Open Office Won't Print!

[decatur-linux]

I am running Kubuntu 6.06 and Open Office 2.0.2, dated January 11, 2007. In particular, I'm trying to print from Calc.

Up until yesterday everything was fine. The only thing I've changed since then was to apply three updates to Kubuntu via Adept; I think it was libgtk* or something like that.

Now I get a strange behavior: if I pull up a spreadsheet and modify it, then do a Page Preview it shows the un-edited version. It will save the edited spreadsheet fine. I can close it and open it again: the spreadsheet looks fine on the monitor, but it still shows the unedited version when I do a Page Preview.

Moreover, it will not print the spreadsheet. It submits the job, I can see the job in the print queue, and it says Processing but it never prints.

Thanks for your help.

I thought something was wrong with the printer, but it prints fine from Kate and KSpread and everything else I have tried to print. I even pulled up the Calc spreadsheet using KSpread and printed it that way, but it doesn't look as good as if it had been printed with Calc.

Is there a log file that I can review to see which files I updated? Is there a way to roll these updates back to the previous version? I am assuming that it was the udates that messed up Open Office. Anyone have any other suggestions?

[decatur-linux]

Re: Open Office Won't Print!

I have learned that the log file I need is /var/log/dpkg and it shows that I updated the following files today:
libgtk2.0-common 2.8.20-0ubuntu1.1
libgtk2.0-0 2.8.20-0ubuntu1.1
libgtk2.0-bin 2.8.20-0ubuntu1.1

How do I uninstall these and revert to the previous versions?

[penguin.ch]

Re: Open Office Won't Print!

How do I uninstall these and revert to the previous versions?

In Synaptic, there is an option to "force" the specific version of a package to be (re-)installed (provided there is more than one available from the repositories, which in case of "libgtk2*" holds true).

[decatur-linux]

Re: Open Office Won't Print!

Thanks, penguin.ch. I've learned a lot from this exercise, but I still have a few questions.

Here is what I learned:

(1) To see the last update of dkpk: cat /var/log/dpkg.log

(2) To see what was upgraded: cat /var/log/dpkg | grep upgrade

The first parameter in each selected line is the file that is to be upgraded, the second parameter is the file that upgrades the first parameter.

To reinstall the original files, use synaptic with the -f option. Select the package that was installed in error. Select Package-->Force Version. Choose the version that you want to reinstall. Check Apply.

Now my questions: when I attempted to downgrade these three packages, Synaptic came back and said something like "dependencies had changed" and it wanted to remove some 34 packages, including Firefox. This didn't sound right, so I aborted this attempt. On the next attempt I selected the three packages and selected the Force Version option. And when I hit Apply this time it said that it was going to downgrade the three packages only. And I allowed it to do the downgrade. Staying in Synaptic, I verified that they had been downgraded. Then when I tried to exit, it said that there were some "things" that remained to be done, and that if I exited I would lose these. Well, to make a long story short, I upgraded the three packages again, downgraded them again, and then exited the program, with the same "error" message again.

I presume that the message meant that I still had the three packages installed that were not the latest version [which was what I wanted]; so to exit was OK.

Did it solve my problem? I'm not sure. I still could not print that particular spreadsheet but I copied the data to a new spreadsheet and was able to print it. The original spreadsheet may have gotten corrupted somehow. And a corrupted spreadsheet may have been all that the problem was. I will continue experimenting.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Open Office Won't Print!

I upgraded the three packages again, downgraded them again, and then exited the program, with the same "error" message again.

In short, Linux depends a great deal on code sharing - which means that one package may be "reused" by several other packages ... which in turn means that, for example when you downgrade a package, one of those relying on it may feel betrayed, so to speak ... that's why "version forcing" is an extremly delicate matter (although sometimes unavoidable).

The original spreadsheet may have gotten corrupted somehow.

You may crosscheck this by copying the original file to a different machine and try to print it from there (or, if not possible otherwise, mail it to me for a test ...).