[ubuntu-uk] OpenOffice.org problems

[David King]

I am having some serious problems with OpenOffice.org.

All was fine with version 3.0.something in Ubuntu 9.04, then one day 
recently the update manager gave me a new version.

Since then it will not work properly. Every time I start OOo I get an 
error message saying "Failed to set the look and feel". The icon on the 
message is the Java icon.

So I decided to uninstall that version, and install OOo 3.1 from the OOo 
website using a .deb for Ubuntu (64-bit).

But this has the same problem, and it keeps crashing and then it fails 
to recover documents. Also I could not import an image into a file in 
OOo Writer, due to a problem with the Graphics Filter.

It was all okay until an Ubuntu update. So can I go back to an earlier 
version that worked? Or is a simple solution to just remove/install/fix 
something with the current installation to get it working again?

I really need this to work, as I have an important document to work on 
and I really do not want to use an alternative like MS Office.

David King