Libre Office won't open

Anything LibreOffice will not open.

I can open it if I switch user to guest.

I have searched and gotten many results for this problem, so that it seems to be common, but the answers are unintelligible to me. This one here said:

...there is a hidden folder ~/.config (so in your home directory). Could you make >it visible by typing Ctrl+H while in your home directory and remove the libreoffice >folder inside that folder? Good chance that all works fine then. Possibly (probably, my >guess) some settings file is damaged. Those files are not removed when uninstalling I >believe. – Jacob Vlijm 2 days ago

I don't know HOW to do this. Could someone please take it the very beginning, for someone like me who doesn't just know this stuff? Again, it seems like a common problem with an easy fix, if I just knew HOW.

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4 Answers

i'm not going to add anything to Jacob comment but just inserting some screenshots to help:

Open your file manager and go to your home(it will open there by default).

Show hidden file by pressing CTRL+h

Now you can find many hidden files/dirs search for that named .config

Now open that directory and search for directory called libreoffice

Now remove this dir by pressing Delete or rightclick --> Move to Trash

Now log out and log in again then try to open libroffice again

An additionally answer using terminal way:

Open a terminal with CtrlAltT and fire this command:

rm -r ~/.config/libreoffice

This command deletes the folder .config/libreoffice in your home folder ~, but not the folde .config itself ;)

Alternatively you could create a backup of the folder with:

mv ~/.config/libreoffice ~/.config/libreoffice_bak

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You should check if libreoffice didn't open a modal window in the background asking about recovering a document after a crash.

Such a modal window can appear in the background, underneath all other application windows, without any corresponding application being listed in your task bar.

If you try to launch the main application again, it will simply quit, and it will look like nothing happened, but the modal window is in fact still there in the background.

Try minimizing any and all window to check for that modal window, and answer the question.

I had the same problem with my Ubuntu 14.04 and wanted to just remove and reinstall, but somehow I got lucky. Here is how I was able to fix it.

1. Go to your Ubuntu Software Center and search for any of the LibreOffice packages (e.g. LibreOffice Calc).
2. Click on it and then click on Remove and wait.
3. You will receive a message indicating that the package cannot be removed because it has a problem and you will be asked it you want to fix it. Just accept by clicking on Yes.
4. The entire LibreOffice suite will be fixed and you should be able work with any of the packages in it again.

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