File Sharing between Ubuntu 12.04 on an HP laptop and an OS X iMac

Hello,
I have been installing Ubuntu 12.04 on my old HP laptop (Pavillion Media Center dv6510e - Turion 64 X2) So far, I have getting a lot of things to work by myself as a newbie. But now I am stuck.
I want to access some files on my iMac from my Ubuntu HP. So I have opened file sharing in iMAC - turned it on and have activated SMB.

From my Ubuntu HP I can see my iMac when I browse the network. I can open it and see all the shared folders. I can browse the complete file structure. So far so good.
But now: I can open Word docs with Libre Office but the files are always completely empty? Even the .rtf files I try to open. Everything is empty! Also the JPEG files can bee seen but not opened (improper call to jpeg library in state 200) Another interesting thing is that in the network browser both my iMac and (my Imac Time Capsule I use for backup) are mounted twice? I don't know if these two things are connected.
So, if anyone could help me, that would be much appreciated.

Boekenknul

Do you copy the files over to the laptop before opening, or try to open them from an smb:// location in the file browser? I think libreoffice wants you to have them locally or else mount the remote share.

Thank you for your quick reply. I have indeed tried both. First copying the files to the desktop before opening, and opening directly from the network browser. The results remain the same. The files appear to be empty...I can browse the complete folder structure...but I cannot open the documents. Thanks for the tip, though.