OpenOffice 3.3.0 crashes

John_Jason
Fedora 14, x86_64, up to date with Firefox 3.6.17 and (currently) OOo 3.3.0.

I have a paper due in a week and really need to get Zotero working again.

I have been using Zotero for years, but not for the past couple of months. Until yesterday I was using OOo 3.2.1, but when I tried to enter a citation yesterday using the toolbar OOo crashed. I tried reinstalling the OOo extension with Tools > Extension Manager, but any attempt to remove or reinstall the extension crashes OOo. Upon re-launching the extension did not get uninstalled before OOo crashed.

I uninstalled OOo 3.2.1 with "yum remove openoffice" and then installed 3.3.0. Both 3.2.1 and the new 3.3.0 are the versions downloaded from OOo, not the versions in the Fedora repositories.

Unfortunately, updating OOo to 3.3.0 changed nothing. Any attempt to use the toolbar crashes OOo, and any attempt to uninstall or reinstall the extension also crashes OOo.

Firefox works perfectly. In a further attempt to fix the problem I installed the latest Zotero. In Tools > Add Ons it now says I have Zotero 2.16 and Zotero OpenOffice.org Integration 3.5a1. I have ininstalled and reinstalled both, but still no joy.

I also renamed ~/.openoffice.org to force it to create a new configuration file. Upon launching OOo I no longer have the toolbar available. Using Extension Manager I tried to get it from the net, but it was not to be found on the OOo site. I do have a zotero.oxt file, so I attempted to install it with Extension Manager, but got an error message that it would not work with the current version of Zotero.

Ideally I'd like to delete the current OOo extension, but I am unable to do so from Extension Manager. Is there a way to get rid of it manually be editing my configuration file?

Or is there a new zotero.oxt file that I can install?

Or does anyone have any other suggestions?
  • dstillman
    I also renamed ~/.openoffice.org to force it to create a new configuration file. Upon launching OOo I no longer have the toolbar available. Using Extension Manager I tried to get it from the net, but it was not to be found on the OOo site.
    1) Close OpenOffice.

    2) Tools -> Add-ons -> Zotero OpenOffice Integration -> Options/Preferences -> Reinstall OpenOffice Components.

    3) Open OpenOffice.
  • John_Jason
    Thanks for the suggestions. I had already tried that, but I did it again, just to be sure I hadn't missed a step. I followed your instructions to the letter.

    1) When I restart OOo without a .openoffice.org folder (so it will create a new one) it still has no Zotero toolbar, in spite of having uninstalled both Zotero and the OOo Integration add-on in Firefox and then reinstalled both, restarting Firefox in between both actions. Apparently installing the OOo Integration add-on in Firefox does not install the extension in OOo 3.3.0.

    2) If I use my old .openoffice.org folder I have the toolbar, but clicking on any of the icons crashes OOo. Any attempt to uninstall, edit, update or otherwise touch the Zotero extension with Tools > Extension Manager also crashes OOo.

    Since renaming the .openoffice.org folder and letting OOo create a new one makes the toolbar disappear, there must be something in my old .openoffice.org folder that tells OOo about the Zotero toolbar. That is, the extension must be referenced in that .openoffice.org configuration file. If I could find the reference I could delete it. Then perhaps reinstalling the OOo Integration add-on in Firefox would do what it is supposed to do.
  • dstillman
    If it can't install into the new folder, then the old folder is irrelevant.

    What happens when you click Reinstall OpenOffice Components? Provide a Report ID after clicking it.
  • John_Jason
    The old folder is not irrelevant because it contains years of autocorrect entries, dictionary additions, styles, and countless other settings.

    Where do I find Reinstall OpenOffice Components?
  • dstillman
    Ah, OK. Then just search for Zotero files in the old folder and remove them.
    Where do I find Reinstall OpenOffice Components?
    Didn't you say you did this above?
  • John_Jason
    I made some progress. I managed to get it working with the new .openoffice.org configurations folder.

    Now the question is, can I find all the personal things in the old folder and move them to the new folder, and then discard the old folder? Or is it easier to find the references to Zotero in the old folder, remove them, and then reinstall the extension?

    I searched in the old folder and "zotero" did not appear. If I knew where it was located it might help.
  • dstillman
    On my system I see the Zotero extension files in a subdirectory of user/uno_packages/cache/uno_packages/. It's possible those were already removed on your system.

    In addition to the extension files, OO keeps various databases about add-ons. But if you're installing packages from the command line on Linux, I imagine you know how to grep -i for "zotero" in that directory?
  • John_Jason
    I'm not very familiar with grep, but I did "grep -i zotero" in the .openoffice.org folder. It just hung for 20 minutes without doing anything, and then I killed it. It shouldn't take 20 minutes to parse every string in that folder.

    I did find the Zotero plugin under the uno_packages and deleted it, along with all the other extensions I had added. Now, when I launch OOo I no longer find any extensions under Tools > Extension Manager, with the exception of an English, a Spanish, and a French dictionary that have padlocks on them.

    However, the Zotero toolbar still appears, although the icons are gone; just text. But clicking on any of the text items still crashes OOo.

    Reinstalling the extension from Preferences in the Zotero window in Firefox still does not add the extension or fix anything.
  • dstillman
    grep -i zotero ~/.openoffice.org

    (It'd really be quicker to just Google how to use grep than to post here.)
  • dstillman
    In any case, since you got this working in a new directory, I'll leave you to work out problems in your old one if you want to, since at this point it doesn't really have anything in particular to do with Zotero.
  • John_Jason
    Success! (More or less.)

    I managed to copy enough folders from my old .openoffice.org folder to the new one that I have succeeded in saving everything except my custom dictionaries. Most important to me were the AutoCorrect entries, and they came across fine. Zotero is working fine also. And I haven't given up on the custom dictionaries - they must be someplace. But even if I lose them I think I am better off. There was something messed up in the old .openoffice.org folder. Zotero was not the only extension that I was unable to delete. This tells me that the databases were not in sync or something more serious was out of whack.

    Many thanks for the pointers!
  • dstillman
    Great—glad to hear you got it working.

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