Apache OpenOffice

Note
Official support for Apache OpenOffice was dropped in favor of
LibreOffice
, the "Document Foundation" fork of the project, which also includes enhancements and additional features. See
Dropping Oracle OpenOffice (arch-general)
.
From
Why Apache OpenOffice
:
Apache OpenOffice is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.
Installation
Install
the
openoffice-bin
AUR
package or
compile it from source
. It is recommended to also install
Java
.
Microsoft fonts
Official Microsoft fonts are useful to prevent pagination problems. Check the
Microsoft fonts
wiki page.
Extension management and spell checking
The Arch package is now shipped with some dictionaries. Check
Extension manager
if your language is already there simply by loading up any OpenOffice program (Writer for example) and access the
Extension Manager
from the Tools menu. From there enter the following location to install a spell check dictionary:
/usr/lib/openoffice/share/extension/install/
Note
If you installed LibreOffice, the path will be
/usr/lib/libreoffice/share/extensions/
instead and extensions are currently all already known to the system.
Alternatively, there are several ways to accomplish this:
Use the
Extension manager
from OpenOffice menu for download and installation - installs only for the user into their
~/.openoffice.org/3/user/uno_packages/cache
Download the extension and install it using
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg add extension
for the user
Download the extension and install it using
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/unopkg add --shared extension
for every user on the system (requires root permission)
Spellchecker
For spellchecking you will need
hunspell
and dictionary for hunspell (like
hunspell-en_us
,
hunspell-de
, etc), for hyphenation rules you will need
hyphen
(
hyphen-en
,
hyphen-de
, etc) and for a thesaurus,
libmythes
.
Other extensions installed by default
pdfimport.oxt
- Ability to import PDF files in Draw and Impress
presenter-screen.oxt
- When using two displays this plugin provides more control over slideshow
sun-presentation-minimizer.oxt
- Reduce file size of current presentation
wiki-publisher.oxt
- Allows to create Wiki articles on MediaWiki servers without having to know the syntax of the MediaWiki markup language
Installing macros
In most Linux distributions, the default path for macros is:
~/.openoffice.org/3/user/Scripts/
The path for this directory in Arch Linux is:
~/.config/.openoffice.org/3/user/Scripts/
Macros are not guaranted to work in both OpenOffice and LibreOffice, but it is possible to choose a common directory for them. Choose the path in
Tools > Options > LibreOffice/OpenOffice > Paths
The default path for LibreOffice macros in Arch Linux is:
~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/Scripts/
Note
If you intend to use macros, you must have a Java Runtime Environment. This behavior is a default, but disabling it
speeds up
the loading time.
Install TrueType fonts
To add fonts to those already available in OpenOffice, run
spadmin
.
Theme
OpenOffice supports to use several toolkits for drawing and integrates into different desktop environments in a clean way. To choose by hand, you need to set the
OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP
environment variable. Its possible values are
gnome
and
kde4
.
To configure the look for anytime OpenOffice gets started, you can export the
OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP
variable in
/etc/profile.d/openoffice.sh
, or in
/usr/bin/soffice
.
Alternatively you can put the variable in any OpenOffice desktop file in
Exec
line between
Exec
and the command, then copy them to
$XDG_DATA_HOME/applications
in order to prevent overwriting on update.
KDE4/Qt4 look and feel
Check
Uniform look for Qt and GTK applications
for a broad application, general tips and other methods to achieve it.
Use different configuration from general theme
Do
not
select
Use my KDE style in GTK applications
. Instead choose a native syle and font for GTK 2 applications.
Use a program like
gtk-chtheme
AUR
to select a style (in general different from KDE) and a font (may be the same as your KDE general system font). There are also other GTK engine packages available.
There are two relevant parts of the OpenOffice options dialog,
View
and
Fonts
:
View
Set scale to 100%
Set use system font OFF (otherwise replacement table will not be used)
Set antialiasing OFF
Fonts
Select
Use replacement table
Replace
Andale Sans UI
(you
must
type this in -- it is not in the drop down list) with another font (your KDE system font or another if this looks bad)
Press the tick symbol to update the list
Select
Always
and
Screen only
Press
OK
When choosing fonts for OpenOffice note that the poor font rendering engine included in the package may not render a particular font in the same way as other applications on the desktop.
Speed up OpenOffice
Some settings may improve OpenOffice's loading time and responsiveness. However, some also increase RAM usage, so use them carefully. They can all be accessed under
Tools > Options
.
Under
Memory
:
Reduce the number of
Undo > Number of steps
to a figure lower than 100, to something like 40 or 50 steps
Under
Graphics cache
, set
Use for OpenOffice
to 128 MB (up from the original 20MB).
Set
Memory per object
to 20MB (up from the default 5MB)
If you use OpenOffice often, check
OpenOffice Quickstarter
Under
Java
, uncheck Use a Java runtime environment
Note
For a list of functionality which depends on OpenOffice Java support, see this page:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java
.
Tips and tricks
Automated document conversion
Document conversion can also be done by the command line tool
unoconv
, which is a
python
automated conversion and styling tool that uses OpenOffice remote access capabilities. Even though it is no longer maintained, as of 2026Q1 it is still very useful. It either starts an OpenOffice instance for its own usage, or connects to an already  running instance. No graphical environment is required for its work.
Troubleshooting
Font substitution
These settings can be changed in the OpenOffice options. From the drop-down menu, select
Tools > Options > OpenOffice > Fonts
. Check the box that says
Apply Replacement Table
. Type
Andale Sans UI
in the font box and choose your desired font for the
Replace with
option. When done, click the
checkmark
. Then choose the
Always
and
Screen only
options in the box below. Click OK.
You will then need to go to
Tools > Options > OpenOffice > View
, and uncheck
Use system font for user interface
. If you use a non-antialised font, such as Arial, you will also need to uncheck
Screen font antialiasing
before menu fonts render correctly.
Anti-aliasing
Execute:
$ echo "Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault" | xrdb -merge
To make the change persistent, add
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
to your
~/.Xresources
file
[1]
.
If this does not work, make sure you are running
$ xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
every time you launch
Xorg
. If you do not have this file, you will have to create it.
Spell checking problems
As of OpenOffice 3.0.0-2, various dictionaries may be buggy due to a character encoding problem. To solve this issue, follow the following instructions.
Find where the particular openoffice distribution places its dictionary files; e.g.,
pacman -Ql openoffice-base
. Most distibutions follow the convention of installing these to
/usr/lib/openoffice/share/extension/install
. Once the directory has been found, assign it to a shell variable:
droot="/usr/lib/openoffice/share/extension/install"
Install
unzip
and
zip
packages in order to be able to extract and compress the dictionary files.
For reference, get a list of languages whose dictionary files are packaged with the base distribution:
cd "$droot" && ls | sed -rn 's,^dict-(..)\.oxt$,\1,p'
Define a list of languages whose dictionary files are to be fixed:
lang="en es"
Extract the target languages' dictionary files and convert the erroneous encoding to
UTF-8
:
tmp="/tmp/dictfix-$USER-$$"

