dots and lines don’t line up
And what is the question? Read these guidelines and follow their advice to ask a good question (we can’t read your mind).
Edit your question to describe what you’re trying to achieve and what you get. Mention your OS name and LO version. Edit your title to make it short.
Don’t use “Add answer”. This is reserve for solutions.
can I get provious settings back?
No idea, since you do not describe at all what has changed, and thus it’s impossible to tell if that was accompanied by a change in config files (which would mean the old config is lost), or just some defaults were changed or you see some bug, which could be restored by using a fresh profile, or an older version. No data in → no data out.
can I reinstall the old version ?
Yes.
It seems pretty obvious what the question is. Can he reinstall the older version, and will his user settings from that version remain intact after having removed the current version?
All you have to do is uninstall 7.1 and download and install the latest version that worked for you. The official site lists 6.4.7 as oldest, but there are places where you can download even older versions.
All you have to do is uninstall 7.1 and download and install the latest version that worked for you. The official site lists 6.4.7 as the oldest, but there are places where you can download even older versions. Edit User settings aren’t affected by re-installation of an older version, unless you go back to version 3.x, which used a different structure of the user profile.