# Openoffice won't open samba share files

## andrewwalker27

I've been using openoffice for at least a year with files on a Windows machine accessed over the network but it no longer allows me to access them.

I get the following error

You can only select local files

Am I doing something wrong? It used to be possible, do I need to do something to enable it now?

Here's my use flags for openoffice-3.2.0

USE="cups dbus eds gnome gtk java kde ldap nsplugin opengl pam"

I'm running ~x86_64

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## BradN

I wonder if it's possible to bind mount the samba share to another location to outsmart its detection.  I presume they do this due to some kind of inadequacy in file locking over samba?

mount -o bind /mnt/realsamba /mnt/oosamba

Someone on archlinux forums says:  "For openoffice to support smb shares. it has to be recompiled with gnome-vfs enabled."

It kinda sounds like this refers to accessing a smb share without first mounting it to the filesystem tree though.  Which approach are you using?

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## andrewwalker27

I've mounted the samba share with fstab so it's in the filesystem tree. There's no use flag for gnome-vfs but the gnome use flag is enabled already.

Strange thing is that is used to work fine, I'm wondering if there is a way of re-enabling it somewhere in the config of openofffice.

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## andrewwalker27

I've been using xfce4 for a couple of days due to a bug in xorg/kde and found to my amazement that openoffice works fine with samba shares in that enviroment! It seems to be a KDE issue, as this thread seems quiet, can anyone confirm this bug or is it just me suffering from it?

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