was only meant as a request to restore what OOo 1.x already was able to do (import the fields as text).
Apropos of the final couple comments (on importing as text), I think the key issue is people who use MsWord at the office, and OO Writer at home. The need in that context is to be able to send documents back and forth in both directions without losing information. If every time you work on a document at home using Writer, the EndNote (etc.) fields turn into plain text, then this simply doesn't work: you don't want to have to go through some process to convert them back into fields when you get back to the office. At least if I'm understanding what is being said here, that process is a show-stopper. I should clarify that I long ago gave up on OO because of this problem, and bought and installed MsOffice on my home computer. But if you want to avoid more losses to Microsoft Office, fixing this (assuming I understand correctly) needs to be a high priority. Mike Maxwell CASL/ U MD
Whatever the relevance of this issue is, there is a fundamental problem with Writer's text fields that make fixing it very hard and so it is still not done. But we will improve that in (not so far) future versions. Watch changes in Writer concerning meta data and bibliographic support.
How can this be marked as fixed when clearly it is not? It appears that OOo isn't escaping xml in fields, instead it ignores the data, is this the problem? What issues have been logged that relate to this is? This is the only one I have found which is clear about the problem.
This issue is not about the missing support for "real" import, it is about the regression that the fields are not imported at all (not even as text as in older versions). *This* problem is fixed. I don't know if there is another issue about the complete support. If not, please feel free to add one.
Sorry to tell you this, but the problem is not fixed : when I create a .doc document and inserting fields, for example with the free bibliographic programm "Bibus", then these fields are not imported when the file is opened in OO2.4, also not as simple text. They simply disappear (each citation and the whole bibliography). i have tried this with .doc documents created with Word2000 and Word2003, same result. I don't know what the difference is between EndNote and Bibus fields, but it is not working for Bibus. If the fields would shown at least as text, I would consider this issue as closed. I have attached a test file created using Word 2003 and Bibus 2.4 Cheers Oliver
Created attachment 53767 [details] .doc file with fields created by Bibus in Word2003 that disappear when opened with OO2,.4
Olivier, could you please file a new issue for this problem? I assume, that it is a diffrerent thing.
OK, created a separate issue for Bibus fields : 89667
Still endnote fields are skipped/not imported correctly in 3.1.1
Created attachment 64160 [details] Sample endNote document with missing field
Created attachment 64161 [details] Patch fixing the issue properly
The original problem has been fixed here (and is still in OOo 3.x). The newly attached document shows a special case of the Endnote field having additional "Quote" keyword in its field syntax. Please do not re-open already fixed issues (which are really fixed for the attached testcases); issues will get extremely inconvenient to handle then. Please file a new issue for this new testcase. Thanks for your patience.
Closed. Please file a new issue for the latest sample.
mru: I reopened the issue for a simple reason: the previous fix only fixed some particular fields... but there were some other forgotten cases: the ADDIN field isn't the only one allowing a / or . in the field code. The proposed patch is a much more generic fix!
cedricbosdo: I have closed this issue, because the problem stated by the original attachment has been fixed and does still work in OOo 3.x. It may be true, that your proposed patch fixes the problem in a more generic manner, but it is generally no good issue handling to reopen already fixed problems. Meanwhile this issue became extremely inconvenient to read and handle due to the high number of given comments. Please file a new issue with "Issue type: Patch" and attach you patch proposal and sample doc there, it will be handled much quicker than.