MacOS – LibreOffice error: “Either another instance of LibreOffice is accessing your personal settings or your personal settings are locked”

libreofficemacos

When I try to open LibreOffice, I get the following error:

Either another instance of LibreOffice 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 'macowner' closes LibreOffice on host 'new-host.home'.

Do you really want to continue?

I don't know why this started. Also, there is only one account on this computer, I changed its name from "macowner" to its current name over a month ago. Edit: I found out my computer kept the same file directory structure when I changed the username of my account, so my account's directory is called /Users/macowner. This may be where LibreOffice gets the string for its error message.

I'm running LibreOffice 4.1 and OS X 10.7.5.

How do I remove this error?

Best Answer

According to the LibreOffice docs and this similar Ask Ubuntu Q&A, it stores a .lock file ~/Library/Application Support/libreoffice/4/user on OS X to indicate a session is active and running.

To clean it up:

  1. Make sure no instances of LibreOffice are currently running.
  2. Open the Terminal application
  3. Optional: Check to see if lock file exists, at the prompt type: ls -l ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/?/user/.lock
    If you see "cannot access" this means the lock file is not present.
  4. At the prompt type: rm -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/?/user/.lock
  5. Close the Terminal application
  6. Start LibreOffice
Related Question