Quirks in Libre Office?

[dwynnehugh]

I have an elderly uncle who has used LO to write 2 published books and many booklets – however during the time he has used LO, he has always mentioned that after a topic becomes 6-8 pages long, things begin to disappear and be lost. Also he and my wife have noticed that as they write a piece in LO Writer, there can be a sudden change of font / size and occasionally italicising crops up all by itself.

To save losing work, he now types about 6 pages and saves them in folders Part 1, Part 2 etc. etc to save them disappearing.

Not a great LO user myself, but can anyone throw any light on this? I know my wife has the latest version of LO – my uncle probably not.

The more you meet people the more you understand why Noah took animals instead of humans

[Dave Rice]

I’ve never used LO or OO that seriously.

But with Office 2016 licences so cheap now on E-Bay, maybe time to go back to the evil Empire?

[Bob Williams]

When I was designing and printing, I used Office 97 and Microsoft Publisher 2000. Yes, that’s how long ago it was, but those 2 products did a great job for me, including books.

I actually researched, designed and planned the printing a book privately for an ageing customer who was convinced that she was the daughter of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII). She had some partially convincing “evidence” that it was all true and also had a sizeable private income, which she was prepared to invest in the book. I spent a long time trying to convince her that (a) even if true, it would probably be stopped from publishing and (b) my research would probably prove it to be an incorrect claim, so how would I get paid for research? She gave me a sizeable daily Research Fee and I found it, as I knew it would turn out, to be incorrect. I stopped the Fee payments and  took back all evidence, including my Research. About 2 months later she employed a ‘cheap & nasty’ solicitor who came back to me and asked me to either bend certain facts, or turn the story into something I would call “quasi-Fiction”. I said I’ll get back to you and informed the customer I now regarded as a victim, that she was using a criminal for a solicitor. She fired him, I never heard from her until I read her Obituary. Sad, sad case of an old lady spinster with a lifelong conviction that she was “someone” who deserved better from life. The solicitor gave me a hateful call, full of obscenities. I gave a rough transcript, not the call of course, to the Law. Eventually he was disbarred or whatever they do to stop them practicing. I hope he is shoveling blood and guts in an Abattoir, that would suit his talents.

Point being, I made a good fist of that job, I learned a lot and the initial Proof looked good. Office now has to be so much better (and free!) and probably includes something like Publisher. I use Open Office now and it always does just what I need from it.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

Was she called Vera Duckworth by any chance? ?

[Bob Williams]

????, she looked more like Deidre Barlow or whatever her surname was after I last watched Corro about 1985. Same tragic look, same glasses.

I felt really sorry for the old lass actually, spent a long, wasted life wanting to be someone she wasn’t, couldn’t give up on it until I proved her wrong, which I really did not want to do. She was obviously well educated, (at Cambridge, Mathematics)  very well spoken and otherwise intelligent. I knew what it would do to her, and then to be taken in by a bent solicitor who only saw £ signs in a job he knew was not provable, must have been such a sad ending to that wasted life. She showed me old photos of her mum, an actress, in company with the PoW during the late 20’s or 30’s, before he became King and met the American divorcee Wallis Simpson. There were letters, not on Royal letterheads, signed just “Edward” or “Your darling Eddy”. We know now that Eddy VIII had loads of lovers in the 20’s and ’30’s, rumour was that he was AC/DC. Good job he abdicated before WWII, because he was also a closet Nazi. There were pic’s of him with Nazi leaders before the War and I have read accounts that suggest he may have acceded to surrender proposals which some British Parliamentarians wanted to make. Lord Halifax was the leader of this group of absolute Appeasers. Even Chamberlain was opposed to them.

Another History lesson!??

 

 

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[D-Dan]

I use LO exclusively both at home and work (despite having an Office 360 license at work), and can’t say I’ve ever noticed this behaviour at all.

he hasn’t been hitting a hotkey to change paragraph style, has he? (Ctrl num)

Arch Linux, on a Ryzen 7 1800X, 32 GB, 5 (yes -5) HDs inc 5 SSDs, 4 RPi 3Bs + 1 RPi 4B - one as an NFS server with two more drives, PiHole (shut yours), Plex server, cloud server, and other random Pi stuff. Nice CoolerMaster case, 2 x NV GTX 1070 8GB, and a whopping 32" AOC 1440P monitor.

[The Duke]

Not used oo or LO for years now far easier to just Google docs then save to dot doc when finished. Quick skim for any formatting issues, before a last save.

If I start ij word I’ll stich with it witn the free version of Office online, over 360 (even thou I have it), just cos cloud saves make everything run far smothers.

 

[Les.]

I have been using open Office (now LO of course) for over 10  years. In the past, I have scanned, OCRed, then edited into OOo/LO a 100 page motor cycle service manual. From time to time it would give problems. I don’t think it lost stuff, but became so slooow, maybe shut down. I then started breaking it up into smaller chunks.

Wait, I have found it.From about 100 A5 pages, it went via four parts, eventually finishing as a 30 A4 page PDF. I don’t have a 30 page .odt, but do have the four .odt parts, plus four .PDFs, then the final PDF. Maybe I used software to combine the four into the one.

Obviously then OOo was having difficulties with large docs back in 2007. Not tried similar operations recently, but would have expected an improvement by now.

Les.

[Bob Williams]

Les, Open Office and LO are still separate programmes. LO was started up by a few dev’s from Apache OO I think, who left to produce their own version. Never tried it myself as OO does what I need, but glad that you have managed to sort out your problem.

Ever get back to North Staffs lately? Not been for a while, my relatives over there getting fewer. Last time I went was about 8 years ago, visited Rudyard Lake, beautiful area.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[The Duke]

I thought OO was now defunct and LO is what you should be using.

[Ed P]

The only time I have (in the past) noted odd formatting was after importing from a Microsoft docx file. I’ve not had cause to do this for a while.

[edit] Duke is correct LibreOffice is a better choice over OO but the poster was referencing LO.

[Les.]

I started using OOo years ago under Windoze, then my move to Linux (Ubuntu 8?? then 10.04) I continued as it was default in the typical install. I would not use the awful Ubuntu 12.x, so moved to Mint, where it was still default. An ownership change mean’t it was no longer “Free” (linux people will understand) so when a later Mint  was released (17.1 I think), OOo was gone and LO took over. A few minor changes, but still basically the same prog, but now “Free”.

Other than that difficulty with long docs, Writer has served me well from the beginning, and by virtue of  Wordstar for windows, Lotus Smartsuite, then OOo in a Linux install (IBM I think), as in the very beginning (1991) I had Wordstar for DOS. Yes, I still have those docs but now in .odt format. I also transcribed some Amstrad word processor stuff for a friend, via the 3.5 floppy conversion, thro to Wordstar then up to whatever I was using 20 years ago. My first computer wordprocessing was dome on an oddball Commodore +4, floppy drive and 7 pin printer. I published a few articles in Television magazine that way! I still have those.

Bob, 12 months ago I was across to bury my sister. I think that makes me pater familias now. May go over sometime soon, but not sure if and when.

Les.

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