I use LibreOffice 7.5 on a Windows desktop and a Linux laptop. I store documents on a synchronized drive, but I would also like to synchronize the LO settings. For example, if I modify the Writer menu a bit on my laptop, I would like the same change to be reflected on the desktop. In essence, I want the same experience whether I use it on the laptop or desktop. I did a search of the Ask LibreOffice questions, but they all seem rather dated, and I’m not certain that they would still be valid. I found one document that warned against this, but I’m not certain why. One idea I had was to export the user profile from one computer and import it to the other from time-to-time, which would work but is not quite as automatic as I would like; unfortunately, I’m not sure what to copy. In short, how can I create a single LO experience on two computers? Thank you for any help you can offer.
Copying the user profile may create inconsistencies if it is not applied to the exact same version of LO.
In addition, you want to do that between different OS’es where path designation may be different because the separator is \ under Windows and / under Linux (I ddidn’t check if paths are internally “normalised” so that they can be used on both OS’es). Also, the global architecture is probably different (in which directories, libraries and user details are stored), resulting in path names being very different (designation of locations for auto text, dictionaries, images, templates, …).
Experiment only after backing up your user profile on your laptop.
Examine the contents of the folder ...\LibreOffice\4\user\config\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter
Thank you for your valuable insight. I may have to resort to an old-fashioned method, start my laptop instance and manually apply the settings one-by-one to the desktop. It will work, but I wish there were an easier way.
Why don’t you simply copy the entire user profile after creating a backup of the old one (just in case)? The Java settings might be wrong which affects only a tiny fraction of the whole software and can be fixed in seconds.
This sounds like a good experiment. I’ll try to copy the entire profile folder and see if that works out.
Alternatively, start LibreOffice with -env:UserInstallation=file:///tmp/test
I just copied my Linux profile to C:\Users\Villeroy\Test\user\ .
The final folder needs to be “user”.
Then I called “cmd” for a shell and entered the command
"C:\Program Files\LibreOffice\program\soffice.exe" -env:UserInstallation=file:///C:/Users/Villeroy/Test/
This starts LO with all my user settings and with a working Java setup. Java is detected automatically. The recent files list can be deleted.
Registered databases are listed but with no path. They need to be edited or removed.
Templates stored in the profile work as expected. My Linux distro stores templates in a separate folder. I would have to copy that folder too and add it to the list of template folders.
Thanks to all who responded. In the end, I went with a manual solution. I realized that my various settings don’t change that much, so I took the time to manually change the options on both computers, so they match. Then, I created a template on one computer with the custom styles I like. I saved the template in a cloud directory, then imported it into the other computer. Since the template does not change frequently, it is easy enough to manually import it as necessary. It’s an old-school solution to a rather tricky problem.