Upgrade to libreoffice-fresh 24.2.1-2 deletes all macros on Arch Linux 6.7.9-arch1-1

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#1

LO 24.2.1-2 was upgraded via pacman and the Arch repositories yesterday and prior to upgrade the system macros (not workbook ones) contained a number of Calc macros that I rely upon for work.

In trying to invoke one of these this morning I find that LO throws an error, my macros are not visible in the macro window and when I check in ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/basic/Standard I see only 3 files, all of which were born yesterday and there is no sign of my beloved macros.

As you may guess, I am not Mr Happy, and would welcome any suggestions as to how these may be recovered before I sit down to rewrite them.

I have been using these macros in one form or another for years and they have survived updates and upgrades over this period and so it would also be enlightening to know if I am the only one who has suffered this fate on this upgrade, and why on this occasion LO saw fit to overwrite them.

All suggestions welcome apart from “don’t keep system-wide macros in the standard macro folder” which, as far as I can see should never be overwritten without warning, or at least copied to backup if the system needs to overwrite.

P.S. just scanned the directory with testdisk and there seem to be no remnants. This duck appears not only to be a dead one, but already wrapped in pancakes and served up with orange sauce.

#2

IMHO the user is primarily responsible for his data backup.
Please have a look here:

The User Profile folder

1 Like
#3

To the extent that each user is responsible to protect his data from loss arising from failure of his system, or indeed self inflicted wounds, I agree 100% but even the LO documentation you point me to states specifically that the user profile will be kept

This folder is not removed when uninstalling or updating LibreOffice, so your customizations are kept.

So to the extent that an update or upgrade over-writes non-system files without warning or simply copying them to .bak I do not.

As an aside, all of the related customisations that attached to these user configurations were nicely preserved. Each and every one was attached to a custom button on the menu bar and a custom icon; this high level user configuration was kept, only the underlying functionality that LO said would be safe was destroyed.

#4

Yes, normally. However, something unusual seems to have happened in your case.
If everything in your user profile has been retained and only the macros have not, check whether macros are enabled in LibreOffice.
You may also have an anti-virus program that you need to tell that LibreOffice macros are OK.

#5

I’ve noticed the same issue several times with OpenOffice and LibreOffice. It affects the “Standard” library only which seems to be replaced with the empty one in $install_dir/presets/basic/.
Try ls -l ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/basic/Standard/*.xba and see if there are any modules other than the new empty Module1.xba.

And yes, backing up all user data on a Linux system is set up within minutes.

#6

Macros were enabled before the update, but the update disabled them as well as the option to record macros. I have since noticed that while the updates kept all of the custom dictionaries, things like autocapitalisation (which I normally have set to off) and a few other customisation options were also wiped. Annoying again, but far less work to put right than the macro deletion.

I have clamav running but only insofar as it gives notifications and does not interfere with anything unless I tell it to, and i have never told it to do anything with these files and certainly didn’t on this last update.

Since I have burned some hours recoding the macros and so there is now an additional module that I have just created to contain them and the rsync in my update script now has a line added to include that file in the backup that runs before pacman.

As above, the annoying thing is not that it did/does this, but that something caused the behaviour to change.

Anyway, 'nuff said. Damage done, now fixed and a safety net in place.

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