I downloaded the slackbuilds openoffice.org files, extracted them, added the original source, ran chmod +x openoffice.org.SlackBuild, ran ./openoffice.org.SlackBuild, then found the resulting .tgz and installpkg'ed it. I was able to get through all of the steps listed without any error messages and everything seemed to be going well. However, now when I navigate to opt/openoffice.org3 (the created folder) and attempt to run any of the programs from kde nothing happens. When I attempt to run them in terminal I get the following message:

root@slacktop:~# soffice
/usr/bin/soffice: line 98: /opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/program/pagein: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/soffice: line 104: /opt/openoffice.org3/program/../basis-link/ure-link/bin/javaldx: No such file or directory
/usr/bin/soffice: line 129: /opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice.bin: No such file or directory

is there some reason these files wouldn't be in there after a normal installation? I read the howto on slackbuilds.org several times to make sure I got all the steps right, and have tried uninstalling with removepkg and reinstalling and the same thing keeps happening. I'm sure its obvious to most of you, but what am I missing?

Did you check the integrity of each of our downloads with the md5sums that are published? I've had plenty of corrupted downloads in my day. I'd make sure there are no other issues first. Then move onto the next thing. I've seen things exactly like this myself.

Are you running a 64-bit system and installing a 32-bit OpenOffice?
http://slackbuilds.org/faq/#x86_64