Posted: Tue Sep 15, 2009 8:49 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access released
We are pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access. From now until 27 October 2009, members and subscribers of the current NeoOffice Early Access Program can download the latest release from the NeoOffice Early Access Program download page. Starting on 27 October 2009, all users will be able to download NeoOffice 3.0.1 for free.
The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, the NeoOffice Early Access Program is a way for us to thank our most generous users by allowing them to download a NeoOffice release before the official release date.
Important: NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access is not a production release and will likely have many undiscovered bugs. If you are not comfortable using unstable software, we recommend that you download NeoOffice 3.0 which is our most stable version.
NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access includes nearly all of the features in OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 and includes many of the most commonly used features in Microsoft Office. The only OpenOffice.org feature that is missing from NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access is Mac OS X Universal Access support. Unfortunately, we have not been able integrate OpenOffice.org's Universal Access code into NeoOffice so if you need Universal Access support, we recommend that you use OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, or Apple iWork.
Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 9:09 pm Post subject: Changes in NeoOffice support services
What changes are we making?
I have bad news to report: after many months of struggling to handle all of the support requests that our many NeoOffice users post on these forums, we must limit our support services only to our most generous NeoOffice donors.
Starting today, we will continue to provide NeoOffice support services in our forums. However, only NeoOfice users who have donated US$25 (or €19 or £15 or CA$29 or AU$31 or ¥3125) or more within the last year can post in any of our NeoOffice forums. NeoOffice Mobile users will only need to donate US$10 (or €8 or £6 or CA$12 or AU$13 or ¥1250) or more within the last year can post in our NeoOffice Mobile forums.
Why must we make these changes?
We definitely believe in providing high quality support for our software. But the recent release of Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has made it clear that we need to spend far more of our time on development and bug fixing than we are currently able to do. If we do not put in the necessary development and bug fixing, NeoOffice stability grows worse over time and that would hurt all users.
This is the key reason for this change: Apple's Snow Leopard release coupled with the engineering work that was required to make NeoOffice stable after upgrading to the OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 code has made it clear to us that we need to dedicate significantly more time to development and bug fixing. Unfortunately, our very limited donations only provides enough funding for one full-time engineer (me) and one part-time support technician (Fran) so we must make the painful decision to stop providing free support services.
Is the NeoOffice project still viable?
The answer is a definite yes. Downloading NeoOffice and viewing our site will continue to be free. Thanks to our many volunteer mirrors, providing free downloads no longer uses up any of our limited donations. Also, we will continue to allow anyone to view any of our websites for free. Over the years, many NeoOffice volunteers have written excellent documentation and we believe that providing access to that document is extremely valuable to all users.
Our only issue is that our total staff (me and Fran) is fixed, and to cope with the increased demands on our time from support requests, we have found ourselves reducing development and bug fixing. That has worked in the short term but while we have been doing this, Apple has made many changes in Snow Leopard and we need to refactor parts of the NeoOffice code to ensure that it is as stable on Snow Leopard as on previous Mac OS X versions. While non-donors will need to be more self-reliant and seek out answers for their problems unaided, in the end all users will benefit from the greater NeoOffice stability that redirecting our time should bring.
But why can't we just let anyone post and have the community support non-donors?
Essentially, that is what we have been doing for the last several months. Starting with our 30 June 2009 announcement, Fran and I stopped answering most non-donor support requests. While that announcement help stabilize donation levels and add several new large websites our mirror list, it did not reduce the number of support requests that are posted in our forums.
While we said that we would not handle any non-donor support requests, the truth is that we run NeoOffice like a small business and, like any business, we care about it very deeply. So, when a non-donor posts that NeoOffice is broken, we found that it is nearly impossible for us to ignore.
We have been fortunate that we have very dedicated volunteers. We are forever grateful to our support volunteers for helping reduce the number of support requests that we must handle through this very difficult year. Their support services have been top notch and we definitely hope that they will continue to volunteer their time to the NeoOffice project. Nevertheless, even with the generous help of our support volunteers, our difficulty in ignoring non-donor support requests that our volunteers are unable to handle has almost squeezed out any time for development and bug fixing.
We definitely have no problem with people providing free support. The problem is that the number of new non-donor support requests has grown much faster than the number of support volunteers. We definitely do not blame the volunteers as handling support requests is thankless and, many times, very unrewarding, work. We understand that some people will be very upset by our changes. Ideally, our changes will be the spark that motivates those people to create and staff a free NeoOffice support sites. It may not happen, but if it does we will be more than happy to add links to any such sites on the NeoOffice Support page.
But won't we lose users because of these changes?
