Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 November 18

= November 18 =

Table problem in LibreOffice Writer
I'm producing a long document in this, over many sessions. It contains a lot of tables, nothing fancy, just the simple default format. I specify the number of rows and columns, and set the column widths to what I want by using the "adapt table width" setting (otherwise it assumes full width and the individual columns have to sum to this). The problem is that after saving the document, on returning it's common to find some tables upset - column widths changed, even sometimes the position of the left border altered. There seems no particular pattern, it's just that when I skim through I see that some tabular alignment and shape are wrong. Is this a known feature? Am I omitting some step to really lock my settings in? The format of text and inserted images is retained without trouble, so I could printscreen each table and insert it as an image, but it would be a lot of trouble, should not be necessary and would make them non-editable. Any help much appreciated.→2A00:23C6:AA08:E500:EC81:EFF0:1812:B7A8 (talk) 13:41, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Layout incompatibility problems are a "known feature" of LibreOffice Writer's effort to support many document file formats including those of different versions of Microsoft Word. Saving your files as .odt files avoids converting away from the program's native format and should give better predictability. 84.209.119.241 (talk) 17:37, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I'll try that.→2A00:23C6:AA08:E500:F124:F23A:822A:92D8 (talk) 22:42, 18 November 2020 (UTC)