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/

[dj2020]

Try to start OO as root. If this works than there is something in your profile that OO doesn't like. Try to delete or to rename the .fonts folder in your home directory (if you installed MS fonts there). In my case this solved the problem.