Is there a way to sync a user dictionary between computers [SOLVED]

[Matthew7]

I’ve been trying to find an answer to this for several days and can’t find anything that works. MANY internet searches have turned up nothing useful. I’m running LibreOffice 6 on Linux computers (based on Ubuntu 18.04). I have found a few older posts here but the suggestions are not working.

The situation is simple. I work on the same files from two different machines, multiple locations. I sync the files I’m working on by storing them in a DropBox folder. I would like to sync a user dictionary so that I don’t need to run through spell check on both computers and duplicate the dictionary.

To date I have tried running LO from a portable version stored on the Dropbox folder. For reasons I don’t understand the portable version insists on storing the dictionary on the machine rather than within the folder. I’ve tried changing the path but LO just deletes the new path I created.

I’ve tried running LO from the native machines and changing the path for the dictionary to DropBox but that fails to work either.

I tried removing LO from each machine so only the DropBox version exists but that caused dependency issues with other apps on the machine which got so bad I couldn’t even get the operating system to run and had to do a fresh install.

There should be a very simple way to sync things like user dictionaries and templates but I can’t figure it out. I can’t be the only one that works from multiple computers and would like to simplify these things.

Any help would be appreciated.

[anon73440385]

I’ve tried running LO from the native machines and changing the path for the dictionary to DropBox

Did you try to wok with symbolic links? Meaning: Keep the path in LO, but ln -s /Dropbox/<yourpath>/shareduser.dic $HOME/.config/libreoffice/4/user/wordbook/shareduserdic_on_dropbox.dic on both of your machines (I’d check on my own, but got no DropBox account for testing)

[Matthew7]

I found a solution that works for me. I’ve been running with it for a few days to be certain that it actually works well. As long as I make sure pCloud has finished updating and make sure to close down LibreOffice before logging onto another computer it works very well. I went with the pCloud because I have more storage space there.

What I did was go into the pCloud settings and set up a sync folder to home/matthew/.config/LibreOffice/4/ When that was complete I created a folder in pCloud and called it LibreOffice Settings Sync Folder. That folder simply acts as a storage container. I can go into the folder and locate anything within LibreOffice. In a sense it’s where all of LibreOffice system files are stored dictionaries, templates, fonts.

What I learned was that setting up a sync folder in pCloud is a local event and has to be done on each computer. Since the Home/matthew/.config/LibreOffice/4/ is the same in each system I just did the same on each machine.

That path leads to everything LibreOffice so changing a setting on one system syncs to the pCloud folder. The only issue is that I can’t have more than one machine running LibreOffice at a time or a “conflicted” folder/file is created with a copy. Of course I can put the two side by side and merge them later.

When I shut down LibreOffice I have to wait a few moments to make sure that pCloud has finished uploading the changes. I don’t know the interval that pCloud checks for changes so I right click the panel icon, click “Pause” then “Resume” which forces the app to check the file for changes and triggers any upload/download that needs to run. I just wait for the circling arrows icon to change to a check mark to indicate that it has finished.

When I log into another machine I have to wait for pCloud to update and finish any uploads or downloads. Again the circling arrows and check mark indicator. When pCloud has finished and I open LibreOffice the new settings are updated and I can pick up where I left off. Changes to the default background on one machine show up on the others that are linked to the sync folder. Changing the default font, changing the design of the template, spelling changes all show up automatically as soon as pCloud has had time to do its updates.

An interesting side note is that I added a third computer, an old Acer Aspire One netbook. I’ve been running various OS on it like Lubuntu, Xubuntu, LXLE and the like. Often the repository version of LO available is version 4. When I connected the Acer and set up the pCloud sync, let it finish downloading all files which takes a few seconds over a slow connection, and opened a Writer document I was greeted with a banner welcoming me to LO 6 and asking if I wanted a tour. Upgrading Writer on any one machine automatically seems to upgrade them all!

If I have to work offline pCloud will sync as soon as I have a connection again. If in doubt I will use a different word processor like FocusWriter or Abiword and then just copy and paste the text into the LibreOffice Writer later on.