Need help with OpenOffice & I.E.
 

When trying to open a file online with an extension of .doc using I.E. and open office I get an error message from open office " error reading data from the internet" attempting to close this box gets " an API call terminated abnormally" box. This is using XP, both home & pro, with sp2. Using FireFox it works correctly . This happens on 2 machines, so I suspect an I.E. setting, but I can't figure it out. I can't provide a link, because it's under my daughter's login at school. Northeastern university doesn't provide online help, only a 9-5 call center. Thanks in advance, knowing there are plenty of more knowledgeable here than me.

Why don't you look at OpenOffice.org at their forums and see if other people have had the same issues. If you can't find anything, then I might suggest sending a bug report to OO.org. I would just caution you to make sure you've checked very well before doing this though.

Might also try this.
Just follow the instruction in "Help > Index > Microsoft Office; new users information. Always Use OpenOffice.org to Open Microsoft Office Files" (run OpenOffice.org Setup for your user)
You have to "install" OO for your user account (it doesn't copy files, it just registers it).

Found it in the OO.org forums.

Thanks for the advice, bendsley. I had tried the OO forums without luck, but found my answer at Microsoft support.I got the same errors using a MS program in place of Open Offfice.There's an issue with IE handling of document files where the url is more than 218 characters long. MS offers a hotfix, but you must request it from them, it's not available to download. I wonder if Mr. Gates knows that the obvious work around is just to not use IE?

Microsoft support? Is there really such a thing?