Put LibreOffice as unedited document viewer only

Hi everybody, Can you tell me please how can I put LibreOffice as document viewer without any edition possibility in the content for any archive please? Thank you very much.

Hi @jathan,

I’m not quite sure what you’re asking here. Could you please describe your particular use case(s) so that we know what to suggest?

If you’re looking to provide a viewer on top of an archive of content, perhaps you could set up the file system or directory on the the file system to be read-only. That way LibreOffice could read the files, but not make changes to them…

Hi qubit, thank you very much foy your answer pal. Yeah, I would like to know how to put the option to open as read-only by default in all LibreOffice aplications (Writer, Impress, Calc, Draw, Base and Math) using LinuxMint for when a user opens an odt., odp., .ods and other, double-clicking on the document and taking LibreOffice as default application can not edit the content as this I have to implement in the computer lab where I am working on 40 computers and users that only view their documents but do not come with LibreOffice editing because it is a space to explore and visualize all types of documents around. Following your intuition, i try execute the next orders in the terminal for remove write privileges in user, group and others:

root@debian:/home/jonathan# chmod ugo-w /usr/bin/libreoffice

but in this directory libreoffice is a symbolic link, so then I try in the .config directory of my home:

root@debian:/home/jonathan# chmod -R ugo-w /home/jonathan/.config/libreoffice/

but when I try to open LibreOffice in general or a .odt file directly, the LibreOffice logo appear, the window open and inmediatly closes, so when I restore the original privileges:

root@debian:/home/jonathan# chmod -R ugo+w /home/jonathan/.config/libreoffice/

I can use LibreOffice normally again Do yo know what I am doing wrong? Thanks

@jathan, I’m not sure that chmod-ing the directory for your user profile is going to help here. What about chmod-ing the ODF files directly?

@jathan, Also – for your lab, what about allowing editing, but just reverting the files every so often (every hour? on login/logout?).

Hi qubit, thank you very much for your comments and suggestions :wink: It is a good idea allowing editing reverting the files every so often in the lab, but we need no one kind of editing like in odfviewer: http://opendocumentfellowship.com/odfviewer, pptview for powerpoint presentations or Evince or Adobe Reader for PDF documents. Any idea to use LibreOffice as read-only ODF documents permament aplication? Thanks.

@jathan - There is a ‘--view’ command-line switch that can be used to open a single document in Read-only mode, but based on what you’ve described, it sounds like LibreOffice might need a more all-encompassing ‘Viewer’ mode.

It sounds like your best bet is to file an enhancement bug and describe exactly how this Viewer should work (what can the user modify/config?)

Hi qubit, How are you? I sent a bug report already: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=62845 I hope this will be considerated for the new LibreOffice version. Sorry for comment it so far. Thanks for all your help pal.

Bug 62845 - Option for “Document Viewer Mode” (read-only mode by default) required

Status: NEW

Thank you very much for your help again qubit :wink: I will do the file an enhancement bug and describe exactly how this Viewer should work. Thanks pal.