Mailmerge crash (and I have to send out a mailing tomorrow!!!!)

[Norbert Zawodsky]

Hello everybody!

(I'm not quite sure if this is the right mailing list for my issue. But
I think, since mail-merge is somehow related to base ...  ;-) )

I've been working with OO 3.1.0.6 for quite a long time now. Since this
problem hit me this evening, I upgraded to 3.1.1.1. But got the same
crash...

As always, I created a .odt document containing form letter fields. (I
did many many mailings in the past). Printing to paper works. I tried
that with 2 or 3 recipients. But sending as email crashes.
If you want to send a form letter as email, you have to use the
Assistant. (Simply pressing Ctrl-P doesn't work because "as e-mail"
doesn't exist there. BTW why ???????)
I sucessfully got through all the steps of the form-letter assistant
dialog. But when I press the "Send" button in the last step, all windows
disappear and the document-recreation dialog pops up. No error mesage.
Nothing....

This is even more a big problem to me now, because a have to send out a
mailing by tomorrow!!!

Any ideas what I could do?

Norbert

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[Frank Schoenheit, Sun Microsystems Germany]

Hi Norbert,

sorry for the late response, hope you got your mails out nonetheless ...

> (I'm not quite sure if this is the right mailing list for my issue. But
> I think, since mail-merge is somehow related to base ...  ;-) )

In general you're in the right place here. At least, asking won't hurt,
though ...

> As always, I created a .odt document containing form letter fields. (I
> did many many mailings in the past). Printing to paper works. I tried
> that with 2 or 3 recipients. But sending as email crashes.
> If you want to send a form letter as email, you have to use the
> Assistant. (Simply pressing Ctrl-P doesn't work because "as e-mail"
> doesn't exist there. BTW why ???????)
> I sucessfully got through all the steps of the form-letter assistant
> dialog. But when I press the "Send" button in the last step, all windows
> disappear and the document-recreation dialog pops up. No error mesage.
> Nothing....

... in some cases, such as the one you describe, Base hasn't stakes in
the problem, it seems. Well, that's an educated guess, without
reproducing the issue, or at least seeing more information about the
crash (did you let OOo send a crash report?, one cannot say more.

If the problem is reproducible for you, with a certain document and
database, I suggest you submit an issue, so the problem can be looked
into more thoroughly.

> Any ideas what I could do?

Save the single documents to a temporary location, and mail them manually.

Ciao
Frank

--
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- Sun Microsystems                      http://www.sun.com/staroffice -
- OpenOffice.org Base                       http://dba.openoffice.org -
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[Norbert Zawodsky]

Hi Frank,

I got the mailing out using the windows version of OO which doesn't seem
to have that problem.
Sending the mails manually wasn't such a good idea. >2.000 mails !!!!

I didn't let OO to send a crash report because it didn't ask me! Just
all open windows disappear and the
"Dokument Wiederherstellung" Dialog pops up...

If I find some time, I'll try to track down this problem to a more
informative point.
Is there a way (maybe some hidden commandline option) to start OO to let
it produce some trace / debug output ??

thanks for your help!

Norbert

Frank Schoenheit, Sun Microsystems Germany schrieb:

> Hi Norbert,
>
> sorry for the late response, hope you got your mails out nonetheless ...
>
>  
>> (I'm not quite sure if this is the right mailing list for my issue. But
>> I think, since mail-merge is somehow related to base ...  ;-) )
>>    
>
> In general you're in the right place here. At least, asking won't hurt,
> though ...
>
>  
>> As always, I created a .odt document containing form letter fields. (I
>> did many many mailings in the past). Printing to paper works. I tried
>> that with 2 or 3 recipients. But sending as email crashes.
>> If you want to send a form letter as email, you have to use the
>> Assistant. (Simply pressing Ctrl-P doesn't work because "as e-mail"
>> doesn't exist there. BTW why ???????)
>> I sucessfully got through all the steps of the form-letter assistant
>> dialog. But when I press the "Send" button in the last step, all windows
>> disappear and the document-recreation dialog pops up. No error mesage.
>> Nothing....
>>    
>
> ... in some cases, such as the one you describe, Base hasn't stakes in
> the problem, it seems. Well, that's an educated guess, without
> reproducing the issue, or at least seeing more information about the
> crash (did you let OOo send a crash report?, one cannot say more.
>
> If the problem is reproducible for you, with a certain document and
> database, I suggest you submit an issue, so the problem can be looked
> into more thoroughly.
>
>  
>> Any ideas what I could do?
>>    
>
> Save the single documents to a temporary location, and mail them manually.
>
> Ciao
> Frank
>
>  

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[Frank Schoenheit, Sun Microsystems Germany]

Hi Norbert,

> I got the mailing out using the windows version of OO which doesn't seem
> to have that problem.

