Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I had an earlier version of Open Office and recently installed 4.1.4 on my laptop running with Windows 10. It worked fine for a few times. Then when I tried to open a file, the icon just kept whirling -trying to open, but didn't. When I clicked on the Open Office icon on desktop, it just whirled too but wouldn't open.

I uninstalled Open Office and reinstalled it. It worked a couple of times, but now it does the same thing - tries to open, but can't. When I tried to uninstall this time, a message comes up saying I have to close any Open Office files before doing this. I checked task manager and there are no files open. How do I get Open Office up and running again?

In task manager, look for soffice in programs for all users or however it is named.

nvarvil wrote: I checked task manager and there are no files open.

TaskManager checks what processes are running - it knows nothing about data files.

Delete all soffice.exe and/or soffice.bin processes. Sometimes, one gets left behind and prevents another file from being opened. Or reboot.

If your problem is solved please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

I am having the same problem. I installed Open Office 4 on WIndows 10 and it worked great. once. After that, when opening Open Office and when opening a document in Open Office, nothing happens. I click on the icon and the wheel spins and then nothing. Or I click on the document, the wheel spins, then nothing. I haven't seen any solutions posted to the above inquiry yet. Did I miss one? Thanks!

The suggested solution is to use Task Manager to kill any soffice processes. Press the keys CTRL Shift Esc to bring up the Task Manager. Go to the Details tab. Sort the processes by name by clicking on the Name header. Select any soffice processes and click End Task.

Yes, I have tried a few things. The first time, I did close/end the soffice task(s). It didn't help. So I uninstalled and then reinstalled open office. It still didn't work. That was some weeks ago.
I just started up my machine and checked the tracking manager again. In the 58 background processes and 88 Windows processes, I can find none that start with soffice not any that mention open or office in them. I tried to open Open Office and it worked! So I edited a document for about 25 minutes. Then suddenly, Open Office crashed. When I opened O Office again, it seems to work. But I find it suspect. Sometimes it sort of works and sometimes it doesn't do anything. (Sigh)
Thank you.

The most common reason for failure of OpenOffice to open is one or more left-over soffice processes in TaskManager, often left after a program or system crash. If failure to open occurs when double clicking an OO file, then the culprit may be broken File Associations.