https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=170013
Bug ID: 170013
Summary: Please do a "hallway usability test" on label printing
with mailmerge, using me as the subject
Product: LibreOffice
Version: 25.8.2.2 release
Hardware: All
OS: All
Status: UNCONFIRMED
Severity: normal
Priority: medium
Component: LibreOffice
Assignee: [email protected]
Reporter: [email protected]
I (a fulltime user of Linux since 1997, and professional software engineer)
have just spent 6 hours trying, and failing, to correctly print the address
labels for my company Christmas Cards, using LibreOffice (starting from a
spreadsheet of addresses, and some expensive Avery labels). This is,
admittedly, my first time trying to do a mail-merge, but surely it can't be
THIS hard?
Please would an experienced developer watch me attempt this again, and help fix
the dozens of points of confusion and error that arise. It's too much for a
single bug report - I can't even find a reliable way to reproduce the partial
success!
This includes:
* The labels dialog doesn't let you choose the "database" from a filepicker,
but insists on using a pre-defined ".odf" file (for that matter, what's ODF? I
know about csv,ods,and xls).
* the data-source being a totally blank pane, with no obvious way to add a new
data source (aha! it's in the right-click menu), and no way at all to remove
one (oh, we have to go into the LibreOffice config).
* the wizard insisting on "first name" and "surname" fields, rather than a
single "name" column.
* Figuring out how to not use the a wizard - and now getting all labels
identical, until one discovers the hidden setting for row-increment.
* the "synchronise labels" toolbar being impossible to find, disappearing, and
only existing in an intermittent toolbar.
* Writer not being willing to import a "data source" from a spreadsheet
(neither xls nor ods), but insisting on an intermediate "LibreOffice Base" step
- which now doesn't update when the spreadsheet is saved.
* confusing print-preview
* the labels not actually aligning correct, unless I bodge in a 5mm left-tab to
incorrectly force the labels into the wrong place, which is actually the right
place on the paper.
* No warning if a label text overflows the physical label.
* Confusing terminology: my data source is a "spreadsheet" - it isn't really a
"database".
* the way that the link between the labels.odt and labels.ods files seems to be
held as a config property somewhere in my machine's libreoffice profile, rather
than as the direct link between two files contained in the same directory.
Sorry this is an unusual bug report, but I think you need to watch me try all
the obvious things and get it wrong, in order to see just how impossibly
counter-intuitive this process is.
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