why can't i type in libreoffice writer

[Beera]

Hello,
I searched online and found a similar question, however there wasn’t a response.

I downloaded the LibreOffice software from your website yesterday (same problems today) but when I go to create a document, as I type, nothing shows up. There is no cursor and it will tell me on the bottom of the document that, for example, there is one word and 12 characters (I’ve tried it several times as I type randomly) but there isn’t any activity on the page. I tried saving the document and then it gets more weird - it shows a folder icon in the save box with a bunch of arrows but no titles and in the box that would usually list the folders, there are icons, but no titles for the icons. I wouldn’t be able to know in which folder I was saving the document. Information is missing, as if LibreOffice is not talking to my laptop.

Please help and please let me know if you need any further information. I’m not a technophobe, but I’m fairly illiterate - ie I don’t know what a tag is, it wouldn’t let me ask this question without one, so I have no idea if I entered the write one.

Thanks,
Bea

[ve3oat]

(Revised) It is possible that your default style or format is using white type on a white background, similar to this question :
https://ask.libreoffice.org/en/question/184443/bought-new-system-reloaded-liberoffice-micros-run-but-all-documents-show-letters-in-white-this-is-saved-and-new-docs-i-can-access-files-but-cant-read/

Yours is the third posting I have seen reporting this problem. Someone might be able to suggest a general solution that will work for you.

In the meantime, you might check that “transparency” has not been enabled somewhere. Go to menu Format → Paragraph → Transparency and make sure that the entry for No Transparency has been checked. Do the same for menu Format → Page → Transparency and select No Transparency.

[EasyTrieve]

I upgraded to Debian Bookworm & LibreOffice 7. Once I told ibus to exit then I was able to type normally.

What seems strange is that I could type into other programs, e.g. Thunderbird, gedit, terminal, etc.

See my own question here at ask with all of the details and what I’ve tried to fix this: Ibus keyboard input problem with LO 7.x on linux Debian Bookworm (2023)

[Herdie27]

I had the same problem. I would type, it would count up words and characters at the bottom and I couldn’t see anything, select any text, nothing. I even opened up existing documents, and most of the time it was the same thing. Some existing documents I could type but not many. I’m using Version 7.5.1.2.

Anyway, I fixed it by simply changing the font, hopefully that helps someone out.

[Vincent_Duvernet]

Same problem with 7.5.1.2.
It was using Liberation Serif font as default. I switched to another one and it works now.

[Kelderek1]

I had the same problem and it was happening in Writer, Impress, and even Calc. There was no cursor visible and although it would appear to accept characters (updating counts at the bottom of the window) they would not show on the screen. All other interface elements were there as normal. Typed text couldn’t be selected with the mouse or even ctrl-a. There was no transparency, background and foreground were set to automatic but setting specific colors didn’t help. I even tried removing all LibreOffice user settings from %appdata% but it didn’t help. I also tried disabling skia and hardware acceleration. I even did the ctrl-win-shift-b Windows hotkey to reset the graphics drivers. LibreOffice version 7.5.4.2 on Windows 10 x64, BTW.

Setting to any other font then typing suddenly made everything appear, including any text typed “into the void”. Unfortunately that only fixed it for the one document and every new document would have the same problem.

The only real fix I was able to find was uninstalling LibreOffice and reinstalling; after that it worked as expected. I use winget in a background script to periodically update apps and I suspect it updated LibreOffice while it was open, so maybe files were locked or something. When I re-installed I downloaded the 64-bit MSI from libreoffice.org, I did not use winget.

[TechySC]

In my case same thing happened.
BUT When I right clicked text box, then chose Character and chose any other font other than Liberation things… It appeared!

[TechySC]

Step 1

[TechySC]

Step 2: Choose any other font