Since upgrading to PlanMaker 2010 (for Windows), from 2008, I've noticed a number of strange behaviors. Besides the slow saving, which I described in a separate post, there's sometimes difficulty with editing (the blinking cursor will disappear, or fail to appear, or appear in a different part of the screen) -- if anyone is curious, I can describe this also in a separate post. But what is most worrisome, and for which I haven't yet found a workaround, is the recent corruption of several documents I was editing.
What seems to have happened, in at least two documents which are currently open, is that many of the cell references have been shifted by one row. In one file, for example, which has lots of sums, the first 16 rows are normal, and the sums contained in those cells have correct references. However, starting in row 17, and continuing through row 326, the references for each sum are off by one row, compared with how they used to be (when I entered them, and for a while afterward). As an example, E18 used to be "=SUM(F18,J18)", but now it's "=SUM(F19,J19)".
There are plenty of examples comparable to that one. There are also a number of cells which have not only had their references shifted by one cell, but also their contents. So whereas row 38 used to be a row of sums, now some of those sums are in row 38 and some have moved to row 39. As an example, F38 used to be "=SUM(F22:F37)". Now F38 is blank, and F39 is "=SUM(F24:F39)". Notice it now includes a circular reference.
One other strange thing about this file: the outlining has been corrupted, so where I used to have columns outlined to 3 and 4 levels, now there are only two levels of outlining. This sort of thing has happened occasionally before, in other files.
I have no idea what I might have done to trigger this file corruption, or how to recover the data and formulas which it used to contain. At about the same time, another file has also become corrupted, in a (perhaps?) similar way. This other file doesn't contain any formulas, just text. But it has plenty of conditional formatting, and a good number of joined cells (always joining multiple rows, never multiple columns). The conditional formatting had been applied in a pattern. Within each of seven columns, there had been a pattern of one cell with one conditional format, two cells with another, and 52 cells with yet another conditional format. Below this, the pattern would repeat, and repeat, about 30 times in all. Now, for some reason, the conditional formatting has been shifted, so the pattern begins in a different place. In some cases, a set of cells which are joined, push the conditional formatting down, so that it's not the same across all seven of these columns. Once again, I have no idea what caused this file corruption, or how to restore it to how it was, or prevent it from happening again.
Please help. I love the features and speed of SoftMaker Office, but if I can't trust it to not eat my files and cost me many hours of work recreating what I've already created, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and buy Microsoft Office, or try one of the free behemoth alternatives...
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