Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I've been having an occasional error when OO writer saves a file. Most of the time it works fine, but every once in a while I get prompted to set the Ascii filter type for a file. If I accept the defaults, then all I get is a screen full of #####. Everything I've written is completely lost. To make matters worse, when I try and use the auto-backup file, it's waaay out of date. Even if I save regularly the file, the backup is several saves old. This is really frustrating cause now I have to rewrite large parts of the file again!

1) Does anyone know why the files are getting corrupted(?) somehow?
2) Why doesn't the autobackup feature work right?

very, very, very annoying.

Welcome to this forum, cjgomez65!

It would help to know which version of OOo you are using as well as your OS. But more generally, many people have experienced loos of documents for one of the following reasons (this list is NOT exhaustive):
- Save in non-OOo native format called odf, i.e. use of Excel, Word formats;
- Very complex or very large documents;
- Hardware problem; save on USB keys;
- Lack of backup by the writer

To Squenson's remarks I would add, working on a laptop or netbook and suspending by just shutting the lid. You are also running Vista. XP is more stable, Windows 2000 even better (both not supported now).

I think that apart from saving to the USB problem most problems are caused by system stability. Have you music/radio playing on the laptop while you work? Turn it off. Stick a CD on your ghetto blaster if you must have noise while you work. Have you many files open at a time, particularly in other applications? Turn them off. People forget that computers running word processors are tools, not entertainment machines. You don't attempt to write a paper using pen and pencil and at the same time play the violin. Why should you expect your computer to do so?

totally ignoring everything RoryOF said. I generally run multiple applications (Dreamweaver, iTunes, SQL Studio Express, OO - often with several files open, IE8 and Chrome) with no problems on a Vista 64-bit OS.

Backup is enabled but not saving correctly, per my email. The doc in question is not very large. only 4 pages. no other apps running at the time. files being saved in odt format. using OO3.1.1. problem occured with earlier versions, too.

From some recent messages in this forum, it seems that the 64-bit version generates more errors that the mainstream 32-bit version. Also, I recommend a manual backup of important documents, in a separate folder and with versioning. I recommend to use Windows explorer Ctrl-c Ctrl-v to copy the document, every 20-30 minutes or so.

Some similar cases here: 22 page term paper replaced with pound signs.

cjgomez65 wrote:totally ignoring everything RoryOF said. I generally run multiple applications (Dreamweaver, iTunes, SQL Studio Express, OO - often with several files open, IE8 and Chrome) with no problems on a Vista 64-bit OS,

By all means - your decision. I have not lost a document in many years and do a lot of writing.

I've been writing for years, too, and I never lost a doc until I started using Open Office...

What format are you saving in .doc or .odt. If the latter you may be able to recover your lost data. If you unzip the file you will hopefully be able to recover the text fron the content.xml file.

Cambirder wrote:What format are you saving in .doc or .odt. If the latter you may be able to recover your lost data.

Even in .odt there is nothing much to be done it seems. I've listed similar cases in that post. (But I may have missed some others).

Even in .odt there is nothing much to be done it seems.

You could be right there, but still worth a try I think.

Yes, of course. But I fear there is something not related to the OS or version or format. But what??? There has been a clear period of time when the other topics popped up and then nothing.

I agree with you Hagar, there has been a surge of requests about damaged documents in the past few months and unfortunately this type of bug is *very* difficult to catch as it is very rare and difficult to reproduce. It was a very good idea to regroup all these incidents in order to see whether there is a pattern or not. Stability is the number one feature of a software.

Yes, I have to agree with most of the negative comments above. As long as you stick with small documents OO seems to tolerate you. However, if you say try to create a 100MB file out of images, it craters or doesn't and just doesn't save stuff! What's with that? Lack of Unit Testing? Of course, I am forced to use a 32bit version of Office on a WinXP 64 machine loaded to the gills, which I might add is getting old rather quickly.

I am going to try on my Ubuntu system where I have a 64bit version of this app installed to see if that mitigates any of this disaster.

What I don't understand, is OO doesn't have to add any crazy flashy crap like Win Office did, that's all eye-candy and IMHO su#^$ anyway. It just has to be fault tolarant and good, very very good at what it does. As far as I am concerned I should be able to fill up memory before the thing crashes, but that ain't happening right now...so I am a bit dismayed, since I have a lot of stuff in odt and can't see myself going to redmondware anytime soon.

Insights?
Comments?
Suggestions?

P.S. Normally I split my docs into subdocs, and even after I do that its sort of a hassle. OO seems to get up to 1.6GB memory and craps out after that....that's the 32bit ceiling, no?