You have the major problem reported with installing OpenOffice. It seems installing the program doesn't install the dictionaries, and the process to follow to do that is extremely hard to work through.

I've tried a number of times to get the dictionaries installed and never succeeded. It seems crazy that the program doesn't do this as a process, as most other office programs do it easily.

I doubt you'll get much joy here at the moment. I'd suggest you try the Ubuntu Linux Forum and do a search for installing OOo Dictionaries. That will give you the process, and I wish you every success. If by any chance you get the install instructions to work, could you come back here and tell us all how you did it?

starOffice Wizard dosen't have the language option...

next will install OpenOffice and see how that turns out...

thanks for the advice, will post how it goes...

I have a new Linux 900 and the spell check works fine in Open Office Writer.  Dictionaries seem to be installed.  It's possible that I installed dictionaries through TweakEEE or something....don't remember.

Edit: I DO remember,  I "updated" dictionaries through the Settings tab, Add/Remove programs!

HTH

Last edited by Hope (2008-08-15 1:00:56 pm)

Well, thanks for letting me know I'm not alone.  I made the mistake of calling the Asus tech support because StarOffice would not spell check and they had me reinstall the OS - which, as you obviously know - did not help.  Next step - RMA - really - they wanted me to send it back so they could send a remanufactured unit to me.  Ouch.  I declined because they seemed to have no aptitude for problem solving.

Tried installing Openoffice with Synaptic but can't figure out how to fire the darned thing up.  In terminal openoffice, oowriter do nothing.  Learning new things is always a bit painful, and I'm only about a week  into it, but cheese whiz, I  thought the command prompt was diagnosed in terminal condition in 1984 when the Mac came out, and that it had died in 1997.  A decade later, it's extracting vengeance on me!!!

And why the heck did Asus do Xandros and StarOffice anyway?  Seems that other distributions of Linux are much more friendly and OpenOffice would be better for us?  (gee, this looks alot like a gripe)

Can anyone help this old dog open openoffice on Xandros?  Please?

Thanks Sage.  But "ooffice -writer" is no joy in Xandros land.  And just to be certain that is wasn't a typo no-go, I did the shift/insert trick after coping your code.  Yes, it's frustrating, but not any more than learning Japanese. 送终克己奉公!!!

you're in the same bind I was in....
uninstall StarOffice again...
and then from the terminal line you should be able to download and install open office by typing
sudo apt-get --fix-missing install openoffice.org   
check with oowriter or look in your Application-->Office folder
then you have to use the Language install under File-->Wizards to install english

hey all thank you so much Kay_tarro.

i got the same problem.  followed all your steps and got it working and i have to say openoffice looks better then then star office.

simong's method worked flawlessly on staroffice.  No need to re-install...
Big thank you! Made my day

Simong's method works perfectly, thank you so much.

It's amazing how many typos (*cough* spelling mistakes) I'd made in the couple of days typing without the aid of a spell checker. I don't think my English teacher would have appreciated me handing in my coursework in the state it was in

OK, Here's the way I fixed this wrinkle.

First go here: Ooo Dictionaries Download

Download and unzip the packages you want.
So for UK English you want, UK Spelling, Hyphenation and Thesaurus.

Then go to the File Manager and in My Home, right click and check the Show Hidden Files box.

Navigate to: .staroffice8 / User / Wordbook. And then copy the files to there.

Open Star Office Writer and from the tools option you'll see UK English as an option in the Language section.

N.B. You'll only see the Star Office folder if you opened the program.
If you can't see it then open one of the Office applications and go through the first time set up.

Hope this helps.

iain_m wrote:

(Now if only I could get it to remember that the default language for new documents should be GB, not USA, English... ;-))

Open a new document, set the language (and all other properties that you want to be the default for your documents, like font, margins, paper size, etc.) and save the document as template. (See File menu).

hotspot wrote:

OK, Here's the way I fixed this wrinkle.

First go here: Ooo Dictionaries Download

Download and unzip the packages you want.
So for UK English you want, UK Spelling, Hyphenation and Thesaurus.

Then go to the File Manager and in My Home, right click and check the Show Hidden Files box.

Navigate to: .staroffice8 / User / Wordbook. And then copy the files to there.

Open Star Office Writer and from the tools option you'll see UK English as an option in the Language section.

N.B. You'll only see the Star Office folder if you opened the program.
If you can't see it then open one of the Office applications and go through the first time set up.

Hope this helps.

Nice one - now I've got spell checking Only one problem though - still no thesaurus:(

I've done the above and now there's two files - th_en_US_v2.idx and thes_en_US_v2.dat - in the wordbook folder, but thesaurus is greyed out in the tools/language menu. Any ideas?