Bug 53300

I could not reproduce on LO3.6.0.4 WinVista32bit.

I can select multiple non-contiguous columns by holding down Ctrl and clicking the column headings individually.

A few additional elements, my first descritpion was quite unclear:

The problem occurs on existing charts, when trying to edit the data range.

Trying to select several non contiguous cell blocks doesn't work, once the mouse button is depressed, calc fills the data range and won't accept any other selection.

I also tried to click on the column headings, it has no effect at all.

Occurs on LO3.6.0.4 Win XP & 3.5.4.2 WinXP.

I see what you mean.

I tried doing the same thing in Excel 2007 and it does let you select multiple regions.

I don't know if this is a bug in the current LibreOffice or if this would be considered an enhancement. It may be working "as designed".

Well, it's annoying enough that several users reported it to me.
Maybe the feature needs enhancement to be more user friendly.

Do you know if this used to work on previous versions of LibreOffice? e.g. 3.5 ??

This may be related to bug 55697 ("impossible to define data ranges beyond actual filled cells").

I can confirm this in LO 3.6.4.3, Ubuntu 12.10.
It is a problem as it is something that is possible when creating a new chart but not when editing its data range later on. It makes it inconsistent.
When sorting rows, the data range of the chart doesn't follow automatically the reorganised cells, which means the data ranges have to be edited by hand, or the user has to start again from scratch.
This highly disrupts the workflow.

Created attachment 83210 [details]
PDF showing the Bug

This bug is still present in Libre Office 4.1.

When I try to create a new graph, in the graphic assistant wizard it is impossible to select non-contiguous cells. When selecting the data interval, when I stop pressing the mouse button it stops the selection regardless of keeping Ctrl button pressed.

It is disruptive and impacts productivity a lot when trying to prepare graphics that have lots of repeated data and where you want to select relevant data in non-contiguous cells. The PDF I sent shows an example of such a use case.

Considering that working with Calc is essential for many people I would say this is important.

I changed this ticket back to NEW (I don't know why it was changed from NEW back to NEEDINFO in the first place; all the information required is here)

Confirming. This bug is present on 3.4.1 and 4.x.
It is a very annoying bug, my colleagues has documents full of graphs and editing all of these is a very pain.