OpenOffice 4.1.4 Calc Hangs on MacOS 10.13.2

[u4sdrbrp]

I've been using OpenOffice versions of Calc for years to keep up with my personal finances without problems. Since upgrading my MacOS to Sierra and now High Sierra (10.13.2), the simplest operation like changing tabs or putting a background color on a cell sometimes causes OO to hang up (the twirling rainbow circle). The only way I can get out is to Force Quit. When I bring up the spreadsheet again, it is able to recover it, but, with all my recent entries missing. I have looked on other Forums and some have suggested it is a Java problem. I have the current version of Java on my Mac (Version 8 Update 151), but, in the OO Preferences under the Java section it says the Java JRE version is 1.8.0_151 (which is probably the same). Any suggestions about what to try to avoid the hang ups? Thank you in advance for your advice.

[MrProgrammer]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

Since upgrading my MacOS to Sierra and now High Sierra (10.13.2), the simplest operation like changing tabs or putting a background color on a cell sometimes causes OO to hang up (the twirling rainbow circle). Any suggestions about what to try to avoid the hang ups?

[Tutorial] Mac FAQ, Q15/A15, Q06/A06, and/or Q02/A02.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[u4sdrbrp]

Sorry MrProgrammer, but, I've tried all of those suggestions and nothing has changed. Thank you for the information though. Anyone else?

[jackrcook]

I have experienced a similar problem with my current versions of Calc and OS X. It might right itself if you wait long enough. Of course that is not the solution we would want.

I have found that re-booting the OS (re-start or shutdown) clears up some sort of cache that gets rid of the spinning beach ball when making entries, or saving a perfectly good file.

Hope this helps your situation.

PS My profile needs to be updated to OO 4.1.4, OS X 10.12.6

[u4sdrbrp]

Thank you jackrcook for your suggestion. I have noticed that if you wait long enough it will eventually work, but, that's often minutes. I'll try re-booting to see if that helps. For now I can go upstairs and use my wife's Windows 10 machine to make the changes on the file I need to. Hope the next OO for Mac will improve this situation. Thanks again for the suggestion

[RoryOF]

A version 4.1.5 which fixes several Mac-related problems is in course of transmission to the world-wide distribution servers. Its general availability will be announced on forum as soon as this distribution is complete.

I have no knowledge of how appropriate it is for the stated problem on MacOS 10.13.2

[u4sdrbrp]

First, thank you for all the suggestions. Now the latest:

I downloaded the 4.1.5 version suggested by RoryOF with the same results. No improvement.

Then recently I finally tried MrProgrammer's suggestion of "Safe Booting" the Mac and used OO Calc extensively and had no problems at all while in Safe mode, but, once I returned to Normal mode the problem of long times do what seems like random routine operations still occurred.

Does this added information trigger any new suggestions? Any help would be appreciated.

[u4sdrbrp]

One more thing I've tried:

I saw a statement online that if you have no problems in Safe Mode, look at the Login programs that start under your user and remove them one at a time until your problem is solved. I have removed all login programs and the twirling rainbow circle still occurs randomly. If I wait a long time (sometimes minutes) it will often complete the task. I'm beginning to think that this may be a problem with the High Sierra Operating System and not OpenOffice.Thanks again for all the suggestions.

[lotic]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

Since upgrading my MacOS to Sierra and now High Sierra (10.13.2), the simplest operation like changing tabs or putting a background color on a cell sometimes causes OO to hang up (the twirling rainbow circle). Any suggestions about what to try to avoid the hang ups?

[Tutorial] Mac FAQ, Q15/A15, Q06/A06, and/or Q02/A02.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

Hi MrProgrammer !

I have been struggling with getting OpenOffice not to freeze up on my iMac. Trolling through all the things I just can't make it work.

Today I had a crash and when I inspected the running process it showed a runaway thread! ....
Doing a search on the issue I found the LibreOffice team fixed the problem. I was hard to trackdown and something that was broken from early days and was caught back in 2012.

The problem is on Calc when you select / copy paste etc....