While we probably will lose some users, we do not consider that to be a big problem as we do not believe that NeoOffice is the perfect office suite for everyone. Many users have told us that they like NeoOffice and we appreciate hearing that, but we also believe that Microsoft Office and Apple's iWork are very nice products. Each has its own set of specialized features that some people find very useful and both products are developed by well-funded and talented engineering groups.
This may sound discouraging to those that would like to see NeoOffice be the dominate Mac OS X office suite, but since we started the NeoOffice project our goal has always been a humbler and, in our opinion, more realistic one: to provide a reasonably stable and useful office suite for Mac OS X for free. Of course, giving NeoOffice away for free does not cover the cost of developing, bug fixing, and supporting NeoOffice. But amazingly we have been able to fix the most critical bugs and support a lot of users because enough users saw value in what we do and decided to donate.
Relying on donations over the last 7 years has not always been easy, but we believe that it is one of the key things what has made the NeoOffice project what is today and we have no plans to change that.
Starting on 27 October 2009, all users will be able to download NeoOffice 3.0.1 for free. Based on past releases, download demand is likely to be very high on 27 October 2009 and for several weeks thereafter so we recommend that Early Access Program members download NeoOffice 3.0.1 from the following URL before 27 October 2009 to avoid slow downloads:
NeoOffice 3.0.1 includes all of the code in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 2 plus fixes for several bugs reported by our users after Patch 2 was released.
Unfortunately, there is no patch available to upgrade NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access installations to NeoOffice 3.0.1. The bug fixes that we made after NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 2 was released are too large to include in a patch. As a result, NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access users will need to download and install NeoOffice 3.0.1.
Below is a list of the bugs in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Patch 2 that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.0.1:
3512 - Some shapes and objects display the incorrect background color or gradient style
3565 - Sun Report Builder causes crash
3566 - Spotlight plugin fails on Snow Leopard
If you are a NeoOffice 3.0.1 Early Access Program member and you have questions, please post any support questions that you have in the NeoOffice Early Access Program Support forum:
Since NeoOffice is tested by the NeoOffice user community, it may still have some undiscovered bugs that may cause NeoOffice to crash. So please read our important warnings for all NeoOffice users before using NeoOffice:
Posted: Mon Oct 26, 2009 5:04 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.1 released
We are pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.0.1. NeoOffice 3.0.1 can be downloaded by all Mac OS X users from the NeoOffice download page. The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users so please consider making a small donation before downloading to help us continue to improve NeoOffice.
NeoOffice 3.0.1 includes nearly all of the features in OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 and includes many of the most commonly used features in Microsoft Office. The only OpenOffice.org feature that is missing from NeoOffice 3.0.1 is Mac OS X Universal Access support. Unfortunately, we have not been able integrate OpenOffice.org's Universal Access code into NeoOffice so if you need Universal Access support, we recommend that you use OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Office, or Apple iWork.
- Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard support (32 bit only)
- NeoOffice Mobile
- Native file locking support for local and networked volumes
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Tue Oct 27, 2009 5:55 pm Post subject: NeoOffice patch and release announcements now on Twitter
To make it easier for NeoOffice users to get notified of any NeoOffice patch or release announcements, starting with this post all posts in this forum topic will be posted to our Twitter account @NeoOffice.
For those who prefer RSS feeds, you can still subscribe to this forum topic by subscribing to the this RSS feed.
Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2009 11:00 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 1 released
Since we released NeoOffice 3.0.1 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 last month, our users found a change in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that can cause NeoOffice to sometimes crash when saving to remote "AFP" volumes. Since this Mac OS X change affects many NeoOffice users, we have reworked our code to handle this Mac OS X change and we have released the change in NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 1.
In addition to our fix for this Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard crashing bug, these patches also include fixes for the following critical bugs in NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code that our users have found:
- Unable to save .od* files that have been open for several days
- Base crashes when replacing form field format
- Calc Edit::Undo menu incorrect after copying and pasting
- Incorrect Symbol fonts shown after Export as PDF
NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 1 can be downloaded from the following URL:
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 1:28 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 2 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 2 released
Since our last patch release last month, one of our users found a bug that causes both NeoOffice to crash when opening large spreadsheets that contained sorted ranges. While this Calc crashing bug is a rare bug and very few users have been affected by this bug, our top goal is to ensure that NeoOffice is stable and does not crash so we have have fixed this Calc crashing bug and released NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 2 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 2.
In addition to our fix for this Calc crashing bug, we have also fixed a problem that many users have had to deal with since we released NeoOffice 3.0 back in early 2009: selecting the File :: Printer Settings menu did not immediately display the native Mac OS X Page Setup dialog like older versions of NeoOffice. This behavior has caused several support requests from NeoOffice users over the last year. So, to address this problem, in this patch release we have modified NeoOffice 3.0.1 to behave the same as NeoOffice 2.2.y by immediately displaying the native Mac OS X Page Setup dialog when the File :: Printer Settings menu is selected.
