No, that's the "Windows trick" - to do a complete uninstallion of something
use console and you'll see much more than any "nice" tool tells you (like rpmdrake, I assume). First try to do a "manual" installation of OpenOffice, and see what you get (missing dependencies or something else?) then 1) if you lack some other packages that are needed, grab them first or 2) if there is something wrong, so that another package is "on the way", remove it or do a "force" install or 3) if you have old OO.org packages left, remove them and use "force" if needed. Then reinstall the office software.
Console gives often the best "debug output" for such problems, tools like rpmdrake might hide the valuable info from your eyes (to make it more nice-looking, like Windows does