LibreOffice Writer presents filename with garbled characters

Recently, I have found that LibreOffice Writer is unable to represent international characters in file names (e.g., the Swedish characters ÅÄÖ). I am running LibreOffice on LINUX Mint 17.1.

I have struggled in the past with issues when porting files between Linux and MS (which might lead to file names being garbled). On this occasion the file names are not garbled when listing them in LINUX file system. However, when opening in LibreOffice, Swedish characters in file names cannot be represented properly).

I would like to enforce UTF-8 in LibreOffice (as I believe the problem relates to bad settings in LibreOffice) but have been unable to find where to do this. Any suggestions on where to find this setting is much appreciated.

Pls verify if changing the Open/Save dialog has some effect?. Menu/Tools/Options/LibreOffice/General.

I’ve used LO/OO in both Windows & Debian without problems. Indeed, I’m editing a file under Debian which was started in WinXP & ported to Debian.

Do 2 sets of checks & make sure that they both gell:-

Make sure that your Linux locale is consistent throughout:

(from a terminal):-

:~$ locale
LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_NAME="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_GB.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

Then within LO:-

(menu):Tools|Options|Language Settings|Languages

One obvious one to double-check is ‘User Interface’, since the problem is the filenames (and then try switching m.a.riosv’s suggestion).

If both sets of checks are internally consistent + match each other then I’m stumped.

PS
I understand exactly what you are saying about the Windows/utf-8 problems. I ran a website & switched it from US-ASCII (which is effectively what it’s file-system was) to UTF8 & had wonderful problems using rsync between XP & Linux with non-ASCII filenames.

I was producing PDFs under XP using OO & exporting to a Linux server. I therefore know that LO/OO uses utf-8. As long as your OS locale is consistent + the setup matches the locale there shouldn’t be any problems.

If any of this helps then please tick the answer (:heavy_check_mark:).

Yes, thanks a lot for the helpful answer. Sorry for not ticking your comment right away.

There is tdf#125971 which might cause such problems with kde5 vcl plugin; it has been fixed in 6.3. This is rather recent problem, likely not related to the original question, and I put it here for @paulspignon and others who might find this page when look for their similar problem in 6.2 (a speculation).

I am trying freeoffice - it has no problem opening. for example, förslag.odt, while LO says it doesn’t exist, and replaces ö with gobbledygook

I have never had any problems with Linux-Mint EN-GB system using file names like förslag.odt or Teståäö.odt although I usually need French acccents.

Perhaps there is a problem with the installation settings, profile etc.