I’ve been having issues with LO on Windows 7 64bit, so I was wondering what you all thought of running the Portable version until I get things figured out? I read a few things about it but they were all old, can someone shed some light as to how well this may or may not work with my setup?
Thanks, Convert22
I have Apache OpenOffice (AOO) installed on my Win7 x64 system without difficulties. I have in the past also installed LibreOffice (LO) to the system with no particular difficulties. Now I have AOO installed and use LO Portable occasionally. The only reason I use LO Portable is for odds and ends of reading Microsoft Word documents - sometimes LO will do a better job of reading a Word document than AOO, sometimes not, it’s just handy to have around in case.
The only thing I find irritating about LO Portable is that the Offline Help file (which you need to download separately from LO’s own site) doesn’t install to it. So you lose offline Help. I have read (though never tried it myself) that it is possible to get the Help file to work with LO Portable - but it is quite complex to do so if you’re not particularly computer savvy. Details are here: How do we install OFFLINE HELP for LibreOffice v. 5.x [portable]
All above said when I was running an installed version of LibreOffice on Win7 x64 the only issue I had with it was getting the Offline Help file to work. It was pretty easy to fix that problem.
EDIT:
Okay, Convert22. Here are some tips for you:
As you are totally new to PortableApps I would strongly recommend that you install the PortableApps.com Platform first and then install the LibreOffice Portable into the platform. To do all of that read all the Support documents here: Support Documents. You won’t need all of the instructions of all the documents there at this point in time but it will give you a better idea of how portable apps work. And, yes, you can install to your hard-drive (this is how I have LibreOffice Portable ‘installed’ on my machine). You can, for example, setup a portable apps suite on you hard-drive and, to use it on you flash-drive, just copy the entire suite over to you flash-drive and, bingo!, you are good to go for using the entire suite from your flash-drive (you can, of course, setup on your flash-drive and then copy the entire suite to your hard-drive). Strictly speaking you don’t need to use the PortableApps.com Platform but doing so will make things much easier for a newbie to portable apps. (If you want an alternative to PortableApps.com Platform then I would recommend Portable Start Menu but really you would need some experience with portable apps under your belt before you try using that - so just keep that inf in the back of your mind for later.)
Once you have PortableApps.com Platform installed then download and install the LibreOffice Portable into it. (Again read the support documents and you should find how to do that is very straightforward.)
If you find this ask.libreoffice.org forum difficult to use (I do) then you might find Apache OpenOffice Forum easier. It has a more traditional forum interface which is helpful. Though it says it is an OpenOffice forum they are quite happy to answer questions on LibreOffice (many of the users there also use LibreOffice).
The important concept with respect to PortableApps is that, strictly speaking, they do NOT install anything to your system. The ‘installers’ just unpack the files contained in the ‘PortableApp installer’ onto your flash-drive/hard-drive etc. into the necessary folders to get the program (e.g. LibreOffice portable) to run properly as a portable. To ‘uninstall’ a portable app you just delete the parent folder for the app you wish to ‘uninstall’.
I should add that as you are experiencing difficulties with a fully installed LibreOffice there is no reason to assume that you won’t experience the same difficulties in using the portable version. To deal with the problems you are facing remember, when writing into a forum for help, to include full details of your system e.g. operating system, LibreOffice version installed, and exact details of the problems you are facing.
P.S. A good book that will help you get to grips with LibreOffice can be got here: Designing With LibreOffice
Thank you so much Radish, I’ve been pulling my hair out for week or two now. LO is Crashing constantly, but I like it so much that I’m trying to stick it out and find an answer. I read up on LO Portable, still don’t understand the concept. It seems as though it is designed to Install to a Flash Drive, but can it be run from a Folder on my computer also?
Convert22
LibreOffice Portable contains an unaltered version of LibreOffice inside of it. You can run it from anywhere you like without “installing” it into Windows. It uses a separate configuration and user preferences from the installed version, so it can be very handy to troubleshoot if you are having issues with your local install. Users us it from portable devices (flash drives and portable hard drives), cloud drives (sync between PCs), and just local to keep things independent of Windows.