How can I install the current LibreOffice in a different folder than my current installation of 6.1.5.2? The .msi installer does not give me an option of where to install it, and I cannot allow it to overwrite 6.1.5.2, because the current version has had an essential feature removed making it useless for my most frequent use of LibreOffice.
There is also the option to use a “portable” LibreOffice of one or more old versions. I do so with more than a dozen for “historical interest”. PortableApps packages of matured versions are available from the download archive (in the given case this location). The package is a self-extracting archive. It can write to any folder (best an empty one) and doesn’t need a Win-based installation. You may use the PortableApps platform, but you don’t need to, and you can put your old user profile in the proper place. Same with the offline help from your old install. (To get offline help for a “new old” version is a bit more complicated.)
You can even have running more than one portable version (or a portable one and the installed one) at the same time. Ask me for additional information if interested.
This sounds interesting. Which feature? Someone else might also want to know.
===Editing===
Sorry! I accidentally posted this as a “solution” instead of as a comment…
Newer versions of LibreOffice cannot launch a Windows batch file from a hyperlink. I need that capability to do two things in succession from a single hyperlink:
- Load a particular ISO image of a CD-ROM into my virtual CD drive
- Run the executable for that particular ISO image
I have been using batch files to do that for many years (I have ISO images of about 300 genealogical CD-ROMs stored on my hard drive). I have not found a way to do this other than with a batch file.
Why is your genealogical data stored in CD ISO images? Wouldn’t it be better to store it in a unified database? Unless of course, your “data” are various reports, e.g. each one a family history. Explain your workflow and we might suggest a better approach.
Well, I don’t use batch files frequently any more.
But there’s a way to circumvent the problem:
Call the batch indirectly using a hyperlink primarily calling a piece of local user code which in turn calls the batch with a SHELL command. Its not quite simple admittedly, because it requires to pass the actually relevant part of the commnand (file name e.g.) as a parameter appended to the hyperlink of vnd.sun.star.script type. The first called user code must then extract that part from the command.
(I wouldn’t have tried this now if I not had the needed code in use anyway. Of course I will share it if asked.)
See also: How do I run a batch file from LibreOffice 6.4.0.3 (x64) Writer?
I have a genealogical database, but the ISO images hold transcriptions of a variety of contemporary records, of some of the scholarly genealogical journals, and of genealogical reference works. They amount to a genealogical reference library of hundreds of volumes.
Dale H. Cook, Member, NEHGS, AGS, MA Soc. of Mayflower Descendants;
Massachusetts State Coordinator for the USGenWeb Project ®;
Administrator of https://plymouthcolony.net
Calling the batch file indirectly is not feasible - it would take too much time to set that up for about 300 CD-ROMs, and the batch files work fine.
Dale H. Cook, Member, NEHGS, AGS, MA Soc. of Mayflower Descendants;
Massachusetts State Coordinator for the USGenWeb Project ®;
Administrator of https://plymouthcolony.net
Mmmh, IMHO reorganizing your file system tree could solve the problem.
Instead of storing ISO images, store the data directly in a directory which name is the same as the ISO image (except the .img extension). This may even be smaller than the ISO image.
Give us an example of the hyperlink to see how it should be modified to cope with direct access to your “fake-ISO” tree of directories. This modification can probably be batch-processed with a macro generator.
Of course you would configure the indirect way of calling only once, and adapt the needed hyperlinks by formulas as you are supposed anyway to do it currently. But I won’t suggest this way if you not are familiar with custom programming for LibO in Basic.
On the other hand I wouldn’t suggest explicitly to keep a specially aged version of a software for a single purpose.
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Doing away with the CD-ROM images is not an option. I don’t have time to pull around a quarter of a million images out of those CDs, and doing so would destroy the indexing and specialized search tools contained in the CDs. I seriously doubt that any of you have ever had to cope with the volume of computerized genealogical resources which I have accumulated over nearly forty years. It takes about 1.5 terrabytes to store my 17th to 19th century manuscript contemporary records images and downloaded journal and book images. There is no sense in beating a dead horse - I have been working with computers since I took my first programming class at M.I.T in 1967. AFAIAC the recent versions of LibreOffice are broken - a very useful feature was removed to protect idiots from themselves in the name of “security.” I am leaving this conversation.
This can be done by batch processing during the night. Transforming an image into a set of directory is not really complicated. I doubt it would destroy the search tools because, once your image is mounted in the virtual CD drive, it is seen as a set of directories. One ISO image = one directory with the exact “exposed” contents of the image.
My photo collection is one order of magnitude below yours and it is perfectly manageable with scripts during overnight unattended job. All is required is 1) a reduced test case to check everything goes well, 2) a strict revertable strategy when doing the real job, 3) a good backup and safety procedure (for reliability my disks are configured as RAID – don’t remember the variant, it is for redundancy, not for speed).
As @Lupp pointed out, relying on an end-of-life program for your daily routine, or worse for new developments, leads surely you into future bigger trouble.
When I had to resync my disks after a drive failure, it took me 3 hours for a 1 TB drive. So converting your 1.5TB data would cost ~10 hours (safe-estimating as you’re dealing with files not with volumes).