Documents Opening as Read Only in OpenOffice.org
June 2, 2008 11 Comments
Had a real problem with documents in OpenOffice opening in Read Only mode. As per advice on loads of sites, I selected the section and went into the Format Menu and unchecked the “protected” checkbox
This, unfortunately had no effect, and the status bar still said the document was “read-only”.
This was driving me nuts until I found the following on Ubuntu Launchpad:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openoffice.org/+bug/215420
It turns out the error is due to the Table of Contents that I had earlier in the document – the read-only status of the TOC propagates to the rest of the document.
By going into the Insert-Index and tables and removing the check for “Protected Against Manual Changes”, then the document then becomes writeable!
Problem solved.
i couldn’t find anything like that, all i had to do was save the file then open it again and then i was able to un/check the checkbox that was giving me that error. weird.
Tried saving in different document formats and all sorts…quite bizarre really. I think this beahviour only occurs if you use a table of contents though….
Thanks!
I unchecked “protect against manual changes” box in the indices and tables menu. All this did was to allow me to change the table of contents. The rest of the text remained protected. In fact, Open office behaved as the pages after the table of contents didn’t exist: e.g. when I tried to ‘select all’ it only selects the first 3 pages up to the table. The remaining pages were not selected.
I finally had to copy paste everything (excluding the table of contents) into a new document. that worked.
Gerhard Schnyder said,
July 21, 2008 at 1:30 pm
I unchecked “protect against manual changes” box in the indices and tables menu. All this did was to allow me to change the table of contents. The rest of the text remained protected. In fact, Open office behaved as the pages after the table of contents didn’t exist: e.g. when I tried to ’select all’ it only selects the first 3 pages up to the table. The remaining pages were not selected.
I finally had to copy paste everything (excluding the table of contents) into a new document. that worked.
——————————————————
I copy+paste everything, that includes the table of contents, in a new document and it worked.
I unchecked “protect against manual changes” box in the indices and tables menu. Then I went into the Format Menu and unchecked the “protected” checkbox from all the listed sections. That allowed me to edit the document. Just fine. Looks like you have do both.
Thanks to all, this solved a problem the day before I have to hand in dissertation. Phew!
This was driving me nuts too. I am using version 3 now. simply click on the read-only piece in the status bar and it os opens the dialogue you need to de select.
Thanks anayway.
Big whoop – you found a different way to reach the same pop-up the original post told you to go to.
And the rest of you failed to read the origianl post, he said to do both. I’ll bet the guy who bcopied text to a new document did not copy the TOC and when he added that in he unchecked the protect field.
So refreshing to see so many of you do not understand English.
What you need to do is Ctrl+A, Go to Format-> Sections, unchecked the Protected checkbox.
Reopen the document.
Thanks a lot.