Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

After years of happily using OO the program no longer works in Writer and Calc. In Calc document opens, but upon attempt to input info the doc freezes, grays out, and circle begins. I have to close down OO. When reopening OO have to save the previous version. Also there is one Calc document locked although I was able to separately open and use that same doc.

The advice in the forum files is 3years old or more. I did try to utilize the suggestions with no success, such as I seem to not have any "soffice" files, and I cannot find the end of path word "user" in order to change it to "user.old" and then make a new user ID.

I just updated from OO 4.1.0 to 4.1.6, and updated my windows 10 OS, and found and uninstalled a pesky "Drive support" unwanted program/app.
Still have the same problem.

I desperately want to continue using OO and would be greatly appreciative if someone would please help me fix this situation. I am not a computer guy, just a user.

Please help, thank you, Paul

Start TaskManager (Ctrl Shift Esc) and kill all "soffice" processes shown on TM's tabs. Then exit TM and try OpenOffice. Note the initial "s" in soffice.

drpdmc wrote: I cannot find the end of path word "user" in order to change it to "user.old" and then make a new user ID.

You must set View Hidden Files to YES to see them. See Resetting the user profile for full instructions.

Thank you so much for your quick reply! This time I hacked around and was able to go deep enough to find 2 "soffice" item that I promptly deleted.
This did not solve the problem. I went back in after restarting my computer and could not find any more "soffice" items.
Then I tried to get to "user", I think I did and changed it to "user.old" and restarted computer.
I did input new name then. The problem still exists.
I find it difficult to follow these instructions because 1) they are not for windows 10 and do not appear exactly as described herein and
2) I am a computer dummy and the instructions assume a certain basic level of computer savvy that I do not have.
I am grateful for your help but the problem is not fixed yet. If you could help further I would be really appreciative.
thank you,
Paul

I just removed several "soffice" items and now my computer doesn't open any of my AOO file but says"The system cannot find the file specified."
The directions and screen shots do not seem to match my computer.
please help
thanks,
Paul

drpdmc wrote:I just removed several "soffice" items and now my computer doesn't open any of my AOO file but says"The system cannot find the file specified."
The directions and screen shots do not seem to match my computer.
please help
thanks,
Paul

What "soffice items" did you remove? You can't willy-nilly remove everything named "soffice". There are processes named "soffice" and files named "soffice". Processes can be stopped or ended using the Task Manager. That does not remove any files from the file system. If you removed the soffice files, then you will need to reinstall OpenOffice because the soffice files are the files that run OpenOffice.

Note; same question asked on the users mailing list; I've responded there with the suggestion of reinstalling.

Removing processes from TaskManager should be safe, as these are only notifications of running processes. If through some form of User misunderstanding such files are actually deleted from the computer, then a reinstall will help, although if such a user misunderstanding has occurred, the running processes have not been correctly deleted and the problem is likely to continue.