OpenOffice 3.x on Leopard 10.5.x
So I’m a new Mac user… Yes, I’ve “switched”, someone put me in a commercial so I can be a dork.
Anywho, I determined I’m NOT using M$ Office for Mac and that I am going to make due with OpenOffice, and VMWare Fusion for running Office applications natively. Except…. OpenOffice was constantly freezing whenever you opened it. I have no love of MSOffice, so I REALLY want this gorram thing to work so I don’t have to boot up VMWare for anything other than an occasional non DirectX10 game. Everytime I go to load up OO Calc it freezes with the stupid pinwheel of death thingy.
So I spend a stupid amount of time working out issues like Java versions (which Apple handles in the most retarded fashion… EVAR), OO updates and finally find an inoccuous post that you have to startup your X11.app before you open OO. That seems to work, but in order to actually use and edit an Excel spreadsheet in OO you have to have a blank Calc sheet open first, then open up your Excel spreadsheet.
So — the solution that worked for me, on an iMac (9,1) Leopard 10.5.7, Java SE6 64bit, OpenOffice 3.1.0 is this:
- KEYBOARD HEADSMASH!
- Update Java manually from the OSX download site. (This one worked for me.)
- Open System Preferences and move the Java versions so that Java SE6 64bit is first
- Open your X11.app (I simply type X11 in spotlight)
- Open a blank Calc worksheet
- Open your Excel Spreadsheet.
- PROFIT!
ugh.. I’m pretty sure since I’m a new slobbering mac user I’ve done something to dork up my system that I had to run through these steps, but I will say that this link makes me believe I’m not the only clueless MAC’er out there to have this issue.