Bug 127105 - Threaded comments (replies) support in OOXML (.XLSX) spreadsheets
Summary: Threaded comments (replies) support in OOXML (.XLSX) spreadsheets
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: LibreOffice
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Calc (show other bugs)
Version:
(earliest affected)
unspecified
Hardware: All All
: medium enhancement
Assignee: Not Assigned
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: filter:xlsx
Depends on:
Blocks: XLSX-Comments
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2019-08-22 19:26 UTC by Thomas Bertels
Modified: 2024-05-11 22:34 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Crash report or crash signature:


Attachments
Example file for the feature from Excel 365 (10.94 KB, application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet)
2019-08-28 12:16 UTC, Gabor Kelemen (allotropia)
Details
Screenshot of the example file in Excel and Calc 6.3 side by side (108.44 KB, image/png)
2019-08-28 12:21 UTC, Gabor Kelemen (allotropia)
Details

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Description Thomas Bertels 2019-08-22 19:26:59 UTC
Since "newer versions of Excel", there is a new "threaded comments" feature.

It's also simply known as "comments" while the old comments are now known as "notes".[1]

When viewing a comment saved by a recent version of Excel in LibreOffice, we see a message "[Threaded comment] This threaded comment can be viewed, but not edited(...)"[2]

By the way, this kind of feature could be added to a future version of OpenDocument, if not already planned in OpenDocument 1.3.

[1] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/the-difference-between-threaded-comments-and-notes-75a51eec-4092-42ab-abf8-7669077b7be3
[2] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/this-threaded-comment-can-be-viewed-but-not-edited-17b3eb02-efa7-4934-9e8e-b8916482bf41?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US
Comment 1 Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) 2019-08-28 12:16:38 UTC
Created attachment 153704 [details]
Example file for the feature from Excel 365

This feature extends the OOXML standard with a threadedComments subdirectory in xl/, then a threadedComment1.xml file contains the actual comment thread.

Also Excel saves a VML (old style note) formatted version of this comment thread along a warning.
Comment 2 Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) 2019-08-28 12:17:32 UTC
Setting as a new enhancement, since we don't have a similar feature yet in the first place.
Comment 3 Gabor Kelemen (allotropia) 2019-08-28 12:21:14 UTC
Created attachment 153707 [details]
Screenshot of the example file in Excel and Calc 6.3 side by side
Comment 4 Jeff Fortin Tam 2023-09-14 03:17:25 UTC
Retitling for clarity & searchability.

According to my observations, any such xlsx file opened by LibreOffice, when re-saved to xlsx format, will destroy those comments' metadata (essentially converting them to notes objects) even if you don't touch those comments specifically, not only if "modifying the comment" like the comment says.

Curiosity question: beyond OOXML and the need for a UI for this in LibreOffice Calc, does OpenDocument support threaded comments with replies and usernames etc. in the .ods spreadsheet format?
Comment 5 Thomas Bertels 2023-12-17 08:52:13 UTC
For reference, here's the Note2 project page, which added threaded comment support to OpenOffice 3.0 back in 2008 (though it didn't handle replies correctly until bug 119229 fixed in 2023): https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Notes2