Files will not open

[Schwarzer Kater]

[…]
I was in the right directory (all of the book's 40 chapters are in that Einstein book--2023 folder), and I executed the command that Snowhog advised me to execute. I hit Enter, and nothing happened beyond the cursor moving to the beginning of the next line. […]

Nothing happened?
The document did not open in LibreOffice Writer?

[…]
To toss another idea that may help, if the file is corrupted, might be worth it try opening the 'bad' file, then copy the text into a new document, and see how that new one behaves.

And did you try that?

[wtb32141]

Claydoh, Chapter 33 treats Einstein's general theory of relativity. It's probably the longest chapter in the book. That chapter's file size is 267.4 KB! I have no add-on's or things like that.

[claydoh]

and nothing happened beyond the cursor moving to the beginning of the next line.

I believe this just means the LO is not having any errors itself, or with the file, at the moment.

[Snowhog]

Show us the listed contents of your ~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023 directory:

ls -la

[wtb32141]

I entered the following command in the terminal part of Dolphin:

bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ libreoffice --writer Chapter\ 1--2023.odt

I was in the right directory (all of the book's 40 chapters are in that Einstein book--2023 folder), and I executed the command that Snowhog advised me to execute. I hit Enter, and nothing happened beyond the cursor moving to the beginning of the next line. None of us is perfect; I have looked that command over carefully several times, and I see no error.

[claydoh]

I don't know how much this affects things, but I just noticed a version of my resume on ODT format is 73Mb (!!?!!) for some reason. Most job sites don't take this format, but all have a size limit (2-5Mb) that this file vastly surpasses. My .doc version is under 2Mb, and the PDF is 48Kb
This has been a somewhat heavily updated, edited, and corrected document, and it seems to have embedded fonts. I wonder if the stored data, such as edit history, font embedding, etc are just 'clogging' things.

So, how large are your files?

I don't easily see a way to clean up the file, other than extracting and manually messing with the raw XML stuff inside.
I did manage to cleanup up my bloaty resume by going to File >> Properties >>Fonts, then UN-checkking all the options, then saving the file.

That reduced it down to 57Kb, a vast reduction in size.
I then re-enabled font embedding, but only checking the "only embed fonts that are used in documents" and the Latin fonts option, and saved the file again. The size stayed the same. smaller size.
I don't know if this is relevant in your case, though it probably isn't unless your files are massively huge in size. But could be info worth collecting.

Do you use any custom plugins or addons for Libreoffice? I wonder if that might be a contributor as well, maybe?


(off-topic: you can open a Libreoffice document with Ark, since they are just a compressed collection of files, and see things like this. Such as the 92Mb worth of fonts in that bloated resume)

[claydoh]

If this is happening only on some files, I suspect a corruption, especially if there never has been any sort of backup or anything.
Or the slight possibility of drive issues - this would likely show other symptoms, though.

At the bottom of the screen appears a horizontal progress bar that moves from left to right at a snail’s pace to indicate progress. Ditto when I save a file

I'd *really* like to see a screenshot of this

To toss another idea that may help, if the file is corrupted, might be worth it try opening the 'bad' file, then copy the text into a new document, and see how that new one behaves.

[Snowhog]

Snowhog, you say, "The command is writer 1--2023.odt". Are you sure? That command does not make much sense to me.

I corrected the command in the post.

[Snowhog]

Claydoh, I decided to try "libreoffice" with all small letters. Here's the result:

bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ libreoffice Chapter 1--2023.odt

Using the above, the correct command to issue to open this document in Libreoffice Writer from the command line (assuming you are in the directory that contains the document) is:

libreoffice --writer Chapter\ 1--2023.odt

The escape character ( \ ) precedes the space after Chapter. This is required when ever a space/spaces occur within a file name.

[wtb32141]

Snowhog, you say, "The command is writer 1--2023.odt". Are you sure? That command does not make much sense to me.

[wtb32141]

Schwarzer Kater asks: Does LibreOffice Writer open the document with libreoffice Chapter 1--2023.odt at all?

My answer: I saw no sign at all of Chapter 1 being opened.


I'll try again with the advice I've gotten today from Snowhog and Schwarzer Kater.

[Schwarzer Kater]

Does LibreOffice Writer open the document with libreoffice Chapter 1--2023.odt at all?

If you have spaces in your file names you have to put a "\" in front of them in the command line interface:
libreoffice Chapter\ 1--2023.odt or
libreoffice --writer Chapter\ 1--2023.odt

That's one reason why I prefer using "_" instead of spaces in file names, like A_file_name.txt .

[Snowhog]

The command is libreoffice --writer Chapter\ 1--2023.odt

[wtb32141]

Claydoh, I decided to try "libreoffice" with all small letters. Here's the result:

bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ libreoffice Chapter 1--2023.odt

After I hit "Enter", the cursor went to the next line, but no text followed that last line. I do not know what to expect, but I'm trying to open the file; so surely some text of some sort should have followed those 2 lines.

[wtb32141]

Cladoh, I opened Dolphin, and I hit F4 to get the terminal. That worked. Then I tried to open the book's first chapter, but as the last line says, the terminal did not recognize "LibreOffice" as a command.

bb@bb-Precision-3520:~$ cd '/home/bb/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023'
bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ ^C
bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ cd /
bb@bb-Precision-3520:/$ ^C
bb@bb-Precision-3520:/$ cd '/home/bb/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023'
bb@bb-Precision-3520:~/Documents/My 5 Books/paper_book_files/Writer_files/Einstein book--2023$ LibreOffice Chapter 1--2023.odt
bash: LibreOffice: command not found