[Solved] OpenOffice keeps crashing (cause by tables ?)

[Nekyia]

Hello,

Open Office keeps crashing for a few months now. Both calc and writer crash. In writer it usually happens when I edit the document when a table start on a page and end on another.
I have completly format my PC, but after reinstallation the problem came up again.

Thank you.

[RoryOF]

Check that Windows 10 is fully updated. Also, a quick diagnostic, that allows identifying whether the problem is with OpenOffice or Windows, is to start Windows in Safe Mode (look up how), and run OpenOffice while Windows is in that mode. If OO runs stable, the problem is caused by a driver or program that runs in Windows normal mode,

Common candidates are clipboard utilities, AntiVirus that touches open OO files, or a Firewall or Windows Defender, or a continual backup utility.

In my view, tables that extend over page boundaries are trouble. I suggest making a table that fits within a single page, then using two copies of it to handle the full data, rather than using a large table spanning the pages.

[John_Ha]

Strange problems are sometimes fixed by resetting the profile - see Resetting the user profile.

[Nekyia]

Win 10 is fully updated. Resetting the user profile did nothing.

In Safe Mode, I had no problem. Now I need to find the culprit. How should I do that?

I don't use table bigger than one page, but they always end up between two pages. Making my tables the size of a whole page seems a good idea, and on top of avoid crashes, it is more convenient.

EDIT: not convenient at all...

[RoryOF]

Look first for some of the possible culprits I listed; disable these one by one - if disabling the antivirus or the firewall, best to disconnect from internet (turn off your internet router) for safety.

If disabling one of these solves the problem, then it is a matter of fine-tuning its settings when you re-enable it.

[Nekyia]

I stopped Internet, Antivirus, Firewall, all unneccessary applications, and then started killing proccess. No luck so far

[John_Ha]

In Safe Mode, I had no problem. Now I need to find the culprit. How should I do that?

Stop all programs which start when the PC boots to identify the culprit. Google for how to do it - it's TaskManager > Startup ..., or use CCleaner.

[Nekyia]

I did that before going crazy killing proccess in the TaskManager.

[Nekyia]

Ok.
I have reset user profile.
Format my laptop.
Updated Win 10.
Stop all programs I can.

And it keeps crashing. But works fine in safe mode.
I don't believe I can reasonably work in safe mode, and I don't like OO alternatives much.
Any ideas?

[John_Ha]

[It] works fine in safe mode.
I don't believe I can reasonably work in safe mode, and I don't like OO alternatives much.
Any ideas?

Use Safe Mode as a diagnostic test to prove whether a startup program is causing a problem.

It is probably just one (or occasionally two) of the programs which start when you start the PC. You need to identify which it is and prevent it starting. See my post above for how to do it.

1. identify all the programs which start when the PC starts.
2. Disable half of them.
3. Restart the PC - they will now not be started.
4a. If it is now OK, it must be one of those you disabled. Re-enable half the stopped programs and restart the PC.
4b. If it still fails, it must be one of those you did not disable. Disable half of the remaining startup programs and restart the PC.

Repeat until you identify the single (very occasionally two) startup program(s) causing the problem.

[Nekyia]

As I mentioned before, disabling everthing under TaskManager > Startup is the first I did when trying to find a program that would make OpenOffice crash.

[RoryOF]

Volunteers on Forum read so many posts per day that they often cannot carry in memory every detail of a thread, so it is good to remind of the details: Did killing everything under startup solve the problem? or was it only solved by Safe mode?

[Nekyia]

I disconnected the wifi and disabled all security programs. Still crashing.
Then went TaskManager>Startup and disabled everything. Still crashing.

Only solved by Safe Mode.

[RoryOF]

Have you any clipboard monitor program? Perhaps something that allows selection among the last few Pastes to the clipboard

At one time, Skype was reported to check the clipboard and caused such crashes, but I understand this has been fixed in Skype drivers for quite some years.

[Nekyia]

Not that i know of.

[John_Ha]

Follow each step in this post.

[Nekyia]

I have disabled all the programs set to run at start, in Taskmng and CCleaner. It still fails.

[John_Ha]

I have disabled all the programs set to run at start, in Taskmng and CCleaner. It still fails.

Did you reboot after disabling all?

[Nekyia]

Yes, of course.

[John_Ha]

In summary

1. It is OK when running in Safe Mode.
2. It is not OK when all startup programs have been disabled.

So it is something which runs when the PC boots but which is not one of the startup programs.