LibreOffice works with this fix but I prefer OpenOffice as the LibreOffice Interface on the mac sucks

I hope that someone can implement the fix in Open Office to as it unusable for me

Here is the extract from the BugReport: found at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/sho ... i?id=56937

Comment 12... 2012-12-18 12:59:27 UTC
Wow - so it seems the spreadsheet a11y code is really broken and for some reason we only see it now:

uno::Reference< XAccessible > SAL_CALL
ScAccessibleTableBase::getAccessibleChild(sal_Int32 nIndex)
throw (uno::RuntimeException,
lang::IndexOutOfBoundsException)
{
SolarMutexGuard aGuard;
IsObjectValid();

if (nIndex >= getAccessibleChildCount() || nIndex < 0)
throw lang::IndexOutOfBoundsException();

sal_Int32 nRow(0);
sal_Int32 nColumn(0);
sal_Int32 nTemp(maRange.aEnd.Col() - maRange.aStart.Col() + 1);
nRow = nIndex / nTemp;
nColumn = nIndex % nTemp;
return getAccessibleCellAt(nRow, nColumn);
}

It rather looks like we're iterating over all the cells in a spreadsheet in some horrible way - creating new a11y peers for them - just in order to see if we have a hit test

That looks really dumb to me apparently no cropping only for cells that are visible even is present
Comment 13 Michael Meeks 2012-12-18 13:02:23 UTC
ScAccessibleSpreadsheet::ScAccessibleSpreadsheet(
ScAccessibleDocument* pAccDoc,
ScTabViewShell* pViewShell,
SCTAB nTab,
ScSplitPos eSplitPos)
:
ScAccessibleTableBase (pAccDoc, GetDocument(pViewShell),
ScRange(ScAddress(0, 0, nTab),ScAddress(MAXCOL, MAXROW, nTab))),

so - this loop could never complete - even if it could do all 10^6 * 10^4 cells.

Wow - what a monster.

Fundamentally this comes down to a -really- poor set of standards body decisions that try to improve and increase a11y by exposing near infinite sets of data to an accessibility-technology ignorant of the risks, and through a totally inadequate API.

Having said that - we screw this up really badly for hit testing - and apparently always have.
Comment 14.... 2012-12-18 13:29:49 UTC
Got it - however, I really need someone to test my patch: a plain compile test on Mac would be appreciated, I'm pretty confident in the logic - I'll attach that.
...patch - needs compile testing (please)

Comment 21.... 2012-12-18 16:05:17 UTC
I reproduced the bug, then applied Michael's patch and verified that it helps, yes! Pushed to master.
Comment 22 Not Assigned 2012-12-18 16:10:35 UTC
It has been pushed to "master":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice ... f85923c9d

fdo#56937 - mac a11y hang related to traversing vast, broken hierarchies.



The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Comment 23 Not Assigned 2012-12-18 16:53:13 UTC
Michael Meeks committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "libreoffice-3-6":

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice ... office-3-6

fdo#56937 - mac a11y hang related to traversing vast, broken hierarchies.


It will be available in LibreOffice 3.6.5.

The patch should be included in the daily builds available at
http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More
information about daily builds can be found at:
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds
Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.

[MrProgrammer]

I hope that someone can implement the fix in Open Office to as it unusable for me

I note that this is your first post, so I will guess that you are not familiar with this forum. If you had read our Survival Guide you would know that asking for a fix here is a waste of time.

Do you have installed any window management/user interface utilities/apps/control panels/extensions for Mac OS X like
* AquaSnap * BetterSnapTool
* BetterTouchTool * Breeze
* Cinch * Divvy
* DoublePane * Flexiglass
* HyperDock * iSnap
* Moom * RightZoom
* ShiftIt * SizeUp
* SizeWell * Spectacle
* Stay * TileWindows
* WindowTidy ... or something similar?

And/or do you use any mouse cursor/pointer utility, i.e. some little application or control panel etc. which animates or replaces etc. the mouse curser/pointer, like
* LazyMouse?

And/or do you use any special software which could be related to accessibility stuff, e.g. a screen reader, screen magnifier, speech recognition software, a text-to-speech (dictation) application, or similar?

All these and many similar utilities rely heavily on Mac OS accessibility features and therefore can cause LibreOffice to crash or freeze. So please check if you have installed any utility of this kind and try to disable it

Or to add LibreOffice to the list of excluded applications for the utility,if there is such a thing.

You're right, I have BetterTouchTool installed (version 0.91).
I tried to disable/enable features to narrow the bug down and I was successful. :)
When I disable the BetterTouchTool functionality named "Enable window snapping", LibreOffice doesn't freeze.

You have perhaps installed software on your Mac which is incompatible with OpenOffice. If you want to use OpenOffice, you can remove that incompatible software. Read discussion about other difficulties related to incompatible software (Magnet) in [Solved] Fatal Error "index out of bounds" when open docs.

[jackrcook]

For what its worth, I restart my iMac every time I plan to use Calc right before I start.
The spinning beach ball is a thing of the past since I do that.