OpenOffice fails to open

[Guffer]

Hi All,

Suddenly, my Open Office files fail to open. Upon clicking an icon (Word, xls, ...) the Open Office box appears for a short while, then disappears and that's it. I've restarted the computer without result.

PS: As I can't open any file, the version number provided in my signature is probably wrong.

Any suggestion is highly appreciated.

[RoryOF]

What is your operating system?

[Guffer]

As it says on my signature: Ubuntu 18.04...

[RoryOF]

OK, I was just checking in case that was incorrect.

Start a terminal and type openoffice4. That will start OpenOffice; use /File /Open to try a file. If OO crashes, the terminal will probably give an error message. Please note this in case we need it.

Pending further information and help I suggest you try renaming your OpenOffice User profile. Use the File Manager, enable viewing of hidden files (Ctrl H) , double click on .openoffice, double click on the 4 (or 3) revealed, then rename "User" to "user.old". If OpenOffice doesn't then work correctly, I suggest you reinstall it.

[Guffer]

Okay,

I tried first opening OO through the Terminal, but all I got back was "command not found". I retried with using 3 (and even 2 and 1) instead of 4, all with the same result.
Then I went via File Manager and renamed to user.old as you suggested and that didn't help either.

Son I guess I need reinstall, yeah?

[RoryOF]

For Linux users: when trying to open via terminal, note that there is no space between openoffice and the 4; also, openoffice4 in terminal must be lowercase.

I would try a reinstall.

[Guffer]

Okay.

Thanks for helping me out. Any idea what made have caused this?

[RoryOF]

No idea at all! I use Xubuntu 18.04 and OpenOffice on all my computers and they are stable.

[Hagar Delest]

Type in the terminal soffice.
It may be an older version.

You can also try to reset your OpenOffice user profile.

[RoryOF]

Question also asked at
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/191888/libreoffice-files-no-longer-open/