LibreOffice Writer frozen, how to save doc contents?

[OwlTigger]

LibreOffice has frozen on me for the first time ever.
The drop-down boxes appear when called but they are all grey. The cursor can be re-positioned but no text entered or selections made.

Is there any way to save the contents of the document?

This problem seems to have happened to others:
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/1-document-freezes-while-rest-of-libreoffice-continues-as-normal-autorecovery-doesnt-work-any-solutions/16464
https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/libreoffice-writer-froze/14955
But no solution seems to have been found.

[OwlTigger]

Using keyboard commands instead of mouse commands worked for me.

Ctrl+A to Select All
then
Ctrl+C to Copy
then opened a text editor and Ctrl +V to Paste the text. (success!)
Then save the text doc.

Then tried Ctrl+S with the frozen LibreOffice doc.
Which apparently succeeded with saving the file as problem.odt.
Then closed LibreOffice.
Then opened problem.odt with LibreOffice successfully!

[EarnestAl]

Hmm. Doesn’t sound frozen if you can copy and save. Maybe there was a shortage of resources that freed up after a few minutes. If you are on Windows, indexing can do that, or some AV scans

[OwlTigger]

I shut down my browser and left laptop running with just Writer for some 20 minutes after that. HDD seemed to be very active. On Linux Mint.
It seemed to be only a partial freeze:
Couldn’t enter anything into doc, couldn’t select anything with mouse, couldn’t see contents of drop-down boxes, couldn’t work anything in toolbar with mouse, couldn’t save or shutdown Writer with mouse even after successfully Select All, Copy and Save using keyboard.
Could shift cursor position and scroll with mouse.

I’m thinking that trying Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C and then trying pasting into another program, trying Ctrl+S. And then following your instructions if necessary is what I’d do if something similar happens again. Or does Ctrl+S risk a recovery by the prog?

[EarnestAl]

Sometimes freeing up some resources by closing email and web browser and waiting a few minutes works.

Probably, it is too late to try to save anything now. Close the program and wait a minute then start LibreOffice Writer (do not open a file). It will offer to try to recover what you had open; OK that. Probably, it will recover most, and sometimes all your document. Do a Save As [different name] in case there is something wrong. Now check your document to see what has been recovered, if it is a total mess you can try opening your original document (you didn’t save over the top of it) and see if it is better.

If you have Always create a backup copy ticked in Tools > Options > Load/Save > General then you might also have a backup. Look in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Paths to find your back up path.

Good luck. Cheers, Al