Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I'm noticing Autorecovery might as well be "load last save". When using OpenOffice to edit MS Word 03 (.doc) documents, and office locks up and does an autorecovery on the next startup, the auto-recovery "succeeds" but only loads the file from the last save. Does the autosave ONLY work when editing Open Office document formats or should the recovery feature recover SOME text I typed during the last instance without saving? I've fallen into saving every 5 minutes when working in MSword documents (I HAVE to use this format), and its getting annoying. Sometimes I forget and loose 30 minutes of work. Also, when writer locks up, math locks up too. Why does one app locking up cause all the others to crash?

Idle

It will recover from the last autosave. What frequency do you have autosave set at. I think the defalult is 15 minutes, which in my opinion is too long, I use five minutes.

On the other hand, I do not experience crashes with OO, so it has never had to recover a lost file. Perhaps some work on the cause of your crashes is in order.

Good luck.

I just had this happen to me. I am using the default setting of "Save AutoRecovery information every" 15 minutes.
I was working with 3 open office documents (2 ods Calc document and 1 odt Writer document).

I had been working away happily for 4 hours this morning.
Since there is significant disc activity and some lag during these autosaves, I was lulled into a false sense of security.
Copy paragraph (16 lines of ~30 characters) from first document (writer), go to paste into second document (calc). As I switched documents, I had some significant disc activity (seemed like autosave) and open office exited ungracefully.

Opened up Open Office, went through AutoRecovery routine, only to find all 3 documents are identical to their last saves (identical to when I started this morning).
It would be nice to have some more resilient recovery functionality, especially when one does neglect to save these important documents!

I consider myself a heavy open office user; this instance was on XP, but I work with a second machine running dual boot ubuntu x64 and vista (SP1) x64, with open office on both OS's. Our office (A small but highly productive firm in the upstream oil and gas industry, in Australia) uses open office on more than a dozen systems, in lieu of any MS office software.
Ive had a couple of rare partial successes with AutoRecovery, but mostly it seems to recover just the contents of the document when it was last saved.

I can confirm for OOo 3.0 on Win XP.

The bug had already been filed as Issue 92968 in August, however it didn't get much attention so far - unfortunately. It hasn't even been confirmed yet.
So the chance to resolve it in the release was lost.

Indeed, instead of the file saved for recovery in the folder C:\Documents and settings\username\Application data\OpenOffice.org\3\user\backup, the last saved file is recovered. Additionally, at the point of time of recovery, the file in the backup folder is deleted.

That means that if OOo crashes, the workaround is to go to the backup folder and copy the file to your user folder prior the restarting OOo.

Anyway, I consider this quite a considerable bug that might be very bad for a lot of users.

So please anybody who thinks he is affected vote for this issue in the hope that it is going to be fixed in 3.0.1!

Regards, phil

I've voted and getting the number of votes to 5 automatically confirms it. I've not tried myself but I trust Phil's tests. Definitively a major bug.

Thanks Hagar!

Wasn't aware of this 5 votes limit, but that's quite useful.

So what could we do to make sure this is going to be fixed in 3.0.1? Do we have any chance except voting for the issue?
I am not familiar with the mailing lists, would it make sense to contribute there?

Yes, except do some active "marketing" about that issue, we can't do much more. The mailing list is indeed a good place to start, at least to warn people about your trick. I know that Matthias Bauer (Writer project lead) watch the mailing list, posting here may influence the priority.

Hagar, do you refer to the user@ mailing list?

Yes.

Thanks, Hagar, for posting in the users@ mailing list and pointing to the issue!
Hope it will make its way to 3.0.1 - I also consider it as a real stopper, especially for the rollout in a corporate environment.

I had sent an e-mail to users@ without subscribing which should lead to a moderation according to General & Project Mailing Lists. But the message did not appear.
Honestly, mailing lists really seem to be outdated. If I compare the effectivity and the quality of the discussion to those in our forum, I must say there is a large difference.

Regards, phil

Phil wrote:Thanks, Hagar, for posting in the users@ mailing list and pointing to the issue!

I would have thought that the issue would get more votes afterwards. There are only 3 more. For information, discussion in that thread.

Phil wrote:I had sent an e-mail to users@ without subscribing which should lead to a moderation according to General & Project Mailing Lists. But the message did not appear.

Yes, it takes some time until it goes online when you're not subscribed (requires manual proofreading).

Phil wrote:Honestly, mailing lists really seem to be outdated. If I compare the effectivity and the quality of the discussion to those in our forum, I must say there is a large difference.

Fully agree. Especially for some time (6-8 months) on the OOo user mailing list. Quality level has deeply sunk IMHO because of various rants, emotional outburst, ... Linked to the spread of OOo (like we've seen here but very rarely)? Each time I see those sterile discussions, I say I'll unsubscribe but sometimes, there is a message worth replying so I keep skimming the mail until I'll be definitively fed up with it. What's also depressing is that a mailing list is not a knowledge base so the same questions keep being posted forever. Here, we can rely on detailed threads (that can be updated).

Hagar, I absolutely agree on your view!
Still, some people seem to favor mailing lists, so indeed it is worth contributing there from time to time.

I was able to register to the list via the newsgroup.
I just had do to post once with a news client (thunderbird), then an e-mail asking for confirmation of my e-mail address was sent (although with a considerable delay of many hours). After answering to the e-mail I can now post to the group (which is identical to the list).
That saves me from subscribing to the e-mail list, which I would not have wanted. That way, I am not flooded with messages.

So I posted a message again, that fortunately was answered. I hope Manfred will nominate the bug in releases@..., otherwise I would maybe do it myself. However, I am not sure who should really post to the list - I understood it is rather intended for developpers?

Regards, phil

Success!!!!

Issue 92968 has been started, recognized as regression, set to P2 and targeted to OOo 3.0.1 and has moreover been linked to the Meta Issue 93339 to track the stoppers for the release of OOo 3.0.1.

So thanks everyone for voting, and I believe this discussion has contributed to raise the importance of that issue!

So now I'm really looking forward to 3.0.1!

Regards,
phil

And now Issue 92968 is resolved and fixed!

I must admit that I had doubts initially, but this shows me that the bugtracking system behind OOo works very well!

Regards,
phil

This bug still exists with version 3.4.0