mkdir "$tmp"
cd "$tmp"

for i in $lang; do
    i="$droot/dict-$i.oxt"
    unzip "$i" -d oxt.tmp
    iconv -f ISO-8859-15 -t UTF-8 oxt.tmp/dictionaries.xcu > dict.tmp
    mv dict.tmp oxt.tmp/dictionaries.xcu
    (cd oxt.tmp && zip -r "$i" .)
done

rm -rf "$tmp"
Finally, use the OpenOffice extension manager (available through the
Tools
menu) to install the dictionary from the resulting
dict-
xx
.oxt
file(s).
Dark GTK themes, icons and GTK-Qt Engine
Older OpenOffice/LibreOffice versions would start in
High Contrast Mode
if you use dark
GTK
themes. This might prevent you from changing
High Contrast Icons
or Calc cell background coloring is completely disabled.
In newer version of OpenOffice / LibreOffice ( > 3.2.x), possible solutions may be:
You could manually configure UI colors via
Tools > Options > Appearance
, yet Impress and Calc may stay dark.
Another solution is to disable
Automatically detect high-contrast mode of operation system
in
LibreOffice > Accessibility
(> LO 4.1.x).
Now the colors can be configured in
Options > Appearance
and the selection of another iconset is possible again.
Hanging when using NFSv3 shares
If OpenOffice hangs when trying to open/save a document located on a NFSv3 share, try prepending the following lines with a
#
in
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice
.:
SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING=1
export SAL_ENABLE_FILE_LOCKING
If you wish to avoid
/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice
overwriting on update just copy it in
/usr/local/bin
.
Original post
here
.
Fixing Java framework error
You may get the following error when you try to run OpenOffice:
[Java framework] Error in function createSettingsDocument (elements.cxx).
javaldx failed!
If so, give yourself ownership of
~/.config/
like so:
# chown -vR username:users ~/.config
Post on Arch Linux Forums.
OpenOffice does not detect my certificates
If you cannot see the certificates when trying to sign a document, you will need to have the certificates configured in Firefox (or Thunderbird). If after that OpenOffice still does not show them, set the
MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER
environment variable pointing to your Firefox (or Thunderbird) folder.
export MOZILLA_CERTIFICATE_FOLDER=$HOME/.mozilla/firefox/XXXXXX.default/
See more about
certificate detection
.