How to save a document in Libre Office?

[leoasks]

I went over so many items, but none of them is near to my question.

Sometimes, not always, when I have created a new document, it is not really saved when I click on’ save as’, like I always do.
In these cases, not to loose them, I try to save them on a USB stick,
but then I also get the response "You don’t have enough rights’’
although I am the only one that uses my computer.
Sometimes i am told that ‘others’ have changed my document.

I use Open Office on a Linux Mint pc.
How can I tell the system that I am the only authorised user.

Thanks for your soonest answer, because I just created some very valuable documents.
If I close my pc, they will get lost.

[Radish]

What are you using? In the title of your post you say “Libre Office”. However, in the post you say “Open Office”. Which is it? Also it would be helpful if you would state the version number of whatever you are using.

[leoasks]

Thanks Radish

and sorry for that error,

I am using Libre Office, but I cannot find which version they installed on my PC.

My pc runs on Linux Mint Cinnamon 4.6.6

[Radish]

To find the version of LibreOffice in Writer go (menu) Help > About LibreOffice

But as ajlittoz correctly points out the issue lies with your operating system, not LibreOffice.

[ajlittoz]

Your question is not a LO issue but one about computer usage.

In Unix-like OS’s like Linux, every file and directory has an owner and permissions. Permissions are split into owner, group and “others”. Usually, “others” permissions are restricted compared to owner and group, generally leaving only read or access right.

What you experience with an USB stick depends on how and where the OS mounts the device. I am not familiar with Mint (using personally Fedora with KDE Plasma desktop – by the way, you didn’t mention your desktop manager and this is also to be considered) so my answer may not be definitive.

Under Fedora, USB storage devices are automatically mounted at /run/media/<user> where <user> is your user (session) name. This directory is owned by root with permissions rwxr-x--- which means you, as a user, can’t do anything with it. But /run/media/<user>/<stick_name> is owned by you and your group with permissions r-xr-xr-x. You can’t change the name of the stick, which is a good thing. Going one step lower in the hierarchy, files /run/media/<user>/<stick_name>/xxx are now rwxrwxr-x unless, of course, they were write-protected after being transferred to the stick.

So, first, find where the stick has been mounted (it may be under /mnt, /media or some distro-specific directory like the one mentioned above) and check permissions with command ls -l.

In any case, I’d recommend you don’t work directly with USB stick. They are too vulnerable to many incidents which may damage your documents beyond repair. Remember that flash devices support only a limited number of writes. It is then wiser to work on your hard disk and use your stick only as a backup or transport device. The file manager has a more reliable and fail-safe copy than LO itself. And if you have an I/O error while copying, anyway your document is still there on your disk.

[leoasks]

Thanks @ajlittoz,

for your quick ànd extensive response.

I learned from it that I first have to install the Linux Mint Permissions.

And that I should be very careful with using USB sticks.

Thanks again

Leo

[anon87010807]

In Tools - Options - LibreOffice - Paths you can configure where your files will be saved. Normally, that’s in /user name/My Documents. Normally Ctrl+S should save your file when you have already given it a name, and if you didn’t, it should open a dialog window where you can enter a name for your file. If that doesn’t work, there’s something wrong with either your user profile or your LibreOffice installation.

[leoasks]

Thanks Floris,

I downloaded the Getting started Guide 6.0

and hope to find there my possible mistakes.