Fine.

> Sending the mails manually wasn't such a good idea. >2.000 mails !!!!

Ooops.

> I didn't let OO to send a crash report because it didn't ask me!

Hmm, that's sad, crash reports can often give a good first idea what's
going wrong.

> If I find some time, I'll try to track down this problem to a more
> informative point.
> Is there a way (maybe some hidden commandline option) to start OO to let
> it produce some trace / debug output ??

None that I know, sorry.
Since you're not using the Windows version, I assume we talk 'bout
Linux? In this case, if you feel halfway familiar with it, you might
want to attach gdb to the soffice.bin process, until it crashs, and then
see if gdb is able to produce a meaningful backtrace. Sometimes, seeing
this also helps knowing what's wrong.

Ciao
Frank

--
- Frank Schönheit, Software Engineer         frank.schoenheit@... -
- Sun Microsystems                      http://www.sun.com/staroffice -
- OpenOffice.org Base                       http://dba.openoffice.org -
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[Cor Nouws]

Hi Norbert,

Apart from the assistance that Frank already has given, the following:

Norbert Zawodsky wrote (26-10-2009 20:15)

> I've been working with OO 3.1.0.6 for quite a long time now. Since this
> problem hit me this evening, I upgraded to 3.1.1.1. But got the same
> crash...

I guess that is a version from a Linux distro?

> As always, I created a .odt document containing form letter fields. (I
> did many many mailings in the past). Printing to paper works. I tried
> that with 2 or 3 recipients. But sending as email crashes.
> If you want to send a form letter as email, you have to use the
> Assistant. (Simply pressing Ctrl-P doesn't work because "as e-mail"
> doesn't exist there. BTW why ???????)

Ctrl-P offers to open the mail merge window from before OpenOffice.org 2.
The e-mail has been built in later, as a Python function, on top of the
mail merge wizard that was created for OOo 2. If I am correct, it was
done and is maintained by Caolan McNamara.

> I sucessfully got through all the steps of the form-letter assistant
> dialog. But when I press the "Send" button in the last step, all windows
> disappear and the document-recreation dialog pops up. No error mesage.
> Nothing....

Pls follow Franks advice wrt reproducing the bug. That is really helpful
in repairing the problem.
You may also try the Vanilla OpenOffice.org on Linux. Maybe that does
make a difference.

Regards,
Cor
--
Cor Nouws
   - nl.OpenOffice.org marketing contact
   - Community Contributor Representative in the Community Council
Gevoel niet vrij te zijn? Zie www.nieuwsteversie.nl

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[Cor Nouws]

PS.

Norbert Zawodsky wrote (26-10-2009 20:15)
> I sucessfully got through all the steps of the form-letter assistant
> dialog.

What works fine, if you have your document ready when you start the
wizrd, is jumping from step 1 to 8 immediately.

Cor

--
Cor Nouws
   - nl.OpenOffice.org marketing contact
   - Community Contributor Representative in the Community Council
Gevoel niet vrij te zijn? Zie www.nieuwsteversie.nl

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[Norbert Zawodsky]

Hi Frank,

Frank Schoenheit, Sun Microsystems Germany schrieb:

> Hi Norbert,
>
>  
>> I got the mailing out using the windows version of OO which doesn't seem
>> to have that problem.
>>    
>
> Fine.
>
>  
>> Sending the mails manually wasn't such a good idea. >2.000 mails !!!!
>>    
>
> Ooops.
>
>  
>> I didn't let OO to send a crash report because it didn't ask me!
>>    
>
> Hmm, that's sad, crash reports can often give a good first idea what's
> going wrong.
>
>  
>> If I find some time, I'll try to track down this problem to a more
>> informative point.
>> Is there a way (maybe some hidden commandline option) to start OO to let
>> it produce some trace / debug output ??
>>    
>
> None that I know, sorry.
> Since you're not using the Windows version, I assume we talk 'bout
> Linux? In this case, if you feel halfway familiar with it, you might
> want to attach gdb to the soffice.bin process, until it crashs, and then
> see if gdb is able to produce a meaningful backtrace. Sometimes, seeing
> this also helps knowing what's wrong.
>
> Ciao
> Frank
>
>  

Intresting! That problem seems to exist only under KDE 3. I did a logout
(from KDE3) / login (into KDE 4) and was able to send an email without
chrashing OO.

(If it's of any interest: SuSE Linux 11.1, 64bit)

Norbert


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