LibreOffice won't start

[peterson43]

I've been having trouble with LibreOffice starting. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, and I have two different user accounts on my computer. LibreOffice used to work fine, but for the past few days I can only use LibreOffice (calc, writer, or any of the programs) when logged in as one of the users. When I'm logged in on the other account if I click on the launcher icon it just blinks and does nothing.

I also tried launching LibreOffice in several ways and nothing seems to work. I tried from the dash and from a terminal. If I was logged in as User1 (where LibreOffice works) and then I use a terminal to su as User2, running LibreOffice as User2 from the terminal still doesn't work.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

[richpri]

Sounds to me like a user rights issue.
First check the permissions and ownership on the executable.

rich@rich2:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/libreoffice
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Aug  7 19:44 /usr/bin/libreoffice -> ../lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
rich@rich2:~$ ls -l /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6168 Aug  7 15:23 /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
rich@rich2:~$

The final x must pe present on both files.

[peterson43]

Sounds to me like a user rights issue.
First check the permissions and ownership on the executable.

rich@rich2:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/libreoffice
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Aug  7 19:44 /usr/bin/libreoffice -> ../lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
rich@rich2:~$ ls -l /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6168 Aug  7 15:23 /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
rich@rich2:~$

The final x must pe present on both files.

I checked with my computer and got essentially the same output as you

jonpeterson@laptop:~$ ls -l /usr/bin/libreoffice 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 34 Aug  7 20:44 /usr/bin/libreoffice -> ../lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
jonpeterson@laptop:~$ ls -l /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6168 Aug  7 16:23 /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/soffice

[richpri]

The problem is that there are many files that could be messed up and cause this kind of problem. Perhaps a Libreoffice expert will reply with more help.

Try creating another user and see whether it can access the ap.

As a last resort you could try reinstalling the application.

[peterson43]

As a last resort you could try reinstalling the application.

I already tried uninstalling and reinstalling LibreOffice Calc and that didn't seem to work. Maybe I need to shut the computer down before I reinstall or maybe I need to uninstall the whole LibreOffice suite, but I suspect that wouldn't work either. There seems to be something else mixed up, but I don't know what.

[richpri]

One last suggestion. Check the logs. Try

sudo rgrep -e Libre /var/log

Good luck.

[peterson43]

One last suggestion. Check the logs. Try

sudo rgrep -e Libre /var/log

Good luck.

Okay, I tried that command in a terminal and got the following

jana@laptop:~$ sudo rgrep -e Libre /var/log
[sudo] password for jana: 
/var/log/auth.log:Aug 21 06:45:46 laptop sudo:     jana : TTY=pts/3 ; PWD=/home/jana ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/rgrep -e Libre /var/log

[The Cog]

You could try removing all the libreoffice settings for the misbehaving user. Try this command to rename the folder with all the settings in it:

mv .config/libreoffice .config/libreoffice-old

and then start libreoffice again.

If it starts then it's something in the settings that is causing the problem. You might as well delete the bad settings folder and just reconfigure from scratch:

rm -rf .config/libreoffice-old

If it still won't start, then I'm out of ideas and you may as well put the settings folder back:

mv .config/libreoffice-old .config/libreoffice

[peterson43]

I tried moving the .config/libreoffice folder, but that didn't seem to solve anything.

I finally fixed it by removing ALL of the LibreOffice programs in Ubuntu Software Center, restarting the computer, and then reinstalling the entire LibreOffice suite. Somehow that seemed to fixed it.

[abriano]

I just thought that I'd narrate my experiences here. I had the same problem as the thread originator (peterson43). I couldn't start any LibreOffice program. When clicked, the LibreOffice icon would just blink and then nothing would happen. The problem seemed to begin when I tried to open a Microsoft Office document that I had saved from our municipality's website. (I have previously opened the document without incident.) The other three other users on the computer could use LibreOffice, but I couldn't.

I tried peterson43's solution of deleting LibreOffice, rebooting, and reinstalling it, but that didn't change anything: the experiences remained the same for all users.

I then tried the solution offered by poster #7, The Cog, typing mv -rf .config/libreoffice .config/libreoffice-old and that worked (I did have to use sudo to remove that directory and its subdirectories).

So everything is fine now.

I might mentioned that I exchange many LibreOffice documents with Windows users (texts and spreadsheets), though I always save the documents as Microsoft Office documents before I send them to others.

Many thanks for the postings! I appreciate them very much.

Brian