Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

[The following is best read with the sense of desperation I'm feeling.] I've been working on a thesis for the past year. Currently ~250 pages. Not keen on retyping it. One fine day, while holding down the shift key thinking about how to begin my next sentence, stickykeys (or filterkeys) turned itself on. And my Writer document began unraveling (literally). Custom character styles don't all show (i.e., some instances of the style display on screen while others are only 'visible' by virtue of the squiggly red line extending across the page indicating a misspelled word), TOC index is missing elements, captions for tables and objects display vertically rather than horizontally . . . The whole thing is just knackered. I have tried a number of 'fixes': pressing both shift keys at the same time; pressing shift f7 shift together; holding the right shift key for * seconds; changing registry key values. Nothing works. If I take my document to a different computer, it displays fine. Any ideas how to cure my document / machine interaction?

I thought the problem was fixed when you reinstalled Windows and turned off all the accessibility options. Did you turn the accessibility options back on?

hard-formatting now hidden

lengo wrote:I've been working on a thesis for the past year. Currently ~250 pages. Not keen on retyping it.

Probably very obvious, but too many times I have seen it *not* happen...

With a document this large, and this important to you, I hope you are taking regular, multiple backups to different media?
I'd also recommend that at least one of these is manual (not done with software but you actually copy it somewhere yourself such as onto a USB key).

As Bill says your other thread suggests the problem is fixed

Hmmm . . . For some reason I didn't get your replies, guys. Guess 'cause I didn't have that little box checked down there. It is now! But I'm back here b/c my problem is back as well, and I haven't messed with sticky keys. The document is backed up in a number of different places--I e-mail it to myself daily at gmail and hotmail, and I have it on a usb key, two SD cards, and an external HD; all of these are 'manual'. So I think I've got that covered. But what about the problem?! Has anyone experienced this before? Or am I so special that it has only happened to me? Is there any way to look at the 'guts' of the document (xml?) to see if anything is wrong? Still hoping for a solution . . .

I have occasionally had the frustration of sticky keys / ctrl key being stuck "on". However, this has never for me resulted in...

lengo wrote:my Writer document began unraveling (literally). Custom character styles don't all show (i.e., some instances of the style display on screen while others are only 'visible' by virtue of the squiggly red line extending across the page indicating a misspelled word), TOC index is missing elements, captions for tables and objects display vertically rather than horizontally

Glad to hear you're safely backed up

lengo wrote:Is there any way to look at the 'guts' of the document (xml?) to see if anything is wrong?

Well yes, right-click and extract the document's component parts, but I don't think this will reveal anything for you. If it displays fine on other computers I think the problem is more likely to be with yours

You could try renaming your OOo Profile, or creating a new Windows profile, but if you have reinstalled Windows already perhaps that won't work The other thing could be a problem with your keyboard or something, but really clutching at straws now!

"Grasping at straws" is a fair description of where I'm at! I do have a dual-boot setup (XP / Ubuntu), and I've found that everything is hunky-dory in Linux (with my document, at least) . . . Could this be the straw that breaks the camel's back and prompts me to switch from XP for good? [Sheesh, today must be cliche day or something! Sorry 'bout that.] Well, thanks for your help. At this point I think my issue gets chalked up to an anomaly in the ether. As long as I can work with my document somewhere somehow, I'm happy. Just wondered if someone had a surefire solution.