Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I had an unexpected loss of power earlier. I was working on a paper on OOo. When I rebooted and attempted to reopen the document, I was first greeted with a prompt asking for an ASCII filter selection. Then OOo attempted document recovery, which hung and crashed. Every attempt to open since, I am greeted with the ASCII filter selection, and then given the following dialog box:
"Document file 'xxxxxx.odt' is locked for editing by:

Unknown User

Open document read-only or open a copy of the document for editing.
(Open Read-only) (Open Copy) (Cancel)"

When I attempt to open it either in read-only or copy, the entire document is 6 pages of pound signs (#). There is no lock file in the directory. There is nothing confidential in the file, so I can attach here if preferred.

ETA: Even showing hidden files, I do not see a .lock file.

There is nothing that can be done, the file is corrupted and there is no known method to recover it.

Thanks for the swift reply. Now if only I had been smart enough to turn on the backup BEFORE this happened...

Don't throw away your documents too quickly.

To me it looks like [Some]Office has the filename registered somewhere, because a file that gave me the 'locked for editing by unknown user' message could be opened following a different path. In my case this was sftp versus sshmount, but I guess moving the file to another directory or renaming it would also have 'fixed' this. So, before you start trashing your files: move, copy and/or rename them first, and try to open them again.

"Locked for editing" messages come because the lock files are left after a crash. If the file opens with the ASCII filter box, unless it is a .csv file, it is almost certainly dead.

In my case, and in some other cases with 'Unknown users' I read about, there where no lock files. Apparently there are more situations where the program may throw a 'Document locked' error.

Sadly, nothing to do: 22 page term paper replaced with pound signs.

Check the temporary folder of the system (see in OOo Tools>Options>OOo>Paths). If there are folders like sgmlf.tmp with a file having the same name inside, make a copy of that file, rename it in .odt and cross your fingers.

Else, nothing to do I fear.

Hopefully it's related to this thread which fixed it for me:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 30&t=40683

Here's the post that worked for me:
With OpenOffice closed, look in the directory in which you have saved the original file, with your computer set to display hidden files. You are looking for a file with name like

.~lock.test.odt#

Delete that file and now you should be able to save your new file under the same original name.
This is a lock file left over after the upgrade caused your computer to shut down. Similar files can be left after a crash.