Is it saved as .odt?
How do you format it? I.e. using styles or doing everything manually? The latter case covers using manual bold, italic, inter-paragraph spacing with empty lines, …
If you’re under Window$, there is a frequent confusion between paragraph break Enter and line break Shift+Enter. They are not at all equivalent. The second one results in very very long paragraphs which put Writer under heavy stress. You can tell the difference by enabling View>Formatting Marks: para breaks are shown as “pilcrows” while line breaks are down-then-left arrows.
How large is the file size? How many tables? how many images or charts?
You talk about “sections”. Writer has a special object called section used to modify the current page geometry (essentially change the number of columns). Do you use this feature or do you mean simply an identified part of your document (layman meaning for word “section”).
ODT. Lots of differnt fancy custom styles
Window$
Both line breaks and paragraph break…
Size above 100Mb. Lots of images and some tables
There is no sections (i know how to use it). In fact I call sections to caption 1, caption 2 etc… which I use to make secondary auto index, and one first index, general. All using level of captions.
The thing is that when i click on “Insert index”, it instantly crashes, I cannot choose any option…
Please attach a representative 1-2 pages out of your document so that I can have an idea about your formatting.
If you have too many “erroneous” line breaks, this contributes to instability. A line break makes sense only when it represents some “logical” spacing in a paragraph. For example, I use hanging indents to list words and give an explanation. There is usually a Tab at the end of the “word” to force explanation to start on left paragraph indent (and continue on subsequent lines well aligned on left indent). But if the “word” is wider than first line indent, I use a line break so that the explanation starts on next line at left indent. Thus, my “word”+explanation is always a single paragraph. Here a line break makes sense.
Though you use a few paragraph and character styles, there is a lot of direct formatting in your document. There are also “logical” flaws in the structure compelling you to manually edit to correct the consequences.
An important factor in degrading performance is related to your images. You have inserted them “as is” and scaled them in Writer. Ideally, images, all the more if they are numerous, should be cropped and scaled in a dedicated program before being imported into Writer so that Writer has nothing to do on them.
Also, all you images are manually positioned, creating severe direct formatting (DF) conditions (these are more serious and stressful than text direct formatting). I know that creating adequate frame styles is really difficult and they are extremely sensitive to DF, to the point that clearing DF is next to impossible unless you apply an unrelated frame style and reapply the desired one.
And you are not consistent with Wrap mode. You seem to have opted (unless it is your default) for Parallel. This is good for images intended to be in the middle of text. But when you want the image to be alone, you compensate with empty paragraphs to avoid text around the image. This is bad. Empty paragraphs always disturb your layout when text is reflown due to edits. A well-structure document should have no empty paragraph (because it contains no information). You should design one frame style per “type” of image: full-width illustration (no text around it), right-side of text, … Configure them with “generic” relative-positioning properties so that you don’t create DF by moving them with the mouse.
Paragraph styles
You start with Default Paragraph Style. This style should never be used for your argumentation. In the tree structure of style inheritance, this style is the ultimate ancestor of all. Its role is to define common attributes shared by all others. I.e. if you configure it for some meaningful paragraph, inheritance will influence other styles, forcing you to compensate, which will also propagate to some others, etc.
You added DF to reach your desired look. DF is always bad. Author’s name is styled Body Text with DF. Again this is faulty.
Since this looks like the title of the document, built-in styles like Title and Subtitle would be the preferred ones. You can create an additional one Author for your name.
You then have a global TOC. You replaced the built-in Contents n styles by Body Text which is the “standard” style for the discourse. You are fortunate enough that your headings are short enough so that the justify property of Body Text does not take control of the line (tab to page numner prevents this).
You are not consistent with the use of character styles. Everything in bold results from a DF.
Remember that a style application does not primarily specify some decoration for your text. From an author’s point of view, styles are a semantic markup of the text emphasising significances: Body Text for the main topic, Heading n for the various outline levels, Emphasis on “special” words, Strong Emphasis on important sequences, … You translate these shades of significance in typographical attributes to convey your points to the reader. Don’t do it the other way round, this makes more difficult to tune the look afterwards.
Document structure
You ruined the standard Heading n architecture to replace it with one of your own without measuring the consequences.
Parts of your book are titled with a Heading paragraph. Heading style plays the same role as Default Paragraph Style for all headings: you configure it for your preferred defaults and they cascade down to all Heading n. Don’t use it for any heading. Otherwise, you must restructure the Heading n family as you did after you noticed adverse effects on your formatting.
Heading n are used for the outlines in your parts, but:
- you removed them from
Tools>Heading Numberingprobably because you didn’t know how to set it to cope with your design choice
This turned off automatic heading numbering. - you offset their “natural” outline level
This is however innocuous. - you attached them to list style Numbering 1
This is a serious potential error because you’re no longer protected by the reserved property of the internal heading numbering style. If you ever have a numbered list based on the same style in your document, it will interfere with your headings and mess heading numbering. - you are inconsistent between your Heading n and Numbering 1
You chose to centre your headings but the list style requests specific alignment of the number followed by tabs which only makes sense when heading is left-aligned. When you centre a heading, the only reliable numbering option is left 0cm followed by space or nothing and no indent. Note how the indent on level 2 prevents paragraph background to extend to left margin.
