I have asked for help on the OOo forums but nothing is forthcoming so far so I thought i'd ask here.

I installed OOo on Slackware linux 13.1 recently. It worked fine until yesterday when I tried to open up an xls file which I often use, and I was presented with a "filter" dialogue with loads of options but no explanation what they were for. I tried several of them but nothing seemed to make any difference - the file was unopenable.

I found a suggestion online that I should try to delete my configuration file ~/.openoffice, which I did. Unfortunately now whenever I open OOo I get a smaller dialogue box with some gibberish in it. It's some crazy wingdings font or something, and I have no idea what it's trying to tell me.

Anyway now I can't access any of my files. I have tried reinstalling OOo and deleting my config file again, neither does anything - i'm always getting the nonsense dialogue box.

I have even installed OOo on a virtual WinXP and the same happened there (the 'filter' dialogue not the gibberish font) Has OOo somehow managed to corrupt ALL my files??

Any help gratefully accepted.

Spoov

check your partitions, RAM

You could post the file somewhere and if its not too private, either PM me a link or post a link to it. If you can't read it on a windows install, then the file is probably corrupted, but I could maybe tell you how much or if its recoverable.

There is plenty of filespace left amani.

Thanks for the offer Peterius but it is financial stuff - very private, and a lot of it!

I'm sure it's something to do with OOo as I can't even open OOo on a fresh install without getting the wingdings-type font and dialogue box.

I don't really want to try a recovery as if OOo is buggered then it might do the same to my backed-up data.

Install gnumeric and see if it will open the xls properly. I much prefer gnumeric for spreadsheets anyway.

My interpretation of amani's suggestion is that the file system may be corrupted so do an fsck on the partition. This sounds like a good first step because you say that all of the documents are affected AND the OOO configuration files are also messed up.

The method that I would use is to boot a live Linux CD and perform the fsck from there. Never perform an fsck on a mounted partition.

If the fsck shows a lot of problems then it is possible that the disk drive or the controller is broken.

Way ahead of you TexMex - it won't open in gnumeric either - says its an unsupported file format.

stress_junkie - I did as you suggest, no problems reported, 0.1% non-contig.

The problems remain, affecting both OOo as installed on Slackware, and all the files in the particular directory in question.

Did your locale get messed up? Linux maintains a definition for your locale but the window manager maintains its own definition.

The following is the entire content of the /etc/default/locale file.
The following are snippets from a bash shell session issuing the printenv command.
Open Office dot Org maintains its own locale and font settings.

Open Office Tools -> Options -> Language Settings

The gibberish font is not a language, not a real one anyway, it's just asterisks, triangles etc.

I don't have an /etc/default/locale file and only one of those variables set (LANG=en_us.utf8). I don't use GDM.

I can't get into OOo to fiddle with settings, as I can't get past the nonsense language popup boxes.

Gibberish could mean that OOo is using wingding font set or some other symbol font set.

Try creating a new user account and see if OOo works properly from that user account. Don't try to access the OOo data files on the disk. Just create a new document.

If that is the case then we would know that OOo is using the wrong font set. OOo can also use an alternate font set for its windows. That can be set via

OOo -> Tools -> Options -> OpenOffice.org -> View

There is a setting there to use the system default font for user interface. That may be the problem.

So let's try using OOo in a brand new user account and see if it works properly there. If it does then we can proceed along this path.

That's impossible, because gnumeric can open xls. This means the file is corrupt.

Thanks for your help stress_junkie but it is clear that the files in question are corrupted, and OOo is the most likely culprit. Which leads me to ditch OOo and give abiword & gnumeric a go. Backed up copies were a bit old but opened OK in gnumeric.

I have had lots of problems with OOo over the years and frankly i've had enough. Hopefully libreoffice will be a bit more reliable when it's matured.

Cheers

Spoov

I don't trust OOO Calc, especially since in this case it not only corrupted the file, but also didn't mention that the file was corrupt when opening it. Again, I recommend gnumeric for spreadsheets, it never corrupted anything for me.