OpenOffice crashing on macOS Big Sur? Try LibreOffice
Some Apache OpenOffice users are reporting that version 4.1.8 is crashing on Apple macOS 11.0 (aka “Big Sur” or 10.16) when opening OOXML documents – like .docx and .xlsx. The error message is:
OpenOffice quit unexpectedly
Here’s a video showing how it crashes (WebM version here):
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One solution is to install LibreOffice, a more actively developed successor project. (OpenOffice’s last major release – 4.1 – was back in 2014.)
LibreOffice has much better support for modern operating systems, and many other features too, such as OOXML export, an updated NotebookBar user interface, a cloud-based version and much more. This timeline shows the major releases:
LibreOffice 7.1 runs on macOS Big Sur, so download it here and carry on with your work. And there’s more to come: an optimised version of LibreOffice for Apple’s M1-based Macs is being developed, thanks to work from Collabora Productivity, a company in LibreOffice’s ecosystem. And more improvements for LibreOffice on macOS Big Sur are on the way – stay tuned!
Interesting thing – some of our readers use OpenOffice.org yet and they are fans of it.
Pretty weird I think, but their decision and hell.