We use Libre-Office on our education-computers.
We would not like our students to see the recent documents of other students.
This because of the privacy of our students.
Is there any way to disable this function?
Please provide more information about your general computer configuration. The recent documents list is kept in the user profile. As long as your students log in the system with a personal user-id, the profiles are individualised. Thus the recent documents list will show only the documents for this user-id.
If, on the contrary, your computers can be used without credentials, i.e. a single account for all, you’ll break privacy.
In one of my previous jobs, I was in a similar situation. There were hundreds of free-access computers. But user home directories were located on a central server and it was mounted through the LAN when user logged in. No private data was kept on the computer itself. Log-in was controlled through an LDAP directory.
I’m a bit confused. If the recent documents list is automatically maintained, I conclude that every user of the workstation has write permission for the user profile. This is not only problematic concerning privacy.
Students sometimes have their own idea about what is funny.
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I asked the ICT-department many times to make a different profile-folder for every student.
Not with any succes.
I can’t make any changes, because I am not the System Administrator, I am just a teacher.
I teach Economics and the Dutch language.
But the solution provided works for us. I do accourage the students to store their files on an external drive, like USB-sticks.
Many thanks for helping out!
If they cannot provide an isolated /home/… for each student… they should be fired!
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You can set the History PickListSize to 0 under Tools → Options → LibreOffice → Advanced, Optional Features, Open Expert configuration, enter PickListSize, hit Search, double-click the History PickListSize entry, enter Value 0, hit OK, OK, OK.
But as already mentioned, the approach using the same account for everyone without bootstrapping a virgin installation and environment for each and every login is at least if not more than questionable. Already in the file open dialog students will be able to see all documents. And as Lupp mentioned, students will have ideas…
In addition, this must be done on every workstation and you are not protected against a merry mischievous rascal who would restore the setting to spy on his fellows.
It could be done with a central configuration deployment extension but if they’re asking this question they are not using any such thing.
Pointers:
- Deployment and Migration - The Document Foundation Wiki
- https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/b/b0/LibreOffice_config_extension_writing.pdf
- LibreOffice Developer's Guide: Chapter 15 - Configuration Management - The Document Foundation Wiki
However, if this is really about shared accounts and profiles that still leaves things open for any other mischief not directly related to LibreOffice.
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Is there a macro (or some kind of automation) for these steps?
I guess this is the property value that needs to be changed.
<prop oor:name="PickListSize"
oor:op="fuse" >
<value>1</value>
</prop>
But the question is what is the outer node name? Usually it is something like “Save” > “Document” or “Filter” > “PDF” > “Export”
I can not find any node name that can be associated with this property.
Sub PickListSizeToZero()
Dim keyNode As Object
With GlobalScope.Basiclibraries
If Not .IsLibraryLoaded("Tools") Then .LoadLibrary("Tools")
End With
keyNode = Tools.Misc.GetRegistryKeyContent("org.openoffice.Office.Common/History", True)
keyNode.PickListSize=0
keyNode.commitChanges
End Sub
I also had the same issue with the recent documents showing, but I’m just glad there’s a fix. I hate to keep complaining, but LibreOffice has a lot of really annoying “features” automatically enabled, which require you to search forums in order to fix the problem. I am grateful that LibreOffice has so many great features, but I kind of wish they would follow Open Office’s lead when it comes to the “out-of-the-box settings”. I really sucks having to compile a detailed list of things that I have to turn on/off whenever I install LibreOffice on a new computer. It would be great if the developers included a simple button that says “Turn off Recent Documents”.
The new version should not overwrite the profile’s settings you’ve chosen.
I’d encourage you to save the user’s profile on a regular basis, then re-inject it on any installation that could need it (ex: new installation on another machine).
sucks having to compile a detailed list of things that I have to turn on/off
save the user’s profile on a regular basis, then re-inject it on any installation that could need it (
Please list all such features at least once. It may be possible to create an extension to take care of it. There is an extension to disable recent documents here…
LibreOffice has a lot of really annoying “features” automatically enabled, which require you to search forums in order to fix the problem.
My experience is that most of the features enabled by default are correct and applied after discussing with community.
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The only lead that may be followed from OpenOffice is “don’t do anything at all”. It may fit people that are comfortable with specific state of features. But these users don’t (want to) realize, that they have a reason to upgrade their program - why? likely because the program made some changes that they consider beneficial (otherwise, why upgrade at all?). And indeed, at every place where the new behavior is good for these users, things are as normal, and nothing to discuss (even nothing to appreciate); but all other places are “obviously wrong”. It goes as far as claiming that things are implemented by developers without asking users (while in reality, every change is driven by a user demand). People tend to feel that their personal needs reflect the majority of users. Also they tend to require that every changed behavior needs a very prominent configuration - which, if implemented, would change existing hundreds of controls in Options into tens of thousands (just try to scroll the already existing expert configurations - almost all of them are some already implemented change, that could in theory have an own checkbox in Options).