OpenOffice Writer Not Working Properly

[brucealbanese32]

All of sudden, all my documents and any new docs I create in Open Office Writer and not opening correctly. The top part of the page where you can adjust paragraph, indedention, font color etc is now blank. All my documents are like this. I cleared my cache and history and even uninstalled and reinstalled Open Office, but nothing has changed. It's like it's corrupted or something. I am on Windows 7 and running Open Office 4.1.3. Please help if you can. Thank you.

[RusselB]

Try resetting your Open Office User Profile as described in [Tutorial] The Open Office User Profile

[brucealbanese32]

Russel. Thanx for reaching out. I tried all the steps. Nothing worked. It's really strange because sometimes when I open a doc in Open Office it's normal. Then I open it again, and it's normal. Then, the third time, it's back to being blank up top. Any other suggestions? Do I have to restart my computer for all this work?

[RusselB]

Restarting the computer after making a software change, in this case including changing the User Profile, is never a bad idea.

[brucealbanese32]

Ok, I will reboot. However, I see that there is a LibreOffice available and just read that it is awesome. Is their "word" program just like Microsoft's and Apache's? If I switch to LibreOffice, will I be able to upload all my Apache Open Docs into the program?

[Villeroy]

LibreOffice and OpenOffice are the same application. OpenOffice is walking dead since 2010 and LibreOffice is its legitimate successor. The one and only purpose of both suites is the standardized Open Document Format. Yes, you can open OpenOffice documents with LibreOffice and with some other programs because the document format is free by any means.

[brucealbanese32]

Russel. I just rebooted and started opening up all my Apache Writer docs. I opened about 40 of them. The first 25 opened up and they were fine. Then, five in row that I opened were blank on top. Then the next ten opened fine. Not sure if I can trust this. What are your thoughts?

[brucealbanese32]

Oh, ok Villeroy. Thanks for the feedback there. I guess I will switch over to LibreOffice tomorrow or whenever. So, it's a totally smooth transition? I can just download Libre and then open all my old docs through Libre and save them as new Libre docs and I will be good to go?

[RusselB]

No need to resave the documents if you've been using the Open Document Format (.odt extension for Writer) as the method of saving is the same in both Open and Libre Office suites.
I actually have both installed on my main computer so I can test problems in each and see if they handle the problems differently.

[brucealbanese32]

Russel. Thanks so much. I think I will just download Libre and rock that out. I had an issue with Apache back in April where if I clicked on the writer doc, it wouldn't open because I was "not authorized" user or something like that. I had to actually open writer, then open the doc through that for it to open. I came to this forum,and after a few hours, I got great help and was able to successfully troubleshoot it. However, since this is the second mishap, perhaps Libre is a better option and doesn't have as many glitches? We shall see. Thanks again.