Presentation destroyed after closing laptop computer

[HofProfit]

Dear fellow members,

I was making a presentation on 2020 (around the 300 sheets). I needed to put the images and audio in it so I could release it.

I closed my laptop down and now the file opens only in writer and gets squares.

Is there any method I can recover the original impress files?

Any help will be highly appreciated.

[RoryOF]

Try the methods in this tutorial
See [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO temporary files for detailed instructions on how to

a) use Previous Versions (W7 and later) to recover previous versions of the file (is there something similar on MacOS and Linux?);

b) recover your file as it was when you last opened or saved it, or as it was when it was last saved with AutoRecovery;

c) find previous versions of the file in the folder it is located in, but which have since been deleted;

d) un-delete the temporary files AOO wrote while you were editing the file, and then deleted. This will recover your file as it was when you last opened or you last saved it.

It you are running LanguageTool on OpenOffice, it may help Impress stability if you disable it while editing the Impress file.

[RoryOF]

Often damage to an OpenOffice file is caused by overhasty power off of the computer, or closing a laptop lid too quickly, before the internal caching of the hard drive has written the file fully to disk.

Use the methods outlined in the above tutorial to attempt recovery, or revert to a backup - timed/dated backups are a good idea, particularly with a file as complex (300 slides) as you indicate.

[John_Ha]

I was making a presentation on 2020 (around the 300 sheets). I needed to put the images and audio in it so I could release it.

If and when you recover your file read Case 2. in 16. Lost images ... and a word of caution about using AutoRecovery. LibreOffice 6.1 may now be better than AOO in [Tutorial] Some useful hints on using images.

I would expect AOO to lose images at random times and would not trust it for a released presentation. I would use either LO or save the presentation as a PDF.

NB this is not the cause of your losing your file.

Please upload the file showing the problem so that it can be analysed. Use the Upload attachment tab below where you type (128 kB max); or use a file share site, Dropbox or Google Drive for a larger file.

[RoryOF]

John_Ha and I differ on this (politely!):

I find that if I go to /File /Options /Load-Save /General and disable "Always create backup copy" (my Network storage won't let OO make auto backups anyway) and "Save AutoRecovery information every ...", my Impress is stable, both for editing, creation of new Impress files and display of Impress files.

Note I am running on Xubuntu, not Windows!

Having done the above, it becomes the User's responsibility to make regular backups - timed/dated backups are good - and to Save the file whenever the User thinks of it (Ctrl S should be instinctive for all serious computer users, to cause a Save take place).

Edit: One other thing: I find that LanguageTool seems to cause occasional instability to Impress editing, so I disable LanguageTool, restart OO, edit my presentation; when all is done I re-enable LanguageTool for my normal use of Writer. The problem may not be LanguageTool, it may be Java, but my priority is to get work done rather than be debugging, so I take a path that works for me.

[John_Ha]

Rory

We do indeed disagree albeit on the most gentlemanly of terms.

It may be Windows but I was recently helping someone with a 40 page presentation with one or more images on every page. It arrived at 170 MBytes and I reduced it to 17 MBytes by optimising it as best as I could.

But, on several occasions I opened it ... and an image or images was/were missing.

I would not give a live presentation with AOO as I think it is too risky and I am very risk averse. Now that LO has rewritten the image handling code to get rid of the problem of lost images I would with LO.

See Image handling rework for LibreOffice – Collabora’s tender results which includes

To save memory – especially with large documents – images that are not currently on screen are sometimes moved out of memory and saved onto disk in a technique known as “swapping” or “paging”. The goal of the tender was to improve LibreOffice in these areas, making it more efficient at handling images and modernising the code base ...

Usually the unique ID is the one that is passed on between layers in LibreOffice (for example, from the ODF filter when loaded, to the model, where it is manipulated and then to the OOXML filter when saving) but the unique ID itself is just a “reference” to the image and by itself it doesn’t have any control over when the image can safely be removed and when not. It could happen that in a certain situation we would still have the unique ID referenced somewhere in the model, but the image would already be removed. This is dangerous and needs to be changed...

[RoryOF]

I always (multiple times) rehearse large presentations of 80+ slides often with multiple images, on both my main computer and on my presentation laptop, (having made the settings I outlined), reviewing and tweaking the speaker's notes and trying to get their main points into my little brain, and subsequently made the presentations and have suffered no loss of so I have no worries; there may be a difference between Xubuntu and Windows 10.

As I rarely use transition effects I always make a PDF version as fall-back - that may put OO on its best behaviour. But you have the experience with Windows, which I don't use (not for 10+ years), so Windows users would be well advised to pay heed to your advice. Nothing is more embarrassing than a computer or program crash in front of an audience.

Edit: My presentation copy is always minimised (/Tools /Minimize presentation)

[John_Ha]

Nothing is more embarrassing than a computer or program crash in front of an audience.

There is - honest!!

I did everything I could to break an AOO Impress file but it would not break. I started with 100 slides each with a 1.5 MB photo. I set AutoRecovery to 1 minute and set the graphics cache to very small value to everything got paged out after a few seconds. I added another 50 slides with 1.5 MB images and scrolled rapidly and selected slides at random. A check of \Temp showed that all the images had been paged out.

But I still could not break it and I didn't lose any images. By now the file was 250 MBytes and taking over two minutes to save.

For the original poster: Be sure to use Tools > Minimise presentation ..., to reduce stored image file sizes. I didn't above.

I searched bugzilla with images and got the following (maybe) relevant hits:

Issue 126844 - saving a document multiplies images in it [Writer] 2016
Issue 126682 - After inserting picture from file, after save, within an hour, the graphic is gone [Writer] 2015
Issue 125767 - Images lost in document when autosave takes place AND previous version was saved on another platform. [Writer] 2015
Issue 125267 - Saves odt files with pictures incorrectly, specifically fills content.xml with draw frame repeats. [Writer] 2014
Issue 118725 - Pictures replaced by "read error" message and dropped [Writer] 2012
Issue 115994 - Images which were inserted with copy-paste disappear after the file is saved. [Writer] 2010
Issue 110255 - Sluggish viewing and freezes (document with 4096 pictures) [Writer] 2010
Issue 49781 - "Read Error" Displayed Between Over-lapped Cropped Images [Writer] 2005
Issue 51222 - Images disapear when I save a document [Writer] 2005

Issue 121433 - Inserted pictures sometimes vanish randomly from the file [Impress] 2012
Issue 117173 - graphic images dropped randomly, and repeatedly, during editing [Impress] 2011
Issue 105879 - Saving .ppt file looses slide images [Impress] 2009

Issue 125997 - aoo startup - missing images*.zip files

Code: Select all

 2015
Issue 102376 - Crash on saving document containing large mount of graphics [Writer] 2009
Issue 95616 - broken image links don't displayed completely [Writer] 2008
Issue 81946 - Writer crashes when scrolling through document containing many large images [Writer] 2007
Issue 80658 - Picture Selection Selects Wrong File If Preview Not Fully Loaded [UI] 2007
Issue 63253 - upper bound of graphics cache should not be constrained [UI] 2006
Issue 59915 - image loss in writer documents, dataloss [Code] 2005

[HofProfit]

Dear fellow forum members,

Upon request the file. It is to big for a direct upload. So I have a dropbox link. https://www.dropbox.com/s/h9lf3lp10gxa3 ... s.odp?dl=0

Any case: lovely weekend!

[RoryOF]

Nothing in your file. Utterly damaged. You should try, if you have not already,, the methods outlined in the Tutorial earlier indicated.