General error or General input/output error opening word doc

[billwarrick]

Just installed 4.1.4 and tried to open an Avery word doc template. First time, received a "General error or General input/output error". Reinstalled, same issue. Found a fix on the forum, but can't find the "Documents and Settings" folder in Win10. Any ideas for help?

[Zizi64]

Just installed 4.1.4 and tried to open an Avery word doc template. First time, received a "General error or General input/output error". Reinstalled, same issue.

- Try the LibreOffice. It has higher compatibility with the never-standardized, foreign fileformats.

[Bill]

Please post a link to the fix. Documents and Settings was last used in Windows XP. It has never existed in Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10.

[John_Ha]

can't find the "Documents and Settings" folder in Win10.

What came after Documents and Settings? You want the same thing in Start > Control Panel ..., or Start > Settings ...

That being said it is usually a problem with the .doc or .docx file itself. Can you please give the exact words of the error message, and exactly what you did to cause the message to appear.

[John_Ha]

Do you run Windows Defender? If so, tell it that C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice 4\program\soffice.bin is a trusted application.

If your problem is solved please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

[billwarrick]

Appreciate the quick responses all. It looks like I do run Windows Defender. I added soffce.bin as a trusted app, but when I went to open the avery word doc template again (through 'open' and directly from WinExp), I still received the following error message which prohibits any further actions.

General error.
General input/output error.

[John_Ha]

See [Solved] Windows Defender prevents file opening for some clues where authorising soffice.bin fixed it. Try File > Open ..., and navigate to a .doc or .odt file in C:\Users\xxxxxx\Documents\, edit it and try saving it.

I don't know Windows Defender - is there a method where you can tell Defender to accept AOO, and Defender finds all the files it needs to authorise? You could also try authorising soffice.exe and swriter.exe.

See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.

If your problem is solved please view your first post in this thread and click the Edit button (top right in the post) and add [Solved] in front of the subject.

[Bill]

It looks like I do run Windows Defender. I added soffce.bin as a trusted app, but when I went to open the avery word doc template again (through 'open' and directly from WinExp), I still received the following error message which prohibits any further actions.

General error.
General input/output error.

How did you add soffice.bin "as a trusted app"? I'm not familiar with any component of Windows Defender causing a "general input/output error" when opening a file. The Controlled Folder Access component can cause that error when saving a file.

[John_Ha]

See Troubleshooting Common Problems for AOO 4.1.5 which says:

Edit: This web page is very old (it was written with Windows XP in mind!) and completely obsolete and it has now been deleted. I am therefore not sure whether the advice I give below is correct. I am leaving it because I do not think it can do harm and it may still be valid - my AOO 4.1.5 has files script.xlc and dialog.xlc in C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\basic. However, use it with care and be sure to keep copies of the old files so you can back it out and go back to your previous setup if it does not work.

General error or General input/output error

This error message indicates that the files script.xlc and dialog.xlc could be missing or corrupted.

Edit: The web page gives the wrong Windows paths below so I have corrected them. The Unix paths may also be out of date ???

In UNIX-based environments, look for them in the directory $HOME/.openoffice.org<release>/user/basic.

In Windows ® environments, look for them in the directory C:\Document and Settings\<username>\Application Data\OpenOffice.org<release>\user\basic C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\basic

To fix the problem, exit OpenOffice.org (including the Quickstarter, if it is running) and copy the files as detailed below.

In UNIX-based environments, copy from the directory <where_OOo_is_installed>/presets/basic/ to $HOME/.openoffice.org<release>/user/basic

On a Windows® computer, copy from C:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org<release>\presets\basic C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenOffice 4\presets\basic to C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\OpenOffice.org<release>\user\basic C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice\4\user\basic.

Note: To be absolutely safe, one could also delete the local settings directory. By doing this, however, all personal settings and customizations could be lost.

I have raised a bug report Issue 127641 - Troubleshooting Common Problems webpage is badly out of date - incorrect information

[JK1903]

I've got this type of problem with at least two documents. I have created the documents from scratch with OpenOffice Writer and saved them as rtf-files. Everything has worked fine until one day I cannot open the file anymore, getting an I/O-error message.

A lot of work lost until... Today I suddenly got an idea that helped me repair the files: Open the file in WordPad. It opens, then save it (maybe with a new name) and after that the file opens in Write as well!

Hope this works for you too.

[John_Ha]

I have created the documents from scratch with OpenOffice Writer and saved them as rtf-files.

Never save as a .rtf. See [Tutorial] Differences between Writer and MS Word files for why you should always work in and save files as .odt.