[Dropped] Where do I start?

[lloyde]

I'm a newbie with OO, and not much of a techie generally.
I installed OO straightforwardly on my Windows 7 laptop, and immediately have the following problems:
1. It crashes nearly every time I use it, often several times in one session.
2. It doesn't close properly, but leaves processes running, therefore will not start up again until I close the processes with Windows Task Manager.
3. The spellchecker does not work at all. I purposely misspell words and it does not find any of them.
4. If I go to Tools>Extension Manager, nothing at all happens. I cannot check to see which spell dictionaries etc. are present.

I probably should not complain about a free program, but I am a writer and was looking forward to using "the best freeware replacement for MS Office," and am deeply puzzled by the positive reviews. It seems endlessly buggy, and I've spent far too much time fiddling with it, trying to get it to work somewhat as advertised, and not writing.
Is there any simple solution for all these problems?
Thanks for any help you can give.

[RoryOF]

Firstly, you should install and use Apache OpenOffice 3.4 (download link from bottom right of Forum Window). Uninstall OpenOffice 2.4 first (Windows control panel, Add/Remove programs).

1) should be fixed with AOO 3.4
2) Don't X out of a program - use /File /Close or /File /Exit. Wait about 30 seconds for the file buffers to flush before closing down computer. Don't allow computer to hibernate/sleep with an OpenOffice file open.
3) You may need to follow the tutorial on Spellcheck problems
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 74&t=16512
4) Dictionaries are visible in /Tools /Options/ Language Settings / Languages.

Its not at all buggy - it works very nicely, but don't expect it to be an MS Word clone.

[lloyde]

Thanks, RoryOF. Sorry for the rant, but I've been working for days to get OO working right. Your advice worked, and I'm enjoying using it. One remaining question: I haven't yet figured out how to get OO to do real-time spell checking. It will do a spell scan (and works well), but how do I turn on the real-time, so that it checks spelling as I type? Many thanks for your good help.

[thomasjk]

Did you follow the tutorial Rory linked for troubleshooting spell check?

[RoryOF]

I'm glad you are getting somewhere. Often a problem is dealt with within a tutorial and is missed on the first read through, so I think you should go through the tutorial again; as it is generally working you can give attenion to items you may have missed. For example, under
/Tools /Options /Language Settings /Writing aids, under the Options setting there are checkboxes for "Check spelling as you type" and "Check grammar as you type" . I'm not certain, but it might be that you will need to restart OpenOffice for these to take - best to restart your computer completely.

Don't set too much store by the Grammar check.

Edit: After you get your spelling check working ok, you might choose to install Language Tool extension for better (but not yet perfect) grammar checking.

[Hambright]

Actually I also confuse where i will start

[RoryOF]

Can you startup OpenOffice and /File /New : Text Document? If so, start writing. Ditto for any other OpenOffice application.