Ok, 8 hours later I have given up on openoffice and have tried installed Libreoffice.
I have managed to get this to work now from CLI follwing debug steps at http://www.phpdocx.com/documentation/conversion-plugin/debugging-libreoffice
However doesn't work from the web app. I gather it's permissions, but not shre what this means. The user I think is nobody, it's a cpanel server.
- Needs to delete the possible blockage of SELinux or the blockage of the execution settings of external programs
- Needs read and write permissions in the .config folder of the userĀ“s HOME directory