Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

So I started using OpenOffice today, so I am pretty new at this. But whenever I try to open any file with writer or other OO programs it stops responding. I have tried creating a new file on desktop, opening .docx files etc. I can't get it to work. What can I do?

Start by deleting the OpenOffice user profile. It is known that sometimes the initial user profile can be corrupt, causing problems. As you are using Windows do this by:

Close OpenOffice and the Quickstarter. Open File Explorer. Copy and paste %appdata%\OpenOffice\4 in the File Explorer Address Bar and press Enter. Delete or Rename the "user" folder. Start OpenOffice.

Hello, I have tried doing that and it still stops responding.

After you deleted the OO user profile, did it prompt you for name/initials on next startup?

Yes, it did prompt me.

Then you did the delete correctly.

Try starting Windows in Safe Mode. If OpenOffice runs correctly in that mode then the problem is caused by some program or driver which runs in Windows normal mode and interferes with OO. If OO does not run in Windows Safe Mode then you should uninstall OO, reboot, then install from a new download, making sure to download only from http://www.openoffice.org/download/

You should also do your initial experiments creating and reading only .odt files - OO can (sort of) read .docx, but cannot write them.

hi i have the same issue was using 4.1.2 and en all of a sudden when i opened any oo program or file it would say "not responding" have tried renaming the user file as suggested and this has still not worked. can you advise me on how to open windows in safe mode. to my knowledge nothing has changed and i have not changed anything.
regards
Danny

Google is your friend

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... -safe-mode

It still doesn't work well with .docx files I presume It crashes every time I try to open same .docx document. It brings up "document restore" feature, but restores 0 documents, then reloads itself.

Did you try running Windows in Safe mode to see if the problem persists? Does the problem happen with only one docx files, or all docx files you try?

robleyd wrote:Did you try running Windows in Safe mode to see if the problem persists? Does the problem happen with only one docx files, or all docx files you try?

I tried copying contents of this .docx file to a new one and it still crashes. If you convert to .doc with ms word it opens it okay, I'll try it in safe mode and post an UPD later, it's hard to go to safe mode because my machine uses domain account

zod1 wrote:I tried copying contents of this .docx file to a new [.docx] one and it still crashes. If you convert to .doc with ms word it opens it okay

That strongly suggests the .docx file is corrupt or uses content not supported by AOO, but supported (or the corruption is handled) by MS Word. Saving it as .doc removes content, and this is the content containing the corruption or non-supported matter.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for a discussion of the difference between .doc and .docx files.

Close AOO. Delete all lock files with names like .~lock.Fred.odt# - they are hidden files located in the same folder as Fred.odt.
Try opening this test.docx file.

Also, LibreOffice 5.3.3.2 can open this same .docx without issues. Is there a logfile to post here by any chance?

See Items 8 and 9 in [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for an explanation