Does customizing menus break future updates?

[KlausB]

I have customized Writer quite a bit, with custom hotkeys and menu entries defined through Tools > Customize, primarily in order to more easily apply custom and predefined styles. For instance, I have a hotkey Ctrl+T for applying the “Teletype” style, and have added a custom “TODO” style to the “Styles” menu.

Today I installed LibreOffice 7.2 in order to try the new “Search Commands” feature. Only to find out that it wasn’t there in its expected place in “Help”. Upon restarting in safe mode, it was present with a hotkey Shift+ESC (as opposed to Ctrl+F1 expected from the blog post about it). The hotkey also works with my profile enabled.

This made me wonder: Does customizing the menu hide new features?

[Hrbrgr]

All customizations you make via the Tools > Customize menu are saved in the so-called user profile (a directory on your PC).
Basically, you should then save your user profile.

See also: LibreOffice user profile

If something works in Safe Mode and does not work in Normal Mode, you can assume that the user reprofile is defective.

You can fix this by backing up or renaming the old user profile (OLD-…). LibreOffice will create a new user profile and the standard functions should do it again.

You can now transfer subfolders from the saved renamed user profile back to the new user profile and test if everything still works.

See also: Safe Mode

Can that help?

[KlausB]

Partly. It would have been an easier way to reset only the menus, than resetting the profile and reconfiguring everything, so it is definitely a helpful answer. Sadly, I can’t test anymore if it would have been possible to receive changes from the update while retaining customizations this way.