I am new to Linux after trying off and on over the past few years.
I have installed Mint 17.2 Cinnamon and for a while all went well.
A system update was installed but Libre office stopped working and disappeared from from the menu list of apps. I tried to reinstall libreoffice as I got a screen message to the effect that it was no longer installed. When i tried to install I got this message

E: /var/cache/apt/archives/libreoffice-common_1%3a4.2.8-0ubuntu4_all.deb: trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/soffice', which is also in package openoffice-debian-menus 4.1.2-9782

Could someone try to explain what has happened and what I can do to put things right again.
Thanks

Dogman2,

Try the following commands one at a time:

Hello beachboy2
I've done as you suggested and after a few minutes of disk activity and lines scrolling through I finish with the following lines
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libreoffice-common_1%3a4.2.8-0ubuntu4_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Libre ofiice has not been installed

Dogman2,

Well try this instead.

Open Synaptic Package Manager (Menu > Administration > Synaptic PM).

Click on the Status Tab.

Then click on Custom Filters, then click on Broken.

If there are broken packages, click on Edit > Fix Broken Packages.

A suggestion may be given at the end of this.

You MAY then need to repeat the commands in post #2.

Hello again
I've done all as you suggested but there were no broken packages.
I repeated the commands in post 2 and get the same results
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/libreoffice-common_1%3a4.2.8-0ubuntu4_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I don't know what has happened but after a further update everything seems to be back to normal. I Thank all who have helped.