No problem … not that I did anything 
It appears that, according to the LibreOffice 4.0 ReleaseNotes there is a bug relating to samba shares:
Most Annoying Bugs The following annoying bugs were not fixed in time and will be addressed in the regular bug fix releases: broken access to Samba share
Thanks SeZo
sounds like that could be the source of my problem (it certainly fits the description of “very annoying bug”), does that mean when a fix is issued I’ll receive it in my updates, I installed it from a PPA ?
Graeme
does that mean when a fix is issued I'll receive it in my updates, I installed it from a PPA ?
I think the next bugfix release is 4.1, due out in july.
[EDIT]
Out of curiosity just loaded up Mageia3 (Kde) LiveCD and navigated to my network (samba) shares with Dolphin file manager
and double clicked on a .docx file and to my surprise Libre Office -Version 4.0.3.3 (Build ID: 4.0.3.3-2.mga3)
opened it just fine. No mounting in fstab or any other trickery. :o
Checking for gvfs shows:
[live@localhost ~]$ ps aux | grep gvfs
live 2951 0.0 0.2 27948 2516 ? Sl 22:11 0:00 /usr/libexec/gvfsd
live 2955 0.0 0.2 41728 2808 ? Sl 22:11 0:00 /usr/libexec//gvfsd-fuse -f /run/user/500/gvfs
live 4012 0.0 0.0 6112 812 pts/1 S+ 22:36 0:00 grep --color gvfs
Checking gvfs mount:
[live@localhost ~]$ mount | grep gvfs
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/500/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=500,group_id=500)
So this would show that it is not the Libre Office version at fault (unless it was patched by Mageia)
I think this could just be one of these all to common mysteries I seem to encounter that will never have a satisfactory answer although between yourself and Mark we’ll likely find a solution
Marks description of Peppermint 4 on another thread makes Peppermint 4 sound very attractive so I’ve downloaded it ready to burn, I’ll install that soon and Libre Office 4.0.2.2 from the repos and try that
Anyway I’ve posted a screenshoot to show it’s not my imagination
Many thanks
Graeme
Dunno if you’ve already answered this … but is this on the Laptop that had the networking issue … or all Peppermint 3 PC’s ?
Anyway I've posted a screenshoot to show it's not my imagination :)
Never doubted you. 
As I always mount the shares in the fstab, this was not showing up. But as soon I removed that method and relied on gvfs mounting in both Debian based SolydX (XFCE) and Arch (Razor-qt) I got the same problem as you. So it is reproducible in other distros too.
Just noticed that on Mageia3 the shares are mounted in /run/user/500/gvfs instead in .gvfs (as it is on yours)
Also there is no .gvfs on Mageia3 live in the home folder. ???
I will haveto check this out when rebooted into the other distros. Though this might turn out to be a red herring.
Still may be a 4.0.3.3 thing, because I just removed my NAS shares from fstab, rebooted (to be sure), and 4.0.2.2 can still open them using “smb” (pcmanfm>Go>Network Drives>blah>blah>linkstation>share) ???
FYI - That mounts (in PM4) at
/run/user/mark/gvfs/smb-share:server=linkstation,share=share
So mounting (or not) through fstab (at least in PM4) makes no difference.
Possibly a bug in the way previous versions of gvfs worked ? … maybe that explains the new location for gvfs mounts ?
The plot thickens…
–
Dunno if you've already answered this .. but is this on the Laptop that had the networking issue .. or all Peppermint 3 PC's ?
I only have LO4 installed on my PC and the Laptop (same laptop that had the networking issues) and it doing the same with both machines
Graeme
If SeZo says it work in Mageia3 … then it must be something to do with 4.0.3.3 and the old gvfs mount point.
Success… I got it working on Debian based SolydX (XFCE). Libre Office Version 4.0.3.3 (Build ID: 400m0(Build:3)).
Firstly I had to install gvfs-fuse (as it was not installed by default), reboot and navigated to the samba shares from Thunar
and opened a .docx file in Libre Office and it worked just fine.
Now I have(wich i did not have before):
mount | grep gvfs
gvfs-fuse-daemon on /home/<user>/.gvfs type fuse.gvfs-fuse-daemon (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=1000,group_id=1000)
So it mounts into .gvfs ???
Hmm … gvfs-fuse is already installed in Peppermint 4 (Unless it was pulled in with something else I installed … but I can find no reference to it in the apt history.log), so that explains why it worked for me
Nicely found SeZo.