Created attachment 68742 [details]
Paste this chart into Writer and compare with how it is displayed in Calc

I can confirm the effect, but I don't know whether it is a defect. When a chart
has its own data table, it is not possible to define a range for a data series.
So the whole table of data is used.
And simple dropping a category, which has no data, might be not the right way.
For example data exist for Jan, Feb, Apr, May but not for March. You surely want
to show March on the category axis. So it needs do be an option to drop a category.

I agree with regina's comment - a case can be made that this is not a defect. 

 What I feel IS a defect is that the behavior is inconsistent between Calc and
Writer.  The chart should be handled the same by both programs, one way or the other

It was an discussion more than 7 Years ago to use the spreadsheet as data
editor. See comments in i20341. 

*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of 20341 ***

I've looked at the comments in the duplicate issue, but they don't appear to
address the fact that a chart of the kind in my example renders DIFFERENTLY in
Calc than it does in Writer.  I don't see that issue being discussed but it is
an annoying behavior that doesn't seem resolved to me.

Thanks for your attention!

The issue says, that it is impossible to use only a part of the embedded data
table, because the ODF has no way to store such selections.

Copying the chart this way looses connection to the spreadsheet anyway. So why
not insert the chart as picture?

If you need to change the data later, then you are more flexible, if you make a
chart from a writer table. Then you can use the same settings as in Calc. You
can put the table into a section and hide it, if you want to show only the
chart. Perhaps you discuss the possible ways in a mailing list or forum?

I understand the technical limitation and the workarounds.  I would suggest that
Calc be altered to display such a chart WITH the missing category (as in
Writer).  That way it is clear that there are some categories selected with no
data and behavior is consistent across both products.

My usage scenario is this:  I keep scientific data in a spreadsheet, where I
perform calculations and analysis and then create charts.  I need to paste the
charts into writer to prepare reports from the data, but I don't want to paste
as pictures because I need to alter the formatting slightly for the report (font
sizes, colors, etc.).  I also do not want to duplicate my data in a writer table
because this creates substantial extra work and invites transcription errors.  I
recognize that the link is broken, but if I need to edit the data I want to do
it only one place, not two (e.g. I will edit data in the spreadsheet then
re-paste the chart).

When I have prepared a Calc chart and I paste into Writer, I expect it to look
the same.  When it doesn't, I have to go fiddle with the Calc chart and re-paste
it until it displays properly.  This is annoying, time-consuming, makes it easy
to introduce inaccuracies into reports, and would be unacceptable in a
production environment I think.

Thank you for your attention. I'm not trying to be a "squeaky wheel" but I don't
feel this is getting the attention it deserves.  I think it is small behavioral
quirks like these that frustrate and drive people away from OpenOffice.  I'll
rest my case here, but I strongly encourage the dev team to reopen this issue
and fix the rendering of the Chart in Calc to be consistent with Writer.

I agree that this issue is not a duplicate -> reopen.

I agree that it is an error that the chart looks different after pasting from
calc to writer.

taking issue

Fixed in CWS chart45.
For compatibility reasons I didn't change neither the behavior in calc nor in
writer. Instead I changed the behavior of the copy action.
The pasted chart in writer now does not contain the unused category thus the
chart looks the same as in calc.
Limitation:
In detail the copy action is performed via save and load. I changed the
information that gets saved (skipping the unused category in the separate data
table). As all existing documents have already saved too much information it is
necessary to touch them once so they will get saved again with the corrected
reduced information. After that the paste action should produce a correct result.

@Thomas, please verify fix in CWS chart45.
Remind to double click the chart once before copying!

changed owner

Seen ok in CWS chart45 -> verified