I copy and paste an email into writer. Then I edit (mostly deleting), after a page or two the program grays out and stays that way for hours. Is there a setting I should change? Uninstalling and reinstalling the program doesn’t seem to make a difference. I tried to let the program just sit for five hours one time and just ended it with a force quit. I am using Ubuntu 12.04.
Please try resetting the user profile, sometimes solves strange issues.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile
Usually it’s enough renaming/deleting the file “user/registrymodifications.xcu”, it affects all the options in Menu/Tools/Options, and the files “user/basic/dialog.xlc” and “scrip.xlc” are overwritten, additionally custom colors in “user/config/standard.soc” are lost.