The chapter TOC in part SA1 is styled List instead of the usual Contents n. I understand you want a different look from the global TOC. However, List is a bad choice. Again, this is an “ancestor” for all paragraph styles intended to format list items. Any customisation you make on it influences other styles.
Your “parts” SA n could have been automatically numbered by Heading 1 and Tools>Heading Numbering. You easily remove the number for “Annex” et al. by pressing Bksp at start of the heading where you don’t want a number.
Style dictionary
You completely messed up the factory relationship between styles. This prevents you from tuning your appearance by customising only a few key styles. You must now practically modify every style.
Also you edited your document some time in the past with M$ Word which left “fossils” of its insufficient structuring primitives as numerous character and list styles. Avoid mixed edits, they pollute documents and damage progressively them.
Conclusion
I suppose that the extra indexes you’re talking of are the “chapter TOCs” (Writer has an ambiguous vocabulary in this area because all TOC, tables of figures, tables of …, alphabetical index are generically called indexes).
The crash is probably caused by your reworking of the built-in heading feature (not speaking of the raw images if they number by hundreds). It can be done but you must be very cautious when you don’t master all the subtleties of this advanced usage. Factory settings represent a good compromise. It can be configured with Tools>Heading Numbering but replacing it completely requires super expert guru knowledge.
Thanks but I know I am not a LO master, but I have an unsolved problem.
The crash started to appear when I moved a content part that previously had its TOC (i had to delete it before moving) to another part of the document. I know there are many improvements, but the problem has to be a specific one.
How do you “move” your part? Cut and paste? Navigator drag and drop? The latter is the most user-friendly but I doubt you can use it because your document structure does not lend itself to it (because you deeply modified the factory Heading n configuration).
IMHO your problem is caused by a combination of bad structure (bad heading configuration), extensive direct formatting and image processing.
EDIT 2024-11-04
Just upgraded to 24.8.2.1 and now experience the crash. Probably the same issue as Insert/edit table of contents causes crash.
I have the same problem. I had to uninstall newest version and reinstall older 7.5.9 version. For some reason my computer keeps updating to the new version 24. . And of course, inserting an index/table crashes. So, I uninstall, install 7.5.9 and it works perfectly, until it automatically updates AGAIN, and I have to keep repeating the same uninstall/install procedures.
It seems that you can update the table, but you can’t edit it. Fortunately for me, I have other computer with previous version of LO and I edit the tables with that version whils I edit the whole document with the latest version… Thanks for posting.
I also just updated to 24.8.2.1 and am having the same problem. I have a TOC and a Figures Index at the front of my .odt doc. I’m now trying to had a keyword Index at the end of the document, but when I try to insert the index, Writer crashes. I’ve submitted two crash reports after it happened each time. Here is one of them: Crash Report | Details for crash report: b33240b8-9392-46f9-b227-5090f1af6220
I’m experiencing the same issue.
I’m reading some comments here: whatever might be wrong with the formatting of the document, the application may issue a warning, but it shouldn’t crash. If the application crashes, bug severity is high.
Crash Report here: Crash Report | Details for crash report: 6280c69e-e80f-467c-8bac-35dc7f113611
Version: 24.8.3.2 (X86_64) / LibreOffice Community
Build ID: 48a6bac9e7e268aeb4c3483fcf825c94556d9f92
CPU threads: 12; OS: Windows 11 X86_64 (10.0 build 26100); UI render: Skia/Raster; VCL: win
Locale: it-IT (it_IT); UI: it-IT
Calc: threaded
This bug is around since at least 2016 (LibreOffice v5):
I think it is a different one: tdf#136325 which appeared between 24.2.7 and 24.8.1. Will be fixed in 25.2.0.
Meanwhile, you have a workaround:
- create a new Writer file
-
Insert>TOC & Index>TOC, Index or Bibliography - in the
Typetab, turn off Preview - OK
- save document
- quit LO
When you restart LO, you can now edit TOC and other tables of …
Thank you, the workaround works.
However:
- I had to start LibreOffice in safe mode first, because LibreOffice crashed opening the table of content box, even with a new document.
- LibreOffice still crashes if I undo the table of content just after creating it.
First, create a backup.
Then try removing all other sections except for the one without the index. Try adding the index now.
If it doesn’t work, download a portable version of LibreOffice (they are available at libreoffice.org) and try again with the portable one.
Please repost as a comment since this is not a solution to the problem but a procedure to try and isolate the issue. Then delete your non-answer and I’ll delete my own comment.
It’s a suggested solution, these procedures have worked in several cases in my experience with Open/LibreOffice.
It has sense. I’ll try it and I’ll post results. Thank you
Believe or not, I found a strange behaviour after a little workaround:
The same document brings Writer to crash when opening the Index configuration editor in my Win10 Desktop computer, but the same document with the same LO version (24.8.2.1) in a Win11 Laptop, works perfectly. So at least I can edit indexes in the laptop and the rest in both computers.
BTW updating indexes doesn’t crash, it’s just the index editor popup.
Therefore, I have my problem half solutioned… but I’m not over with this issue, if I found any other relevant information I’ll post it here.
Try Win 10 LibreOffice with a new profile, LibreOffice user profile - The Document Foundation Wiki
Maybe, click Tools > Options >LibreOffice > View and tick the box Force Skia software rendering