Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I am using MacOS Mojava version 10.14.6
On Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8
I am working on spreadsheet. I copy and past my 2020 spread sheet into a new file naming it 2021 records, now I can not open the old file, why?
when I click the old file a box comes up it says

ASCII Filter Options:
Properties

Characters Set drop down box Western Eu Dos/OS2 OK
Default fonts drop down box Wassem Cancel
Language dropdown box English (USA ) Help

Paragraph brake O----- CR & LF O- CR ------ O LF

It didn't work

I am using MacOS Mojava version 10.14.6
On Apache OpenOffice 4.1.8
I am working on spreadsheet. I copy and past my 2020 spread sheet into a new file naming it 2021 records, now I can not open the old file, why?
when I click the old file a box comes up it says

ASCII Filter Options:
Properties

Characters Set drop down box Western Eu Dos/OS2 OK OK
Default fonts drop down box Wassem Cancel
Language dropdown box English (USA ) Help

Paragraph brake O CR & LF O CR O LF

ejrsws wrote:It didn't work

What didn't work?

Normally when the Ascii dialog box comes up when opening a .ods file, it's a good indication that the file is corrupted, but, at that point, possible salvageable.
You can try to salvage your file yourself or you can upload it here (128k maximum size) or to a file sharing site (eg: dropbox) if bigger than 128k and one (or more) of us can see what we can recover of your file.
Additionally following the steps in this tutorial as soon as possible may recover an earlier, but uncorrupted, version of your file.

/Users/EverEddie/Desktop/RV spreas sheet 2020.ods

No file attached. Please read this tutorial for instructions on attaching a file.

Is there a way for me to talk with someone to get tea support.
i have a very important spread sheet file that will not open, everything else works fine with the exception of one file, it is driving me crazy.
I have a Mac Book pro and I am using OpenOffoce4 My issue is, On Jan 4, 2021, i coped and past a spreadsheet in a new spreadsheet and saved the new file as 2021 leaving the old file on touched but when I went back to the old file it wouldn't open, a box appears , ASCII Filter Options, with 3 drop down box. ( OK, Cancel and Help) I don't want to use another program, I love my Open Office.

ejrsws wrote:Is there a way for me to talk with someone to get tea support.
i have a very important spread sheet file that will not open, everything else works fine with the exception of one file, it is driving me crazy.
I have a Mac Book pro and I am using OpenOffoce4 My issue is, On Jan 4, 2021, i coped and past a spreadsheet in a new spreadsheet and saved the new file as 2021 leaving the old file on touched but when I went back to the old file it wouldn't open, a box appears , ASCII Filter Options, with 3 drop down box. ( OK, Cancel and Help) I don't want to use another program, I love my Open Office.

There is no phone support available. We do not work for Apache OpenOffice and in order to provide that kind of support would mean providing personal information, specifically a personal phone number.
Additionally you would only be able to get the knowledge of one person rather than this entire community.

You have posted the same question three times in the same topic and have not provided a copy of the offending file for us to be able to examine.
As the problem is with just the one file, we need to be able to see that file in order to determine if it can still be saved or not.

Also, see [Tutorial] How to find and un-delete AOO/LO temporary files (which RusselB linked earlier in this topic) for ways to attempt to recover temporary files saved on your computer. Do this as soon as possible in addition to providing the file here, as temporary files will be over-written as you continue to use your computer.

If you need help with the recovery process, ask a knowledgeable family member or friend to help you through the process.

/Users/EverEddie/Desktop/Turtlebay Bills/monthly Spreas sheet/My RV income list 2020 .ods

Again, your file is not attached. Please follow the steps in [Forum] How to attach a document here to attach your document. At Step 3, make sure to click the Add the File button.

You can use the Preview button to check your attachment is present - you should see something like this, but with your file name shown: Note that your document must be less than 128 kilobytes; if it is larger you'll need to use a file sharing site such as Mediafire and post a link here.

Here is the spreadsheet I am having trouble with.

