OpenOffice changing language randomly

Ravioli · Jan 26, 2015

So I've been writing my WIP in OO Writer, and in English. But many times, the language as indicated in the bottom center field has set itself to German, with is the language the creator had originally saved the template in. I don't remember how I fixed this problem the last time.
This just happened again, after weeks of writing with "English (usa)" in the grey field. Now suddenly it's German again, and selecting text, even the empty space ahead of what's been typed, and marking it as "English" and setting the default language to English, does not help. No matter whether it's for the whole document, selection, or paragraph, as soon as I continue to type, it will go back to German and hence not perform any spell check. It's also extremely bothersome and distracting to have the imperfection of a lie, "German", staring me in the face while I'm trying to work and have to correct this untruth after every word as so much as a space resets the language to untruth. How do I set the software to stop ever changing any languages in my document? I have gone into the language settings, but everything is on English (usa). I have to continue right now but I can't because it says "German" when I'm typing in English, and I can't eat a chicken when the packaging says turkey.

Jamesaritchie · Jan 26, 2015

Stop using OpenOffice. Get LibreOffice. It's the same thing, but with constant development, better features, and much better reliability.

Ravioli · Jan 26, 2015

Thanks for the tip. I somehow got it fixed again. Still no idea how. Does LO support OO templates?

BradCarsten · Jan 26, 2015

NaeimGiladisLegacy said:
Thanks for the tip. I somehow got it fixed again. Still no idea how. Does LO support OO templates?

The community that developed Open office got upset with Oracle (who had become the new evil overlords) and so they took the Open Office source code and just changed the name, but otherwise it was exactly the same software. They then continued development on that, giving Oracle the middle finger. Open Office hasn't been updated since- I think it's last release was in 2011.
So everything should work perfectly unless some new feature has broken an old template.

As for your original question, just go to the taskbar at the bottom of the page, and your current dictionary should be listed somewhere in the middle. Click on German or English (USA) or whatever is currently selected and choose whatever dictionary you want to use.

Just to add to this, in Libre office (and perhaps open office too) go to Tools > Options, then select Language settings from the left pane > Languages, and then in the main window select the language you want under Default language for documents.

Maryn · Jan 26, 2015

I understood Open Office to have been bought by Apache. There most certainly have been updates since 2011.

Maryn · Jan 26, 2015

Jamesaritchie said:
Stop using OpenOffice. Get LibreOffice. It's the same thing, but with constant development, better features, and much better reliability.

You know, if the question had been I've had it with Open Office. What should I get instead? this would have been a perfectly good answer, but as it is, you did not address the question at all. For all you know, the same issue with language may exist in Libre Office too, since they diverged from the same code.

BradCarsten · Jan 26, 2015

Maryn said:
I understood Open Office to have been bought by Apache. There most certainly have been updates since 2011.

My mistake. I've now switched to Google docs and WPS office, so I don't follow it all that closely any more. The last Open Office released under Oracle was 2011.

Maryn · Jan 26, 2015

Not a problem, just a correction of facts. It's not a perfect program by any means, but I do like the price.

Maryn, who has issues with how it handles tracking changes

Ravioli · Jan 27, 2015

It's still happening and I don't know what to do. At this rate, I'll have to delete the entire WIP (303 pages) because I can't possibly type while staring at a distracting falsehood that also compromises the spell checker. I was just getting into a good paragraph which I'll now have to cancel and dismiss because it says "German". Why has this error been implemented by the developers?

Maryn · Jan 27, 2015

Just because no one here is able to solve the problem doesn't mean the best action is to delete your document.

Have you googled "OpenOffice Changes Languages"? Most problems with software are not unique to one user but have happened to many others.

Maryn, who'd seek a solution

Ravioli · Jan 27, 2015

Yeah, Google only gives me discussions on how to deliberately change languages, but nothing on this specific issue. I've taken this issue to the official OpenOffice forums to no avail.
I've just tried a few things and found that setting everything (selection, paragraph, etc.) to English and then closing the program to restart it, helps. But since it suddenly switches to German in the first place, there must be just as simple a way to switch it back, probably a combination of accidentally pressed keys or such. And I still don't know why this happens.

Thanks for your support; I wish the developers could at least pretend to care as much.

Alexys · Jan 28, 2015

Have you tried the too-obvious fix of opening a new document, selecting the entire contents, and copy-and-pasting it all? (The next step beyond that would be saving as HTML or another inspectable-as-raw-text format and checking for anything peculiar, but you might lose the template or other complex formatting that way . . .)

BradCarsten · Jan 28, 2015

Does this help

The third post says you need to change the documents style sheet. press F11
right click on Default style and select modify.

Go to font and Change the default language

Does this work?

Reziac · Jan 31, 2015

Maryn said:
You know, if the question had been I've had it with Open Office. What should I get instead? this would have been a perfectly good answer, but as it is, you did not address the question at all. For all you know, the same issue with language may exist in Libre Office too, since they diverged from the same code.

Not quite. Novell was working on their own version back a while, and donated a huge pile of bugfixes. As I heard it, LibreOffice used these bugfixes, but OpenOffice didn't.

Ravioli · Jan 31, 2015

Alexys said:
Have you tried the too-obvious fix of opening a new document, selecting the entire contents, and copy-and-pasting it all? (The next step beyond that would be saving as HTML or another inspectable-as-raw-text format and checking for anything peculiar, but you might lose the template or other complex formatting that way . . .)

Yeah but that didn't work last time I tried it.

ave said:
Does this help

The third post says you need to change the documents style sheet. press F11
right click on Default style and select modify.

Go to font and Change the default language

Does this work?

Thank you SO much! I'll definitely try that next time it happens (let's hope it won't or I might lose it).

Taejang · Feb 2, 2015

Maryn said:
You know, if the question had been I've had it with Open Office. What should I get instead? this would have been a perfectly good answer, but as it is, you did not address the question at all. For all you know, the same issue with language may exist in Libre Office too, since they diverged from the same code.

In this case, it was a valid answer (if perhaps not worded the best) because it could solve the issue and is free to try.

As mentioned here, MS Word, OO, and LO can all behave oddly when the document size grows very large and/or the number of things tracked gets big (in that thread, it was the number of errors being tracked). Perhaps break your story into smaller documents? My wife breaks hers into chapters, or you could just cut it every hundred pages or so.

OpenOffice changing language randomly

Ravioli

Crazy Cat Lady

Jamesaritchie

Ravioli

Crazy Cat Lady

BradCarsten

practical experience, FTW

Maryn

Baaa!

Maryn

Baaa!

BradCarsten

practical experience, FTW

Maryn

Baaa!

Ravioli

Crazy Cat Lady

Maryn

Baaa!

Ravioli

Crazy Cat Lady

Alexys

Took a wrong turn at the Pleiades

BradCarsten

practical experience, FTW

Reziac

Resident Alien

Ravioli

Crazy Cat Lady

Taejang

Why not?