Open Office
 

My original Open Office suddenly began going into recovery mode whenever I opened it. It then gave a message 'recovery failed'. When the screen finally came up it was in a very poor resolution colour.
I un-installed it and down loaded the latest version, purchasing a 3 year VIP Access in the process. This new download is showing exactly the same format as my previous one.
Would appreciate some advice on this.

I have MS Vista Home

Get rid of Vista. :E


Did you do a complete reboot after un-installing Office, before the new installation?

Also try a tool that searches the registry for orphan entries of office before installing the new version.

I installed Open Office of one of our machines. After a few days the child said "Daddy, please can I have the real Office?".

So I installed the real Office and have never had any such problems as you describe.

Looks like an old trick from MS to kill those who wants to compete with them. Just like how they killed Lotus and Borland with their DOS. They have some undocumented INT calls and API calls that will crash the competitors app, and the competitors app will look buggy, yet in reality it's the OS they're in that makes them crash. deja vu

I'd contact the folks @ Open Office. I had to forcefully install OO on my laptop, but have to admit that I have gotten used to it and prefer it now over the "original" office. :uhoh:

Thanks for replies. Went into properties and the 'run in 256 colours' box was ticked. Removed tick and hey presto it worked!

Everyone in our practice (12 people) uses OpenOffice on a variety of platforms (Mac, Linux, Windows) without problems and transitioned easily.

Fairly typical of Gertrude to suggest removing OpenOffice as a cure for an incorrect setting in the base OS. Even MSOffice would have looked odd.

But that's an MS fanboi for you.

:ok:

Mac

Snide little comment there, MtK.

That's the bit that interests me...

!)

Good point Bushfiva. It came up in a window I had to fill in to proceed to the actual download. Not sure what I'm getting for my money but I needed Office so went ahead. I did contact them when the same problem appeared but all I got back was another download instruction which didn't fix the problem. Should've spent a bit more time solving the problem on the original installed Office. We live and learn!

Goudie, for future reference beware of such sites. OpenOffice is freely available from many sources, the canonical site being openoffice.org. I'm guessing the site you registered for does nothing other than take money from you, for providing a link to software that is freely available. No (or very few) legitimate sites require multi-year subscriptions to download random software. You may want to go back to the site and check the terms and conditions, to make sure your credit card won't be billed again in 3 years.

Thanks for the advice Bushfiva. There was a 7 days money back clause which I've just invoked. Be interesting to see what happens

Indeed, one of the many good things about OpenOffice is there is a lively community out there that is competent, and willing, to help, for free. Do not pay for this!

I'd have told the blighter that they can have 'real' office when they pay for it out of their 'real' pocket money.

Glad you got the problem sorted goudie. Like others have said though, no need to pay for the product or any support for it.

Actually got in touch with them and demanded a refund. I'm assured the money is on it's way to my account!

Does Open Office need to take so long to download? It doesn't seem to be the size but, rather, the speed from their website. I had a much earlier version on my W98 dinosaur and I don't remember the download being such a nightmare. I've let it do it's thing on this XP machine but, when I went back to it about four hours later, I had a message telling me that it had taken so long that the process had been closed down (or something like that!).

Goudie

I would be carefully checking my account for the next few days just in case

The downloads are mirrored across the world. A mirror close to your location (as per geoip) is automatically selected for you in the Download page. If that one seems to go too slow, you have a number of options:

* Cancel the download, and visit the download page again. Hopefully a different and faster mirror will be selected.
* Use P2P. There is a link somewhere in the downloads page.
* Manually select a mirror. Again, there is a link in the downloads page to a list of mirrors--this is a bit more technical than it should be, as it does not appear to be targeted at unsophisticated end users, for some reason.

All of this assumes you are using Windows. If using Linux, it will come from your distro's repository via the usual mechanism so none of the above applies. Don't know anything about Mac software.


cdtaylor,

The post you are replying to is from 2009!

Thank you for that LH2! Yes, I am using Windows - XP SP3.

I have visited the principal download site several times. The first time it siad that the download would take three hours so I left it to get on with it. When I came back I had that message about t all having taken too long and so had been chopped. On each subsequent visit, as soon as I was told that the download would be equally slow, I chopped it first! I have come through other links to that same page but with the same result each time, too slow.

I have come through mirror sites but don't understand the options presented to me, nor in the cases of P2P which I have seen. It seems such a palaver - after all it's not really that big a download. It's just that it's such a slow one.

2009 doesn't seem THAT long ago!

Want me to download it and post you a CD of it?

That would be wonderful of you, Keef, to the point of embarrassment, even! How can I reimburse you for that?

Even to explain which of the downloads I should use from this site, for example, might save you a lot of trouble.

UK Mirror Service: sites/ny1.mirror.openoffice.org

I just don't understand what their different links mean!