Items From Drawing toolbar not displaying

PugMuffin · Blue Pill Joined: Aug 02, 2007 Posts: 3

Today NeoOffice seems unable to save and display drawing objects from the drawing toolbar such as rectangles, lines etc.

I have older doc's (everything in Word 6.0 format) that display rectangles and flowchart items just fine. But the drawing objects do not display in the documents I just created.

The normal text displays just fine, so the file is being saved correctly, everything displays except the drawing objects.

Can anyone shed some light on what I might be doing wrong, I've put a lot of work into these documents.

I'm using NeoOffice 2.1. Patch 3 on OS X 10.4.10, been using NeoOffice a little less than a year and have never had this problem.

Thanks for any help.

Samwise · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 8:26 am Post subject:

My first suggestion would be to download and install Patch 7 which is available on the patch download page, and see if the problem goes away. If it doesn't, please post back and we'll try to figure out what the cause of the problem may be.

PugMuffin · Blue Pill Joined: Aug 02, 2007 Posts: 3

Installed Patch 7, with no change.

My method of checking is to create a doc, insert text and a rectangle and then save it. When I reopen the doc the text is there but not the rectangle.

Samwise · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:35 am Post subject:

Can you trying moving your NeoOffice-2.1 and NeoOffice-2.x preference folders aside by following the instructions provided on our wiki ?

Also, in what format are you saving your document ?

Samwise · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:54 am Post subject:

If you are saving all your documents in Word 6.0 format, you can disregard my previous advice of moving your preference folders aside. I have found that saving a document with a drawing shape in this format and re-opening the document produces the result that you desribed.

The likely explanation is that OpenOffice.org's Word 6.0 import/export filter (NeoOffice is based on OpenOffice.org) will not export the drawing objects correctly. However, the Word 97/2000/XP filter will; unless you have a compelling reason to save your documents in Word 6.0 format, you should save them in that format instead. Also, it is advisable to keep your documents in ODF (.od*) format, and only save them in another format when you need to exchange them with Microsoft Office users, for example.

PugMuffin · Blue Pill Joined: Aug 02, 2007 Posts: 3

Samwise

You hit on it.

The issue seems to be that I was saving the doc in Word 6 -- which when I do with the rebuilt preferences I get a warning message (the warning did not occur with the previous preferences).

The drawing objects appear fine when the doc is saved as an .odt

I would say the problem was that I was not getting a warning message when saving as Word 6 format.

Word 97/2000/XP saves fine with drawing objects, but I will make sure I use the .odt from here on out.

Thanks for helping me through this.

Samwise · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:42 am Post subject:

Since we figured out the issue isn't related to corrupted preferences, you can move back your NeoOffice-2.1 folder to its original location (this folder contains many settings, including all your installed dictionaries and more) and overwrite the new folder.

The warning when saving in another format can be re-enabled at any time from NeoOffice > Preferences... > Load/Save > General > "Warn when not saving in OpenDocument or default format".