But it doesn’t work, I have tried several time to use Libre Office but all it does is give me that screen shown above, (Choose Helper Application) with nowhere to go from there.
I don’t want to use Firefox for that, but it was all that was offered that I recognised.
I need to use the spreadsheets now so I’ll have to plug back into the laptop and do it there. Probably need a good battering but at least it works. 
A nightmare just happened, I tried again to open the Mastercard file and all of a sudden the tab bar above started racing across the screen at 90 miles an hour. The only way I could stop it was to come out of Firefox and then back in. There must have been at least 50 New Tabs there and I had to cancel each one of them in turn in order to start again. Needless to say all the standard tabs that I keep open all the time have disappeared, again. 
This is getting beyond a joke and I am seriously thinking of sending the whole thing back.
That sounds like a stuck key or mouse switch, causing multiple copies of tabs to open. This doesn’t seem to be going well - is there no-one local you can trust to help?
I will be home later, and will try to find a simple way for you to register ODS files with libreoffice. In the mean time if you’re willing to try a different method:
Open Libreoffice OR the spreadsheet application (excel-alike) from start menu or icon.
Open the file you want to view from the file menu if you’re offered one, or from the dialogue box that opens if you just start libreoffice without specifying the file you want to open first.
You’ve cracked it. 
I couldn’t find Libre Office, I thought it was installed yesterday when I downloaded it and was fooled into that by it appearing in one of the windows I opened.
But obviously it wasn’t installed, it is now. 
What happens when I open my files is this panel appears:
It has always appeared ever since I switched from Open Office to Libre Office and, not knowing what was entailed I simply cancel it and carry on. It is not a problem, but do you recommend that I press OK and select Libre office from the list that appears now?
Thanks anyway, I was on the point of repackaging the new computer and sending it back to Spain. Maybe I can live with it now, unless it has other horrors in store, yet to be revealed. 
Glad THAT is sorted. Yes, click OK and it should then always know what application to use in the future.
I’ll go and do that now, thanks again, just glad I caught you before next weeks trip. 
I’m sure I’ll be around, but likely 2-3am French time.
I would like to throw another small problem open to discussion. For several years now I have been using 2 external drives to store all my stuff, Sonnics 1 and Sonnics 2. 2 backs up 1.
All worked fine for most of that time but some months ago Sonnics 2 started to be very slow to load and I would get various panels pop up saying do you want to do so and so or, worse, you must format this drive before you can use it. I ignored all those and soon everything worked as normal. Now Sonnics 2 simply won’t load and again the dreaded advice to format. I know that doing that will delete everything on it, so I am thinking the right way to go is to buy another one and backup 1 to it, before attempting a format. But before I do does anyone have any way around this problem before formatting, if only to see if there is anything on there that might not be on 1?
There is a very good chance that drive 2 is failing, and you have been lucky that it recovered enough to carry on working for a while. I would suggest buying 2 drives, if you can, replacing BOTH of your external drives on the basis that if one has failed the other may do so soon too. I would also keep drive 1 and use it for occasional backup - say once per month or per 3 months.
As for reading drive 2, is there any information on it that you don’t have on drive 1? It’s probably toast now. Don’t format it and re-use it because it will only fail again soon.
Remember there are just 2 kinds of storage devices: those that have failed and those that have not failed yet.
Thanks AM, obviously good advice and I will do exactly as you say. As to whether there is anything on 2 that isn’t on 1, I don’t think so but can’t be 100% sure, maybe one day I accidentally worked on that first and forgot to back it to 1. That is why I wanted to have one last look.
One last thing. Are all external drives identical no matter what country they are bought in? Just thinking about the performance I have had with this new, Frenchified, Spanish PC. 
Don’t buy a French drive - it will go on strike when you don’t expect it.
No, there’s no difference, but I would buy a recognised brand like Western Digital, Toshiba etc. All drives will be made in the same small number of factories, although they may be cased up in different places.
