How are Help packs installed and how are they used?

I downloaded and then installed the help pack. But I am unable to use it as there is no icon or shortcut anywhere. Could anyone help?

After you installed it, you can use it via <F1> or Help|LibreOffice Help - without having the help pack installed, it would open your browser instead (and thus you only would have access to help content when you have internet access).

Also the extended tooltips that can be activated via <shift>+<F1> come from help-content, so you only get extended tooltips when you have help installed locally.

Thanks for info about extended tooltips, which is of some value. We expect much more from the Help Pack in the same manner as OpenOffice’s Help function, which is easy to find what we want, and does not need Internet connection. LibO’s online help is much inferiror than OpenOffice’s Offline Help.

The help pack installed must agree with the Language of user interface [Tools>Options window LanguageSettings>Languages>Language of User Interface (Note: If LUI is English(UK) then help installed must be …helppack_en-GB…)] otherwise you get (Application not found) error when you try opening Help (by pressing F1 for e.g.).

I accidentally solved this problem when fixing another problem! It now works, at least for me! :slight_smile:

This will undo all of one’s settings.

These steps are for Windows XP SP3.

  1. I closed all LibreOffice windows and exited the QuickStart
  2. I renamed the LibreOffice directory in the C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data directory.
  3. I started up LibreOffice (double-clicked on shortcut) and let it recreate the user’s LibreOffice directory.
  4. I went into Tools → Options… and updated various settings in there (name, country, which dictionaries to use, which Java runtime to use).
  5. I selected Text Document and opened an .ott (template) file. It went through its first-time template use, but there were no errors and the new document opened just fine. (Well, yes, I was working on the “Templates already exists” bug.)

Now the Help Pack is displaying the helps like it should!

Also, now opening a template to create a new document works just fine.

Also, now the Recent Documents list works just fine.

(That means renaming the user’s LibreOffice directory fixed all three bugs I had hit in the past 12 hours!)

However, the words I added to my dictionary are gone, and the toolbars are now reverted back to the standard ones. Fortunately, I had made very few changes in toolbars and the words are easy to add back as I use them.

This doesn’t exactly answer the original question, it seems you’re providing a workaround for a specific problem you had.

Well, it’s better than no aswer. Intersting enough, the Help Pack is officially provided by LibreOffice but no official instruction to make it work. I can see many poeple asking this same questions now.

Yes, but I still don’t know how to install the offline help pack.