What about a "General Troubleshooting" tutorial?

[Hagar Delest]

I quote a post from another thread (that can be easily found here) because I want it to be disconnect with the emotional load of that thread.

I think maybe we do need a "General Troubleshooting" tutorial thread, something like the one on Andrew's site (http://katana.oooninja.com/w/openoffice ... leshooting), that we could refer people to first, before they go on to the more specific tutorials.

It seems to happen regularly that we jump in trying to troubleshoot a specific complex problem, only to eventually come back to "resetting the profile solved the problem". I think Cryofan's basic suggestion is a good one: we should direct everyone first to a general troubleshooting flowchart, that includes trying a fresh profile and possibly re-installing the software, before we dive in to more specific steps.

I don't know if we want to link off-site, or take some time to develop something that we can direct people to by default: "Have you worked through the General Troubleshooting flowchart yet? If not, start there and if that doesn't help, proceed to the ________ tutorial." The more specific tutorials could also start with a "Try this first..." link to the G-T flowchart.

Well, there are 2 kinds of issues: the precise ones (spell check doesn't work) and the global ones (OOo doesn't start at all).

The fresh profile is the best test for global issues. But for precise problems, I'm for the surgical method to avoid collateral damages (losing the customization in the profile).

So we should start with the profile first? It should be a good hint to see if a reinstall is needed (if no change with new profile). Then there are the OS related causes (security applications with Windows, packages dependencies or display problems with GNU/Linux). And finally the configuration files damages.

In fact, it would mean a complete mapping of the profile, explaining what each set of configuration file is for. That's some work!

Any thoughts/proposals?

[acknak]

Good idea to start a separate thread!

Basically, it would gather all the routine suggestions we give and put them in a flow-type document, where any user could work through some initial diagnosis and find the appropriate general procedures to try.

Some of it would overlap with the OOo FAQ (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... tation/FAQ), but laid out in a more structured way.

I'm thinking of something like this:

I'm having a problem downloading OOo
Are you using the right web site? (link to OO.org)
The download never finishes. (links to DL managers)
...
I'm having a problem installing OOo
The installer says there is an error (link to article on installer errors)
The install finishes, but I can't find how to start OOo (Start > All Programs...)
...
I'm having a problem starting OOo
I try to start OOo, but nothing happens (link to article on install repairs)
OOo takes forever to start (link to article on quickstarter??)
...
OOo was working for me, but suddenly OOo has begun doing something strange
Try running OOo with a fresh profile
Try running a repair or re-install (article on repair/re-install)
Try turning off graphics acceleration
...
I'm having trouble opening a document (this might need to be a sub page)
I can't open documents that were fine before.
I can't open a document that someone sent to me.
I can't open my MS Office documents
...
I'm having trouble printing a document
Can you print from other applications?
Have you ever been able to print from OOo?
Workaround: export to PDF and print from that.
...
My document is changing when I save and re-open it
Try saving as ODF and see if the problem still happens.
...

Maybe that needs to be filtered/simplified/layered further, with some of those branching off to a similar page that deals with one area.

We don't want to reproduce the OOo FAQ--that's way too much information to wade through, but it should put the 5-10 most common solutions we come back to here into a user-navigable framework, and give the user enough information to carry out the solution steps.

[TheGurkha]

I think that it would be good to have the links to the appropriate tutorials, so if the 'quick fix' to a, for example, spelling query didn't work out for the OP then they could follow the link to have a deep dive in the full spellcheck tutorial.

[acknak]

Exactly.