This may be a combination PHP/Apache/OpenOffice problem.
I'm trying to setup a page which does some limited document conversion from Word files to PDFs. We are using the method here:
http://ward.vandewege.net/writings/200510auto_doc_conv/
On our development server this works ok as the Apache user has a shell. On our live server however the Apache user does not have a shell so the PHP script just spins until the page times out and I get a blank page, and no conversion of the uploaded Word file ever takes place.