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Why am I unable to open an OO file stored on a Windows share by double clicking in Nautilus?

Asked by Geoff Johnson

Why am I unable to open an OO file stored on a Windows share by double clicking in Nautilus? I can open other file types (e.g. jpeg files) in this way. I see the OpenOffice splash screen then nothing.

Also, if I open OO and go to the open file dialog I see no way referencing the files on this smb share.

Do need to configure OO in some way to be able to reference these files??

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Arnaudus (a-lerouzic) said : 		#1

Hi,

Which kind of file is it exactly? Is it Oo or Microsoft Office files?

If you see the splash screen, then OpenOffice tries to open the file and then crashes. Perhaps the file is corrupted? Can you access the file from Windows? What happens if you copy the file on your Linux partition and try to open it?

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Arnaudus (a-lerouzic) said : 		#2

By the way, Openoffice does not seem to like samba shared partitions. See for instance question #32500, question #44845 and bug #267371. It might be the same problem (if the files are corrupted, OpenOffice may crash). You should always try to have a backup of your files before putting them on a smb drive, seems that there are some problems.

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Geoff Johnson (geoffejohnson) said : 		#3

Thanks for your thoughts on this issue. I can confirm:
a) Files are not corrupt.
b) Mixture of .doc and .odt files.
c) All files open OK if copied to desktop, but will not open from the Samba share.
d) Have tried both OO 2.4 and 3.0. Issue remains at version 3.0

Conclusion
===========
I guess OO doesn't like Samba shares.

Any further thoughts, anyone??

Geoff

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Geoff Johnson (geoffejohnson) said : 		#4

I finally have a solution.
After reviewing various Ubuntu forum threads I believe the only answer to this issue is to mount the Windows share as an smb filesystem:
In this example I use a mount point name of maki_ddrive for a Windows share "ddrive" on a Windows machine "maki".
  mkdir /mnt/maki_ddrive
  mount -t smbfs //maki/ddrive /mnt/maki_ddrive

In order to make the mount point easily visible in Nautilus I then added a link in my home directory:
  cd /home/geoff
  ln -s /mnt/maki_ddrive

=============
Having said all the above, I am new to Linux / Ubuntu and would welcome comments as to whether this is the best/only approach to resolving this issue.
=============

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Tony Pursell (ajpursell) said : 		#5

Bug #267371 affect large files, in particular. I am a contributor to that bug and while testing for that bug I had no problem opening OOo files on an XP machine (using Samba, of course) from File manager by clicking them. It is just a matter of associating OOo with a particular file type. I will do some tests and report further.

Tony

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