Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I recently installed open office 4.1.7 and created a spreadsheet. After lots of work, I saved the file. A day or so later, I re-opened the file to find that it had been modified. I could no longer edit it or add to it. I did the file over again and the same thing happened. Some one has entered my computer and changed my file. There was a message, stating the it was an unauthorized copy of Excel. How can someone enter my computer and change my file?? Is there anything I can do to block such entry??

Knowing more details will help people figure out what is happening.
What are the symptoms of you not being able to edit the file? Is there any warning or error that appears?
What do you mean when you say the file has been modified? Is the content slightly different or is it now totally garbled or something else.
When does the message about an unauthorized version of Excel appear?

If you are concerned about someone accessing your system, you should change the login password for Windows.

Please post an exact quote of the error message. Excel is an application. A spreadsheet is a data file. A spreadsheet can not be a "copy of Excel".

When I open my open-office spreadsheet file, the header says "cash - Excel (Unlicensed Product)". My file is named "cash". Then, down below that it says "Notice Most features are disabled because your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the web version". None of the above quotes were put there by me. The contents of the file are as in the original file I created, except they are grayed out, and cannot be altered.

It would appear that Windows is opening your file with Excel instead of OpenOffice - perhaps there has been a recent Windows update that resets your file associations; this seems to be a not uncommon occurrence judging by the number of posts about it here. Simply reset the file associations to open your documents with OpenOffice instead of MS Office.

Do you save in .xls?
Or has your file association for .ods been reset to MS Excel?

Open AOO first and then try to open your file. If it works fine, then set the file association to AOO for your file type (be it .xls or .ods). See [Tutorial] Setting the default program to open files.

Please add [Solved] at the beginning of the title in your first post (top of the topic) with the *EDIT button if your issue has been fixed.

denst wrote:When I open my open-office spreadsheet file, the header says "cash - Excel (Unlicensed Product)". My file is named "cash". Then, down below that it says "Notice Most features are disabled because your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the web version". None of the above quotes were put there by me. The contents of the file are as in the original file I created, except they are grayed out, and cannot be altered.

That sounds normal for files opened with a version of MS Office that has not been activated. "cash - Excel" in the Title Bar indicates that the file has been opened using Excel, not Calc. When the file is opened using Calc, the Title Bar should show "cash - OpenOffice Calc". The unactivated version of MS Office has taken over the file association for the OpenOffice files. This means that when you double-click one of those files, it will be opened with MS Office and not with OpenOffice. You have to reset the file associations if you want the files to open with OpenOffice. There have been reports that Windows updates change the file associations back to MS Office, so you may need to reset the file associations after Windows updates.

"Open AOO first, then open the file." THAT WORKS! Thank you.. I can' find the first post, and the edit button. I want to mark my post solved.

OK, but the actual issue is the file association then. See the tutorial to fix it.