[Solved] 4.1.7 keeps crashing with Catalina addressbook

[audio magic]

I used to use both OpenOffice and NeoOffice for years merging address data from Addressbook to a letter .ott . I cannot remember when exactly it started to wrong but I seem to remember it still worked after upgrading to Catalina a few months ago. Then at some time NeoOffice failed to work properly and I upgraded that to the new paid version. Since then it got only worse (how typical ). So I wanted to go back to OpenOffice and forget about N.O. altogether.
What happens is that when I load the addressbook data into writer, it only loads 40 addresses in stead of a few hundred, and it takes ridiculously long doing that, about 2 minutes! Then, when I choose the an address I would like to send a letter to, OpenOffice may crash immediately but it certainly crashes when I give the merge instruction (data to letter).
What goes wrong where?

Peter

[MrProgrammer]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

OpenOffice may crash immediately but it certainly crashes when I give the merge instruction (data to letter)

Review [Tutorial] Mac FAQ Q02/A02, Q15/A15, Q28/A28, and perhaps others. I don't use MacOS 10.15 myself. Uninstall/reinstall is most likely a waste of your time. See if the problem occurs using the Guest User account. Review similar topics in the forum to see if any ideas there help. You can search for "Catalina", for example. This is not a developer forum; we are all users, like you.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[Villeroy]

... it only loads 40 addresses in stead of a few hundred ...
Peter

A database can have millions of records. Base loads no more 40 records for viewing at a time. It loads more records as required. If the record counter is followed by an asterisk, this indicates that the displayed number is not the final count.

As a work-around you may create a new directory and export the data as text (*.csv) or as dBase (*.dbf) to that directory.
Then open the address database and call menu:Edit>Database>Connection...
Choose connection type Text or dBase and specify the directory..

[audio magic]

iCloud seems to be the problem! At first I went to Sys Prefs/Sec&Priv/Privacy and allowed OO full disk access (found that in Q&A). Didn't help.
Then I thought, maybe something is wrong with the addressbook itself, so I checked its Prefs and saw that iCloud account information enabled. Unchecked that. Next tried letter - addresses merging and it worked! Very quick too! But not entirely flawlessly: it loaded only 40 addresses and could not find the one I wanted. I manually forced OO to load all addresses and yes, then the address I was looking for was found.
1. Why didn't it automatically search the entire addressbook?
2. If I want to keep may address data synced between iPhone/iPad/iMac via iCloud, it means I can't use OpenOffice - and vice versa ????

[Villeroy]

Conceptually, OpenOffice is software of the 90ies and your address book is in "the cloud" which means "someone else's computer". Can you access your data while the internet connection is down?

[audio magic]

With iCloud Account Information (in Contacts) enabled: no. That is, it looks as if it is going to work, OO takes a loooong time and then crashes. I already tried that a few days ago. And no, my addressbook is not (or not only) in the cloud but also on my SSD and that is where I instructed OO to look. If 'iCloud' is on, in the data OO loads I see groups in addressbook carrying a 1 or 2 suffix (so probably a local and a remote version) but only one addressbook mention (no suffix): no choice there.

[audio magic]

I now know: yes, iCloud is the problem (as so often). I'll have to uncheck "Enable this account" in Contact/Preferences every time I want to merge addresses with letters/invoices/whatever, and then loading address data runs as smoothly as before. Well, not exactly lightning fast but no more crashes.