"Your personal settings are locked"

[mallomar]

I know almost nothing about Macs. I starting using a MacBook (it's a few years old) a couple of days ago. OS was 10.5.8. I installed Open Office 4.0.0 and it was working fine.

Yesterday I updated the OS to 10.6, and now I get this error message when I try to open OpenOffice:

Either another instance of OpenOffice is accessing your personal settings or your personal settings are locked.
Simultaneous access can lead to inconsistencies in your personal settings.
Before continuing, you should make sure user '[username]' closes OpenOffice on host '[hostname]'.

Do you really want to continue?

I've spent hours googling the problem and trying potential solutions (find and delete a locked file, etc.) I'm so inexperienced on the Mac I can't figure out how to search for or navigate to the locked file, if it even exists. I tried searching in Terminal, but couldn't find any of the types of files described. I navigated to the OpenOffice folder, but didn't see anything that looked like a locked file.

Could someone please tell me exactly how to fix the problem? I'm not sure if it's really a locked file. OpenOffice isn't running, so I don't know how it could be accessing my personal settings. I only have one username/account set up. There's also a guest account, but maybe that's a default thang -- I don't think I set it up.

I would really appreciate any suggestions or advice. I tried searching for a locked file by following instructions I found for revealing hidden files, but no joy. I also read somewhere about a locked profile (?) in a "/3" folder, but I don't know how to get at it.

TIA.

 

[Weaselboy]

Try this... quit Open Office then open the Finder. Now click the Go menu then Go to folder and paste in the below path and enter. Scroll down and find the OpenOffice folder and delete it. Restart Open Office and you should be in business.

~/Library/Application Support/

What this process does is deletes your Open Office user profile.

 

[mallomar]

Weaselboy,

You're my hero! It worked!

Thanks so much for your clear, concise, idiot-proof instructions.

 

[ssiruguri]

Try this... quit Open Office then open the Finder. Now click the Go menu then Go to folder and paste in the below path and enter. Scroll down and find the OpenOffice folder and delete it. Restart Open Office and you should be in business.

~/Library/Application Support/

What this process does is deletes your Open Office user profile.

You don't need to delete the entire folder - find the file .lock (you will have to either enable hidden files in Finder, or do this via Terminal) and delete it.