With a size of 176 bytes there will be nothing usable in it. Typically an OpenOffice file will have a minimum size of about 6000 bytes.

The 176-byte file contains a MacOS property list. I can't imagine how you managed to stomp on your spreadsheet with that. This seems unlikely to be an OpenOffice problem. In ten years I have never seen that happen to anyone else. My best guess is that you did something which you didn't want to do in Finder, but I don't know how I would create a property list there even if I wanted to. Finder → File → Make Alias does create a small file, but the format of that is different than your attachment. And when you open the alias, Finder understands that you want to open the original file, not the small one, so you wouldn't get the ASCII Filter Options dialog. Summary: That file is destroyed. Restore it from a backup or start anew.
You should review Q23: How do I backup OpenOffice files on my Mac? and
Q24: How do I restore OpenOffice files from backups?, though it may be too late for this problem.

@Mr P:I got a message that it was an imperfectly formed zip file. There is merely the zip file header, and no content. Probably symptoms of an over hasty close down of the computer, before the write buffers had flushed to disk.

When unzip is asked to open something other than a ZIP file, say a JPG file, it will say the file is an imperfectly formed archive, End-of-central-directory signature not found, etc. I am sure the OP's attachment is a property list. The PlistBuddy command (above) would choke if it were anything else. The Mac's file command, which shows what type of data is in a file, agrees. Improper sleep/shutdown of the computer is a possible cause for the trouble, I suppose. Hundreds of people have lost data that way.

$ ls -ln
total 2864
-rw-r--r--@ 1 503  20  1456377 Dec 24 23:33 Cranberries and Guava.JPG
-rw-r--r--@ 1 503  20      176 Feb  1 12:34 My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods
-rw-r--r--  1 503  20        6 Feb  1 13:22 Text file.txt

$ for f in *; do unzip "$f"; done
Archive:  Cranberries and Guava.JPG
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of Cranberries and Guava.JPG or
        Cranberries and Guava.JPG.zip, and cannot find Cranberries and Guava.JPG.ZIP, period.
Archive:  My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods or
        My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods.zip, and cannot find My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods.ZIP, period.
Archive:  Text file.txt
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of Text file.txt or
        Text file.txt.zip, and cannot find Text file.txt.ZIP, period.

$ for f in *; do file "$f"; echo; done
Cranberries and Guava.JPG: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01, aspect ratio, density 72x72, segment length 16,
Exif Standard: [TIFF image data, big-endian, direntries=9, manufacturer=Apple, model=iPad (5th generation),
orientation=upper-right, xresolution=150, yresolution=158, resolutionunit=2, software=14.0.1,
datetime=2020:11:06 07:56:55], baseline, precision 8, 2448x2555, frames 3

My RV spreadsheet 2020.ods: Apple binary property list

Text file.txt: ASCII text

Thank you for the information, Mr Programmer. I had never looked in depth into the content of such a broken file, as it is usually sufficient (particularly with a file of such small size) to accept that it is broken beyond repair, with no usable content.

MC - Midnight Commander - is a useful *nix tool for examining files; Shift+F3 will open the file 'raw', without invoking any associated application. I imagine it is available on most distributions; if not, it should be IMO .

RoryOF wrote:I had never looked in depth into the content of such a broken file, as it is usually sufficient (particularly with a file of such small size) to accept that it is broken beyond repair, with no usable content.

I was interested in the content, hoping it might lead to an understanding of how the OP broke their file since we would like to be able to explain to the OP (and to future posters with the same issue) what went wrong and/or how to avoid this problem.

ejrsws wrote:I can not open the old file, why?

Was this file in iCloud, ejrsws? Please tell us yes or no. If yes, I should explain that OpenOffice was developed long before any type of cloud storage existed and it is not designed for that environment. When using OpenOffice you should always work with files stored locally on your computer. You can use Finder to create a copy of the file in iCloud for backup, but do not attempt to edit it there. If you want applications which are designed to work with iCloud, use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote from Apple.
Q55: Why can't I open the "new" Microsoft formats, DOCX/XLSX/PPTX?
Q59: Can I exchange documents between OpenOffice and iWork, Apple's office suite?

robleyd wrote:MC - Midnight Commander - is a useful *nix tool for examining files; Shift+F3 will open the file 'raw', without invoking any associated application.

