Anyone who has used OpenOffice.org knows that it can be very slow at the best of times, however, a friend forwarded me this tip for making it faster:
- Launch one of the OpenOffice.org applications (doesn't really matter which)
- Click on the 'Tools' menu and choose 'Options'
- Expand the 'OpenOffice.org' tree and choose 'Java'
- Untick 'Use a Java Runtime Environment'.
Apparently one of the reasons why OOo is so slow is because it also loads the Java RE every time it loads - this should prevent it from doing so. It will stop you from using Java with OOo but the chances are most home users won't need it anyway.
Note that this probably won't have any effect on NeoOffice on Mac OS X, since it has to use Java for some of its operations.
Update: For those interested in knowing exactly what the Java RE is needed for in OpenOffice.org, Wikipedia has a handy guide. It will disable the wizards and all database connectivity, as well as preventing you from saving files in mobile formats like Pocket Word, restricting some of the functionality of Base and the media players on Unix systems.
When I do this on my system OOo crashes when I press F7 to start the spellchecker. With a JRE enabled the spellchecker works and OOo doesn’t crash. So I guess I’ll live with the extended starting time.
Well that’s odd - it works fine on my copy of OpenOffice.org 2.0.2 for Windows. What OS are you using and what version? And does updating to the latest release solve the problem?
Hello I would very much like a GMAIL invite do you still have any?
Dean Field
I have two systems, both with OO 2.0.2. On my WinXP home OO crashes without Java while on my WinXP pro it stays stable. Weird, must be a prob on my home system. Thanks for the hint anyway.
Great tip! Thanks man.