1. Try the three different form of Safe Mode (with networking etc) and see if it is OK when the fewest things are prevented from starting. Take a screenshot of the processes. Start normally and compare the processes with those running when in Safe Mode.

2. Could it be a service? Check TaskManager Services tab. Disable non-Microsoft services. Does that fix it.

3. Run System File Checker (sfc /scannow) to check the integrity of Windows and repair any errors. I think W10 has an integrity checker/repair utility - google for it. See Settings > Update and Security > Recovery > Reset this PC to re-install W10 without losing your files. Back up data just in case.

4. Run diskcheck (chkdsk) and repair any errors.

5. It could be a nasty - scan the PC with Malwarebytes.

6. Uninstall AOO. Rename C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user to ...\user-old. Download AOO from http://www.openoffice.org/download/index.html and install. You should be asked for your name etc.

7. AOO is pretty dead - you will migrate to LibreOffice at some time as I recently did. Do so now choosing the stable version of LO.

[Nekyia]

I did all the different scans. Found nothing.
And then I directly tried LO because using AOO or LO doesn't change much for me - don't need to spend more time trying to fix the situation. LO works perfectly fine so far.

Thanks to both of you!

[stephengriff]

my openoffice crashes every 15 min
(I am mostly ising calc)

it is not helpful to try to seach thru 1000 posts to try to find something that might help

i have version 4.1.5
and am on windows 10

i am a programmer, and technical

but i can not look thu 10000s of posts or try try 10 differnt things to try to figure out what is going on

there should be an answer

[straub3939]

I'm not a programmer and know little to nothing about a computer anymore but... I did not read the entire conversation so I don't know if you got your issue fixed but I have had Open Office crash on me twice. It wants to recover a previously opened file and when I go through the process at the end the program crashes. This has now happened to me twice and both times I found a post on the internet I can not find at the moment but what I did was to type %appdata%/openoffice/4 in the windows search programs and file in the bottom left corner of the screen (four squares), The user folder will appear, rename it to user-old and the re-open OpenOffice. Hope it works for you.

[RusselB]

This is also referred to as resetting the User Profile, as described, in detail in this tutorial

[Pete_Ldll]

Hi, I'm having the same problem as this thread, which seems to have been running for nearly 5 years now! Surely there should have been a fix for this apparent long-standing bug, long ago?
I'm running win 10 and was running OO 4.1.7 - now updated to 4.1.11. I'm trying to add rows to a number of tables in a document in writer. Some of which run over 2 pages, others do not. I had been saving in .doc format, having read this thread tried .odt , also tried doing a 'save as' - incremental number.
OO still crashes - sometimes, but not all, when I try to add rows to a table!
Whether there is another program causing a problem or not I don't know, as I have not tried the 'Safe Mode' suggestion.
Sorry, but I'm not a programmer and computer knowledge is fairly basic, so trying to turn programs off really isn't a practical solution for me.
Does anyone have a working solution to this issue, please?
I'm otherwise a very happy user of OO and am grateful to and appreciate those of you that have the knowledge, skills, and time to write these programs.
Thank you
Just a bit

[John_Ha]

Follow the suggestions in the thread starting by resetting the user profile.

[Hagar Delest]

And if no change, try LibreOffice.

[David-wayne]

Changing systems with fresh windows 10 and only O.O. and Firefox downloaded.

To report on the O.O. fault: system is not crashing!? Crashing as in my experience having systems crash since DOS 3.0 would include both OS and AS being taken down however the OS remains stable. Further the suggested [ .OLD] fix did nothing to alleviate the issue of the program being shut down by Windows 10 with all recent data entered between hard saves Ctrl-S being lost. This includes all cell formatting and data... grrr!

What ii have observed while exclusively doing my spreadsheet data entry, is that the amount of data lost is approximately the same [personal training for Ctrl-S is on going] My seventeen page spread sheet has Zero links between any pages as ii had way to many problems using MS Ex@#l.

So seems like we're going back to the top to solve this maddening issue guys. All previous O.O. programs have functioned without incident hence why ii registered this account on this date.

Keeping the faith.
Dave

[Galile0]

Hello,

I had the same issue, writer crashed as there was a table spanning two pages. I re-created a new openOffice profile as suggested and it solved my problem.

Cheers,
G

[AndyArmitage]

Hi, this problem has been plagueing me for months.

I tried resetting user profile, no good.

After reading these threads and noticing
1) it is "caused by some other program loading at startup"
2) there were problems with skype monitoring the clipboard

So I tried quitting Teams while I am using OpenOffice, and ... bingo!

I wonder whether Teams shares some Skype code?