Duly noted, thanks again.
On the point of ordering 2 Western Digitals
Looked at the slightly cheaper Toshiba but, although I treat evaluations with a pinch of salt, it had rather too many bad ones for my liking. Another thing, I have had 2 toshiba laptops, one after the other, both new and both stopped working completely after 6 months. Also, my very first external, is a very large mains powered brick still going strong after many years, And I believe it is a WD also.
So unless I get any alarm bells I will soon be pushing the buy button.
Looks like a sensible option to me.
FWIW I have 3 X 4TB and 1 X 8TB WD drives as backup for work and photos, plus 2 smaller Tosh drives from when I had a MacBook and used time machine to backup. I’m not rigorous as I should be, but could get back almost everything if I had to.
Consider the button pushed then, but obviously, despite perhaps thousands of photo and videos, mainly dogs, my needs are much more modest than yours. My 1 TB Sonnics are, after all these years, still with around 300 GB of capacity left.
Till these 2 arrive though I will still feel vulnerable with only the one Sonnics live, and this failure of 2 only emphasises that fact.
Both arrived this morning and have been installed. They are both listed as Elements with the suffixes (F) and (G). To avoid confusing them with my old Elements drive from years ago, and also to distinguish them one from the other I would like to name them 1 and 2, but I suppose if I am not going to remove them F and G will do if I can’t work out how to do the change.
The main thing is that I don’t want to make any mistakes and so here is the panel I get when right clicking one of them. I am wondering what all those Spanish sounding names are for and should I avoid them, or what?
Also I have to transfer stuff from Sonnics 1 so I can work from them in the future keeping Sonnics 1 as a disconnected backup should anything go wrong. So first thing is what are all those ‘anadirs’ and what to do with them?
Anadir is add - so I think it’s offering a couple of archive formats and to send data by email. This may well be drive software thinking your computer is Spanish.
I would format and name the drives (you should be able to format the drive by clicking the Format menu option shown in your image above, select quick format). The drive letter they get should be assigned as the next available, so todays G drive may become an F drive tomorrow, which is why I like names IF I’m going to keep the 2 drives as distinct entities. You could call them F and G, or you could call them something like Chas and Dave or Castor and Pollux - as long as it’s helpful to you.
Well, something strange happened, I got no notification of your reply AM and just came here on the off chance, so sorry and thanks at the same time.
Reading, I learned that the format option was only needed for Macs, no need for Windows 10, so have avoided that. I will avoid the anadirs too after your explanation.
Anyway, I plugged them in and transferred all of Sonnics 1 on to Elements 1 (I worked out how to rename them) but when I tried to do the same to Elements 2 got a message saying it was impossible due to serious hardware failure. Tried it in a different usb socket and all was ok. This happened again when checking the sockets round the back (this computer has 4 USB3s and 6 USB2s) but later on all seemed to be working fine. Very strange. I have written a 5 star report on it for Amazon but mentioned these foibles as a backup if I ever have to make a claim later.
At the moment it is chugging away halfway through copying my Transported Dogs file. It is very large with multiple photos and videos and estimates 3 and a half hours for the task. Yesterday when I did the other one in a USB2 socket it took over 4 hours. So at the moment I am working on the laptop which is why I can’t show you the warning panel which came up earlier. I’ll do so later when it is finished doing what it is doing, don’t like disturbing something when it is working.
Glad they’re working for you. I reformat a drive as a matter of course, windows or Mac, but then I’m an awkward, untrusting soul.
Is there a way to format wifi dongles, and should it be necessary? The first one connected the laptop right from the off, no problem, but the 2nd one (same make) did not work in any of the usb ports on the new PC. It recognises it, even once at least showed a little blue tooth symbol on the lower bar, but no connection. This same one also works perfectly in the laptop, so, given the difficulties I hav had before with these usb ports, it has set me wondering.
There is a mini disc with each dongle but nothing to say what it is for and each one does say ‘driver free’.
