by Ayanin » Sat Apr 03, 2010 5:54 pm
For some reason, the files I'd backed up the day before opened, but any open office file that was actually on my computer, created after I got this computer (and installed open office on it), opened as "####". So somehow, it identified every file I had made on this computer since I've had it, (not those from a previous computer, or those from my cds), and opened only those "current" files as "####".
Talk about bizarre. It sounds like it definitely had something to do with the install of OO on THIS computer. But no matter what I did... re-installing, messing with profiles... nothing worked. And the problem carried over to other machines trying to open the files.
Basically what I've done was to restore everything from the day before yesterday from my cd, but... I lost some irreplaceable work because of this. I'm still debating whether I want to take a chance with this in the future, or just go back to my much crappier paid software (which I can ill afford to do). Regardless of what the problem actually WAS, there was no crash in Open Office. That is, unlike other people, it wasn't that my computer suddenly shut off, or that OO suddenly crashed, or that my hard drive is dying, or that I have a virus (trust me... I don't use Internet Explorer for that reason, and since using firefox, the only time I EVER have problems is on the rare occasion I open Explorer, and then it's only spyware, which I remove immediately because I know the moment I use that piece-o-junk, there will always be spyware). I am exceedingly careful with my computer because my work is on it. I don't visit pirate-media sites, I don't really play video games, I don't even usually go to forums... nothing. I work, and read the news on here, and watch an occasional video on a site I've never once had problems with (other than my previous computer's dire lack of ram). So whatever the problem is, it's NOT my computer, it's definitely not a virus (I'm not exactly computer illiterate... I grew up with a brother who builds and programs them), and there was no crash in any of my software when this happened. One minute it was fine. The next minute... not fine.
So the only thing I can think of is, somehow my copying and pasting asian (Japanese) text into a file I didn't even save... somehow that apparently caused it to have a meltdown where text encoding was concerned, and then associate whatever it did because of it with all of the existing OO files on this computer. I would LOVE for the programmers to look into this problem from that angle, because that is probably what happened last time I had this problem, too. (I work with Japanese text a lot, but not usually in OO.) It is, after all, related to text handling, and somewhat out of the realm of ordinary use. My guess would be, where the English version is concerned, there probably haven't been enough people using Asian text in it to really find all of the bugs that might come up with doing so. The text was also copied from a rather ancient (90's) Japanese word processor (an ancient version of NJStar), which probably didn't help, I suppose. That was the last thing I did in open office, before the problem began, and while the program closed and everything just fine at the time, when I opened my other files, there were the "###'s.
I think this is a case of two different bugs having the same result, in other words. Apparently this can happen if the file becomes corrupt or a person's machine or program crashes... but apparently it can ALSO happen with some kind of weird asian text issue, even without any kind of crash or system/software malfunction.
Thanks anyhow for trying to help. I just hope that someone looks into this OTHER issue, rather than everyone continuing to assume the problem is caused only one way. Clearly that is not the case.
Open office 3.2 with Windows XP