I’ve used Libre Office for a long time, but lately, I’ve started having an issue. The file doesn’t get corrupted, but when I open it, I lose 20-30 GB space on my MacBook Air. I can copy the entire text, create a new doc, and paste, then delete the old file and get those 20-30GB of space back. So it’s ‘manageable’ but it’s very frustrating as I have to do this every new 10 pages or so (I’m writing a book). Anyone know what the issue is?
TIA
MacBook Air => MacOS, but which version? LO version? save format?
20-30 GB space: disk? memory?
You say your book is 24.7 MB. This is a lot if you have no images. So how many pages? Tables and images?
How do you format? Manually or with styles? Please note that styling contribute to lean size and stability. Direct formatting on the contrary cause inflation and poor responsiveness (at the extreme, crashes).
Ventura
Saving as .odt
Disk space availability
300 pages with background pictures (bleed print); couple images for QR codes, no tables, though aiming for 400-500 pages (have done this before with no issue)
All formatting is through styles. Took me a long time to learn that, but it’s a lot easier now XD
Though it is doing this when I copy and paste it into Google Docs, so maybe there’s something wrong? It looks fine on the doc, but the line spacing is on top of each other when I paste it. Sometimes the text also turns orange, but only in Google Docs. IDK if that’s relevant.
At least, the most important information so far.
How do you work, do you constantly switch between LibreOffice and Google?
My personal opinion:
Even if it worked, if I were writing a book, I would never use Google, MS Word or the like.
I never copy from Google docs to Libreoffice. I just use google if I want to write on my mobile. I then completely retype it into Libreoffice from scratch.
Is it always the same image or how many different images are there?
How large (kB, MB) are these images?
couple images for QR codes
How many and what memory size do they have?
Five images for left and right, chapters, and front/back material. 1.7mb (300dpi minimum needed for printing) Three QR images, small screenshots; not high quality; just good enough 95kb
I’ve tried deleting the background images and still no difference.
I have just copied some text from a sample document that I use for tests. It is as complex as I can get it with TOC, Index, endnotes, footnotes, tracked changes, etc. If I copy some text from that document into Google Docs I see, showing in red, the original text that was deleted and Accepted in Track Changes, that is, not visible at all in Writer. Have you got Track Changes turned on? Have you got changes not yet accepted?
.
Have you got File > Versions turned on, Versions ?
.
The text with lines stacked on top of other lines I cannot replicate. Can you share a small sample Writer document that shows that effect in Google Docs?
So if they are jpg, that will expand to to maybe 20 MB. Repeated images are loaded into memory just once.
Can you click Help > About LibreOffice and in the dialogue, click the icon just at the end of Version information and paste the details here?
24 MB to 20 - 30 GB is a factor of 1000. So even with compressed graphics this hardly to achieve…
It’s not tracked changes. It’s the same colour as when there’s a url link, so I’m thinking it’s some weird formatting/code to do with " as happens more with dialogue for some reason. I left the lines overlapped as I write pretty dark stuff, so don’t want to traumatise anyone lol.
Also uploaded sample text. Turns out the issue isn’t just this doc. This was a new doc I made to test.
I use png instead of jpg if that makes a difference as I need it transparent for the printers.
Version: 7.6.2.1 (AARCH64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 56f7684011345957bbf33a7ee678afaf4d2ba333
CPU threads: 8; OS: Mac OS X 13.2.1; UI render: Skia/Metal; VCL: osx
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); UI: en-US
Calc: threaded
random text.odt (14.2 KB)
There’s also no difference if I delete the bg images. Either to loading or use speed or disk space. The file itself is only 24.7 MB. So yeah, don’t think the images are the issue.
Oh, and versions are off. That was my first thought. Have also checked tmp folder and that’s not it either.
I don’t see anything strange when pasting the contents of your sample document into Google Docs.
.
In Writer, I do see that all the text in the sample has character style Internet Link when it should be No Character Style as there is no internet link.
The character style is not visible because it has direct formatting applied over the top of it of black text colour, Justified, indent of 0.50 cm, Tab at 2.42 cm. If I click Format > Clear Direct Formatting (Ctrl+M) then the character style becomes visible. The character style should not be there so select all the text in the sample and click No Character Style in the character style pane in the Sidebar.
.
The paragraph style is set to Default Paragraph Style when for the main body of the work it should be Body Text. Select all the text in the sample and double click Body Text paragraph style to apply it. You can right click Body Text style and select Edit style. In Indents and Spacing set a First Line indent of 0.50; in the Tabs tab type in 2.42 cm, leave it at Left/Top and click the button New; in the Alignment tab, click Justified. OK
.
Now there is no direct formatting in the sample document and no misapplied styles. It would be a much bigger job removing all the layers in your document. I don’t know how much all the direct and extra formatting adds to the memory burden, quite a lot, but not 20-30 GB I think. It sounds like a memory leak somewhere.
.
If you open LibreOffice in Safe mode (Help > Restart in Safe mode > Continue in Safe Mode) can you open your document without the memory size increasing so much?
If that doesn’t help, then maybe installing LibreOffice anew or upgrading to a newer version?
Okay, so the line problem is probably on my Google Docs somewhere then. Ta; will see if I can’t figure it out.
I have changed all the default text to body text and put no character style (my clear direct formatting button for some reason didn’t work). So that’s cleared up all the orange text; ta.
Doing that has dropped the file down to 12 MB (from 24.7MB), but I haven’t got the diskspace back. Do you know how I would go about looking for the memory leak?
I will unistall and upgrade after I finish this book. Otherwise I’ll pull out my hair if I have to style all the pages again lol.
