Reading the bug report from Mike, it was easy for me to identify the problematic dialog that he posted a screenshot of (Extension Manager dialog) and understand the problem that he is describing. I checked this issue on OpenOffice Writer 4.1.1 official version (Release: Milestone AOO411m6 | Build ID 9775 | SVN r1617669 | Released 2014-08-21) on Mac OS X 10.10, but since this is a common dialog on all platforms and has been in the product for a while, I believe this issue is not at all platform or configuration dependent. 

The confusing dialog can be opened by going to Tools menu and selecting “Extension Manager…” - this is the dialog shown after an update to an extension (in this case a dictionary) has been installed. 

I see three main aspects that make the Dictionaries Update confusing for a regular user. I have added more info and research for each of these three aspects below:

1. As a regular user, when I encounter a confusing dialog where I am unsure what to do, I try to check the documentation for it. In this case, I noticed that the documentation for OpenOffice doesn’t specifically explain that dictionaries are handled as “extensions”. 

The existing documentation is pretty good for extensions in general, but if I have a problem with my dictionaries I wouldn’t right away check the extension manager documentation unless I knew that dictionaries are also extensions. Here are the documentation sources that I have checked to confirm this:

*Help button on Extension Manager Window*
The window that Mike is on has a Help button that takes the user to the “Extension Manager” window, but this also has no info on Dictionaries, so this might also cause confusion for a regular user. 

*The OpenOffice Writer Documentation*
https://wiki.openoffice.org/w/images/1/11/0200WG33-WriterGuideOOo.pdf - All references to dictionary and dictionaries management in the documentation contain a lot of useful information, but not of these explain that dictionaries are just regular extensions. 

*Extension Manager Wiki*
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Administration_Guide/Using_Package_Manager contains no info about Dictionaries being “extensions” as well.

**Suggestion** - A possible good improvement in this case to help users who are confused about the Dictionaries update process would be to improve the documentation and point these users to the extension update process. 


2. Based on reports from other users and number of issues found in Bugzilla for this module, the “Extension Manager” window/UI and module in general is an old problematic area in Open Office in general and the UI is indeed confusing. 

After a short search in Bugzilla, I found 40 bugs regarding “Extension Manager” (Accepted, Confirmed and Unconfirmed) 
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/buglist.cgi?list_id=164395&query_format=advanced&resolution=---&short_desc=extension%20manager&short_desc_type=allwordssubstr 
This suggest that there are a large amount of problems with this specific module in general. 

More specifically, here are two issues discussing the exact same confusing experience for Extension Manager in general: 

https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125077 - this is still UNCONFIRMED, but the behavior and the confusion described is very similar to the one reported by Mike here. 

https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=124489 - This second issue (Extension Manager: add small message for successful installation) describes the same problem with the UI where the user is not sure whether an update was installed or not, but on top of that also suggests a solution for how to show a simple confirmation/success message when update was successfully installed. This bug is already CONFIRMED, so this suggests there are plans to implement the suggested improvement (or a similar solution) some time in the future.  

Based on this research, I believe Mike has a valid point and is describing a real design problem that could be considered for fixing using the simple solution already suggested and confirmed. 



3. Mike also reports that the “Add..” button didn’t work, so he just closed the window eventually. He might mean simply that there was nothing to add. But it is also possible that he encountered another known issue with the Extension Manager dialog where the update dialog comes behind the Extension Manager window, and thus the Extension Manager dialog that is on top becomes unresponsive.

Here is this problem described in another issues which is already confirmed: https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=125502 

If this is the case, this functionality issue might actually add to the confusion the user is experiencing when trying to understand what action to take in the Extension Manager dialog. Fixing this already confirmed bug might actually improve the experience with the Extension Manager dialog and reduce the confusion a user might experience when trying to update dictionaries.