[Solved] Can't type more than 257722 characters in document

[Robedob22]

This is a weird problem - I'll try and give as many details as I can.

I can delete four characters and type another four in their place, but it's like there's a 257722 character limit on the document I'm working on.
I can't copy and paste new text into the document past that limit (but copy and pasting a four letter word in after deleting four or more characters works fine).
Once that limit is reached, the program isn't responding to typed inputs in any meaningful way - nothing happens.

I've tried resetting the user profile, and it's not a keyboard issue.
I've worked with documents that are bigger than this one before on the same system.
There are a lot of comments that can cause slowdown on the document, but never this issue.

Working in a fresh document works for now, but eventually I'm going to need to combine the two.
Would appreciate any help.

[Hagar Delest]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

I know about the 64k limit for characters in a single paragraph but not about any limit for a file.
Can you confirm that you can't add character in any part of the document?
Perhaps the paragraph you're trying to change has already 64k characters.

[robleyd]

At a guess, you are making significant use of Shift+Enter to force a new line, rather than using just Enter to create a new paragraph. Writer has a maximum of 64K characters in a paragraph; I would suspect you have hit this limit in the current paragraph.

[RoryOF]

I have had and have files with far more than 257722 characters running under all versions of OpenOffice. As robleyd says, you are probably using Shift Enter to mark paragraphs, rather than Enter.

To cure this use Find and Replace
in Find enter \n
in Replace enter \n
drop More Options and select "Regular Expressions" - this is most important - the fix will NOT WORK WITHOUT THIS
then press Replace All.

To mark a paragraph end, use Enter; there is no need to mark line ends - OpenOffice will wrap automatically to the next line. If you need further formatting help this document has proved helpful for many:
Writer for students (several languages)

[Zizi64]

Andrew Pitonyak's free macro books contain more than 1,000,000 characters, and it was created in the OpenOffice/LibreOffice:
https://www.pitonyak.org/OOME_4_0.odt

Click on the picture for a better view.

[RoryOF]

To help determine the cause, turn on /View /Non printing characters (that same command turns off the display)

This will show the construction characters of the file. Paragraph ends (Enter) will be shown as a backwards P (recte: a Pilcrow), line breaks produced by Ctrl Enter will be shown as a left pointing hooked arrow. Spaces as a raised dot, tabs as a right arrow.

Many using OpenOffice for serious formatting will have that command turned on all the time - one quickly gets used to it and concentrates on the actual text, not the formatting.

[Robedob22]

Seems like the problem was overuse of shift+enter for paragraph breaks.

I remember having just pressing enter for a paragraph break causing some weird formatting for me once, so I must've gotten into the habit of doing it every time.

Thanks, I really appreciate all the replies and help fixing this issue.