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I want to install OpenOffice. What can I do to install it on my computer?

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To anyone who wants to follow these instructions: Please remember that LibreOffice evolved from OpenOffice when it was dropped by it's original developers, so if you are looking for a full-featured Office software, LibreOffice should be enough for you. Not so long ago the original OpenOffice was picked up by Apache, so currently there is a fair choice between these two platforms, but LibreOffice is by no means "worse" or "less feature-packed". Therefore this question is useful for those who for some reasons want to replace the default software with LibreOffice, which does not differ a lot. – Rafał Cieślak Jan 4 '13 at 22:11
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1) For installing OpenOffice you have to first uninstall the LibreOffice which is by default installed in your Ubuntu.

So open the Terminal Window and type the following command and give password.This will remove the LibreOffice completely.

sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice-core

(OR)

Open the Ubuntu Software Center and search for “LibreOffice core” and click on remove (uninstall).This will uninstall the LibreOffice completely.

2) Download OpenOffice from its official website.The download file will be in *.tar.gz format.

3) After the file is downloaded, go to the downloaded directory and click on “Extract here”.

4) Now open the Terminal and change the directory to the location where your Extracted Open Office file is present.Just type “cd” followed by drag and dropping the “DEBS” folder or manually do it.

5) Type the following command which will install OpenOffice by installing all the *.deb package files.

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

6) Enjoy using OpenOffice. The default installation location is /opt/openoffice4 and Apache OpenOffice executable is called soffice and is located in /opt/OpenOffice4/program/

source

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Whenever I'm trying to do that, it's remove 'gnome' metapackage as-well "sudo apt-get remove --purge libreoffice-core", which in-turn is removing gnome packages like 'transmission' and many more. . . ! – Sumit Murari Aug 8 '15 at 19:43
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Try sudo apt-get purge libreoffice* if you still see any errors when installing open office. – Bilal Mar 8 '16 at 8:56
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Went through this answer step by step and it didn't work. It's not showing on the menu or when I search through the menu and running "soffice" from the terminal yields "/usr/bin/soffice: 175: exec: /usr/lib/libreoffice/program/oosplash: not found" – The Duke Of Marshall שלם Jan 13 '17 at 14:35
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NOTE - To remove LibreOffice ( to avoid any conflict) please read Rick Green's below answer and then follow this.

Now it is known as Apache OpenOffice which is available through third Party repository as 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/office 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openoffice

If you are on a 64 bit system you are not done yet. Starting openoffice3 will fail with the message "no suitable windowing system found, exiting". You need to install some 32 bit libraries:

sudo apt-get install libxrandr2:i386 libxinerama1:i386

Next, it fails with "exception in syncronize" because permissions are wrong. Fix them. Then it worked for me.

sudo chmod a+rx /opt/openoffice.org3/share/uno_packages/cache/uno_packages

Alternate method

Download .tar.gz from here , selecting your Arch type through Linux Intel DEB for 32-bit and Linux x86-64 DEB for 64-bit, it basically contains .deb installation packages. Follow these instructions:

  • Unpack the downloaded Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.0_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz to prepare for installation by 

    tar -xvzf Apache_OpenOffice_incubating_3.4.0_Linux_x86_install-deb_en-US.tar.gz

    The Extracted directory will be named after the Language you selected to download like

    en-US

    Navigate into DEBS folder

    Install the .deb files by typing 

    sudo dpkg -i *.deb

By default, this will install Apache OpenOffice in your /opt directory.

For installing the desktop integration features for your setup navigate to desktop-integration in the DEBS installation directory and do 

  sudo dpkg -i *.deb

NOTE Be careful ppa:upubuntu-com/office refers to older version of open office.

SOURCE

Linked answer

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This does not include a recommendation to first remove LibreOffice. These two packages are very similar and may not work together. – david6 Nov 19 '12 at 11:16
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@david6- The question wasn't asked in that context anyhow, good point though , but that's up-to User's choice. I will link above Rick Green's answer to include it too. – atenz Nov 19 '12 at 17:27
    
For me, 12.04 and method #1 doesn't work. Seems to be conflict or confusion with Java - this appears to be effecting more than a few people: google.co.za/… ... ubuntuforum advice didn't fix it: ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=12223047&postcount=8, and seems there're related bugs, but not enough caring: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/926594. That being said, method #2 worked great, so thanks to tijybba. – Zayne S Halsall Dec 29 '12 at 11:30
    
In my case the server didn't have "unzip" installed so it silently failed even though everything completed. – Paul Gregoire Jul 9 '13 at 17:15
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The first method no longer works. ppa is dead... Can we get an updated answer? – JohnMerlino Nov 9 '13 at 1:15

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