In this patch release we have also fixed the following other critical bugs reported by our users:
- NeoOffice menu becomes unresponsive when all windows are minimized
- Minimizing a document window that is displaying the native Mac OS X print dialog disables keyboard and mouse input
NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 2 can be downloaded from the following URL:
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Mon Dec 28, 2009 4:05 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access released
We are pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access. From now until 2 February 2010, members and subscribers of the current NeoOffice Early Access Program can download the latest release from the NeoOffice Early Access Program download page. Starting on 2 February 2010, all users will be able to download NeoOffice 3.0.2 for free.
The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, the NeoOffice Early Access Program is a way for us to thank our most generous users by allowing them to download a NeoOffice release before the official release date.
Important: NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access is not a production release and will likely have many undiscovered bugs. If you are not comfortable using unstable software, we recommend that you download NeoOffice 3.0.1 which is our most stable version.
We give top priority to answering any problems posted by our most generous donors. If you are a NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program member that has donated US$25 (or €19 or £15 or CA$29 or AU$31) or more within the last year, you can report any problems or ask any questions in our NeoOffice Early Access Program Support forum. Giving priority support is a way for us to thank our most generous NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program members.
Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:04 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 3 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 3 released
Since our last patch release last month, one of our users found a bug that causes NeoOffice to crash when a user's machine has one or more corrupt fonts and a document is opened that uses one of those corrupt fonts. While this crashing bug is a rare bug and very few users have been affected by this bug, our top goal is to ensure that NeoOffice is stable and does not crash so we have have fixed this crashing bug and released NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 3 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 3.
In addition to our fix for this crashing bug, we have also fixed a problem that affected Snow Leopard users. When Snow Leopard was first released, we found that saving an existing iDisk document would cause the document to be set to zero bytes in size. To protect against this Snow Leopard bug, NeoOffice 3.0.1 did not allow Snow Leopard users to save an existing iDisk document. After much debugging effort, we found the cause of this bug and we have reworked NeoOffice's underlying OpenOffice.org code to not trigger this Snow Leopard bug and in this patch, Snow Leopard users can once again save existing iDisk documents.
Both of these bug fixes were included in the NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access release so NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access users do not need to apply any patches to get these bug fixes.
NeoOffice 3.0.1 Patch 3 can be downloaded from the following URL:
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Starting on 2 February 2010, all users will be able to download NeoOffice 3.0.2 for free. Based on past releases, download demand is likely to be very high on 2 February 2010 and for several weeks thereafter so we recommend that Early Access Program members download NeoOffice 3.0.2 from the following URL before 2 February 2009 to avoid slow downloads:
NeoOffice 3.0.2 includes all of the code in NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access plus fixes for several bugs reported by our users after NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access was released.
Unfortunately, there is no patch available to upgrade NeoOffice 3.0.2 Access installations to NeoOffice 3.0.2. The bug fixes that we made after NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access was released are too large to include in a patch. As a result, NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access users will need to download and install NeoOffice 3.0.2.
Below is a list of the bugs in NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.0.2:
3579 - Accept/Reject Changes dialog no longer highlights text
3580 - Apple Remote Control does not work on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
3581 - NeoOffice crashes randomly when Mac OS X secure memory is enabled
3582 - Cursor and character postions do not match when using full width justification
3583 - Checkbox does not show "dash" option
3584 - Bad hyperlink displays error message on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
3585 - Highlighting Writer table cells fails
3587 - Some Calc documents crash when the Formula Syntax setting is set to "Excel A1" or "Excel R1C1"
Important note for Calc users who are using "Excel A1" or "Excel R1C1" as the formula syntax: in order to fix bug 3587, we had to remove the ability to use "Excel A1" or "Excel R1C1" as the formula syntax. This feature was an experimental feature developed by Novell's Go-oo engineers that we have included in NeoOffice 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 Early Access. Unfortunately, we have found that Novell's experimental feature makes NeoOffice Calc unstable and since Novell's engineers have removed this feature from their Go-oo releases, we were unable to fix the stability bugs in their code. As a result, we had to remove this feature.
If you are a NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program member and you have questions, please post any support questions that you have in the NeoOffice Early Access Program Support forum:
Since NeoOffice is tested by the NeoOffice user community, it may still have some undiscovered bugs that may cause NeoOffice to crash. So please read our important warnings for all NeoOffice users before using NeoOffice:
We give top priority to answering any problems posted by our most generous donors. If you are a NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program member that has donated US$25 (or €19 or £15 or CA$29 or AU$31) or more within the last year, you can report any problems or ask any questions in our NeoOffice Early Access Program Support forum. Giving priority support is a way for us to thank our most generous NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program members.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 4:07 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 4 released
During the recent NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program, we fixed several bugs reported by our users. Since some of these bugs occurred in both NeoOffice 3.0.2 and NeoOffice 2.2.6, we have integrated the NeoOffice 3.0.2 bug fixes into NeoOffice 2.2.6 and we have released the fixes in NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 4.
NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 4 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in this patch:
3580 - Apple Remote Control does not work on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
3583 - Checkbox does not show "dash" option
3584 - Bad hyperlink displays error message on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Mon Feb 01, 2010 4:23 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.2 released
We are pleased to announce the release of NeoOffice 3.0.2. NeoOffice 3.0.2 can be downloaded by all Mac OS X users from the NeoOffice download page. The NeoOffice project is funded entirely by donations from our users so please consider making a small donation before downloading to help us continue to improve NeoOffice.
If you are a NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access Program member or subscriber and you have been using the NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access release, we recommend that you download and install NeoOffice 3.0.2 from the NeoOffice download page as the new release contains fixes for several bugs that were found in the NeoOffice 3.0.2 Early Access release.
Important note for Calc users who are using "Excel A1" or "Excel R1C1" as the formula syntax: In order to fix a crashing bug, we had to remove the ability to use "Excel A1" or "Excel R1C1" as the formula syntax. This feature was an experimental feature developed by Novell's Go-oo engineers that we included in NeoOffice 3.0.1 and 3.0.2 Early Access. Unfortunately, we found that Novell's experimental feature made NeoOffice Calc unstable and since Novell's engineers have removed this feature from their Go-oo releases, we were unable to fix the stability bugs in their code. As a result, we had to remove this feature.
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Wed Feb 17, 2010 12:54 pm Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 1 and NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 5 released
Since we released NeoOffice earlier this month, two of our users found two different bugs that cause NeoOffice to crash. While these crashing bugs affect very few users, our top goal is to ensure that NeoOffice is stable and does not crash so we have have fixed these crashing bugs and released NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 1.
In addition to our fixes for these crashing bugs, we have also added the following two new features in this patch:
- Newer .doc file import and export code - All NeoOffice 3.0.x versions have used the OpenOffice.org 3.0.1 code to import and export .doc files. Over the last year we have found many bugs in that OpenOffice.org code. Since the many bugs that we have found were fixed in the newer OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 code, we have merged the newer OpenOffice 3.1.1 .doc file import and export code into NeoOffice.
- Dictionary lookup - NeoOffice Writer now has the same "Look Up in Dictionary" feature that many of Apple's Mac OS X applications have. Now when you Control-click or right-click on a word in a Writer document, you will see a "Look Up in Dictionary" menu in the popup menu that appears. Selecting this new menu will display the word's definition, if it exists, in Mac OS X's Dictionary application.
NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 1 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 1:
3446 - Bad fonts cause Calc labels and tabs to be compressed
3586 - Multipage table in .doc files truncated
3588 - Greek characters are stacked on top of each other
3589 - Impress crashes when inserting a table when cursor is in an existing table
3590 - Writer crashes when saving large document
NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 5 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 2.2.6 Patch 5:
3446 - Bad fonts cause Calc labels and tabs to be compressed
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Sat Mar 06, 2010 10:05 am Post subject: NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2 released
After we released NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 1 last month, a few of our users reported problems adjusting the tab bar and enabling the Save toolbar button in their Writer documents. After much troubleshooting, we found that these two problems were caused by the new Dictionary Lookup feature that we added in Patch 1. While these two problems only occurred if a user right-clicked on an image in their document before making any edits, our top goal is to ensure that NeoOffice is stable so we have have fixed these two problems and released NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2.
NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2:
3557 - Can only cycle through 2 open documents on Mac OS X 10.6
3591 - Accessing .ods data source with cell borders extremely slow
3592 - Displaying image context menu disables Save toolbar button
3593 - EPS images with Contour setting enabled do not display when document is opened
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2010 9:37 am Post subject: Re: NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2 released
Since we released NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 2 nearly a month ago, we have been busily fixing any significant bugs reported by users. To ensure that NeoOffice users have the most stable code available, we have combined all of the latest bug fixes with the fixes in previous NeoOffice patches and we have released NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 3.
NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 3 can be downloaded from the following URL:
Below is a list of the bugs that we fixed in NeoOffice 3.0.2 Patch 3:
3557 - Can only cycle through 2 open documents on Mac OS X 10.6 when using a Belgian keyboard layout
3594 - Check boxes in .doc files do not stay checked after saving
3595 - Network printer causes NeoOffice to hang for several minutes before sending output to the printer
If you have any support questions, a list of suggested steps for finding an answer for a problem as fast as possible is available on the NeoOffice Support page. Since over half of our donations come from a small percentage of our users, we provide priority support to our most generous donors in our NeoOffice forums.
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