[Dropped] Program suddenly totally unusable

[MBJ86]

Hello,

I use OpenOffice to track daily data in a table format. Yesterday I was suddenly unable to open the same format/layout of file I've been using for 2+ years. The program froze and I eventually had to End Task through the Task Manager. I had made no changes to my machine or software.

I un-installed and reinstalled OpenOffice with a new install download from the website. I restarted the computer.

My computer is fully up to date.

When I tried to re-create my existing document in a brand new document, the document would not save, would not load basic functions like the highlight palette, and then I got another crash and this error:

During this crash it would not allow me to take a screen shot, so I had to take a photo with my phone:



I'm really hoping I'm not going to have to go purchase subscription-based software now. I rely heavily on this program multiple times a day. It's been great until now.

[FJCC]

Try resetting your user profile. To do that, open any folder and enter
%appdata%\openoffice\4
in the address bar near the top. Rename the user folder to user.old. Then restart OpenOffice. You should get the registration screen. Fill that out and then check if the program is now stable.

[MBJ86]

Thank you. It worked normally for a minute, then when I tried to save it crashed again:

"Due to an unexpected error, open office crashed. All the files you were working on will now be saved. The next time open office is launched, your files will be recovered automatically."

I was able to go through the "Recovery" step upon re-opening but nothing in the document saved.

[LastUnicorn]

These kinds of problems with OpenOffice and Windows 10 seem to be being reported fairly regularly in this forum now. Best advice would be to uninstall OpenOffice and try LibreOffice to see if that gets you free of the issues. There are lots of good reasons to just migrate to LibreOffice anyway — it is more up-to-date and actively developed, the same cannot any more be said of OpenOffice.

[keme]

About your tabular data: do you use Writer (the wordprocessing app) for this, and utilize "classic style" tab stops for your layout instead of a more robust (cell grid) table object?

The reason I ask: With this configuration for data input, you may easily have everything in one single paragraph (no paragraph breaks).

• OpenOffice Writer still has a limit of 64k characters in a paragraph.
• ~80 characters daily average input for ~2 years will approach that limit.
• If you save to a "foreign" file format (Microsoft Word "doc" springs to mind), the necessary format translation may increase size, pushing content over the limit upon save/load. This will render your file unmanageable to Writer.
• In LibreOffice Writer, that 64k paragraph limit has been lifted.

So if my guess is in your ballpark, (and also for a number of other possible reasons) installing LibreOffice may be your solution. You do not need to uninstall OpenOffice, if you need some peculiarity of that suite for other purposes. LibreOffice and OpenOffice will live happily side by side.
Works for me in MacOS and Windows. Most likely also everywhere else. I haven't used other OS platforms for a while so I cannot say for sure, but it seems that Linux/BSD are not relevant for you anyway.

[John_Ha]

Please upload the file showing the problem so that it can be analysed.

Press POSTREPLY and click the Upload attachment tab below where you type (128 kB max); or use a file share site such as mediafire, Dropbox or Google Drive for a larger file.