Well, the application is then Midnight Commander, is it not? For examining raw data, standard Unix tools od and cat -v are useful and have been available for about 50 years. Personally I like hexdump -C, since this is similar to the dump format used on mainfrmes. The name od (Octal Dump) reflects UNIX's history. It was developed on the PDP-11, an octal machine. I have programmed the PDP-11. The instruction set design is very clever. There were only about six dozen instructions. Modern machines have thousands.

hexdump -C My\ RV\ spreadsheet\ 2020.ods 
00000000  62 70 6c 69 73 74 30 30  d3 01 02 03 04 05 06 5c  |bplist00.......\|
00000010  4e 53 55 52 4c 4e 61 6d  65 4b 65 79 5f 10 10 4e  |NSURLNameKey_..N|
00000020  53 55 52 4c 46 69 6c 65  53 69 7a 65 4b 65 79 5f  |SURLFileSizeKey_|
00000030  10 18 4e 53 55 52 4c 46  69 6c 65 52 65 73 6f 75  |..NSURLFileResou|
00000040  72 63 65 54 79 70 65 4b  65 79 5f 10 1a 4d 79 20  |rceTypeKey_..My |
00000050  52 56 20 69 6e 63 6f 6d  65 20 6c 69 73 74 20 32  |RV income list 2|
00000060  30 32 30 2e 6f 64 73 11  28 d7 5f 10 1c 4e 53 55  |020.ods.(._..NSU|
00000070  52 4c 46 69 6c 65 52 65  73 6f 75 72 63 65 54 79  |RLFileResourceTy|
00000080  70 65 52 65 67 75 6c 61  72 08 0f 1c 2f 4a 67 6a  |peRegular.../Jgj|
00000090  00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 07  |................|
000000a0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 89  |................|
000000b0

Well, the application is then Midnight Commander, is it not?

I wrote that poorly; MC is a text mode file manager; Shift+F3 within it allows you to view the raw content of a selected file, instead of F3 which may invoke an external (to MC) application to view the file. The view can be toggled to hex mode.

As an aside, it is available for Win, Linux and MacOS

thank you for making aware of the issues with OpenOffice and Mac, also
Thank you for trying help me with my file. I just wanted to let you know, someone told me to try command +shift + O and double click the corrupt file at the same time. I did that and recovered the file. HAHAHA Hopefully you can help someone else. Thank you again i will remove OpenOffice from my MacBook.

ejrsws wrote: I just wanted to let you know, someone told me to try command +shift + O and double click the corrupt file at the same time. I did that and recovered the file.

That is very good news. I asked, but you didn't say if you were using iCloud or not. Perhaps you had been opening the iCloud file without success and ⇪⌘O switched the dialog to your computer's Documents folder where the real file was. iCloud versus local computer file confusion may be an increasing problem for OpenOffice Mac users as Apple pushes people toward iCloud while OpenOffice is unlikely to add support for that. This will be especially true for users who enable  → iCloud → iCloud Drive → Options → Desktop and Documents folders. I haven't done that.

ejrsws wrote:Thank you again i will remove OpenOffice from my MacBook.

OpenOffice does have difficulty with .DOCX documents on Big Sur before 4.1.9 but as I do not have Bug Sur OpenOffice works fine for me and I can open any .DOCX documents from friends with Numbers. Numbers may be a better tool for some Mac users. There is quite a gap in function between the two products. Some Numbers tasks are hard/impossible to do with OpenOffice. Some OpenOffice tasks are hard/impossible to do with Numbers. I use both.

Once again thank you for responding during my stressful time. I am very happy I recovered that file.
Thanks again.