What is preventing installation of LibreOffice 5.4 Help?

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#1

I am trying to install the LibreOffice 5.4 Help pack in my Windows 10 computer. However, when I try to do so, a message says “A newer version of LibreOffice 5.4 Help Pack was found. To install an older version, the newer version needs to be removed first.

It is a perplexing message. Is there really a newer version of the 5.4 Help pack (that is still called “5.4 Help Pack”) other than what we can download from the main download page?

Something I did must have caused this problem. I installed a parallel version of LibreOffice 6.0, but that involved a few downloads of both 5.4 and 6.0. The 6.0 version is installed in the root directory. The 5.4 version is installed in the Program Files folder.

However, I was not able to uninstall some versions that did not appear in the Programs and Features list of the Control Panel. So, I moved those folders to a backup drive.

There must be remnants somewhere. To install the 5.4 Help pack, what files needs to be removed and from where?
Any insights would be appreciated.

#2

It detects help pack for 6.0 installed. The “LibreOffice 5.4” from the message comes from the installing package: it doesn’t know which version it has detected, only knows its own name and that the detected one is newer.

You cannot install neither LibreOffice nor its help pack in parallel on a system. However, you can unpack the installer to a directory, and use it there (methods are listed here, mentioning help pack).

#3

Thanks, Mike.
Please bear with a few more questions, as I am clearly not a techie.

It sounds like I should uninstall 6.0, then install the 5.4 Help pack, then reinstall 6.0 Is that what you are suggesting?

I used the Separate Install GUI to install 6.0. Unfortunately, I must have overlooked the option for downloading the help installer.

#4

It would be great if you could attempt to explain the difference between install and unpack. When I try to research online, I mainly get information about moving companies.

Thanks again!

#5

The methods on the page I referred to above include the msiexec /a ..., which extracts files from the installer into a directory, but does not install them. Installation is not simply unpacking; installer performs much more things, like registering fonts, associating file types, checking for older and newer versions, updating system, etc. So when you simply double-click an MSI, it’s being installed; when you use msiexec /a ..., files are simply extracted.

#6

Thanks for the clarification.
It wasn’t clear to me that you were talking about extracting files. I thought you were saying that unpacking is somehow an alternative to installing.
Reading that again, I think you were saying that a parallel program cannot be directly installed with the installer and that what matters is where the program is installed. Is that correct?

#7

It sounds like I should uninstall 6.0, then install the 5.4 Help pack, then reinstall 6.0 with its Help pack. Is that what you are suggesting?

#8

I suppose that you don’t need to uninstall LibreOffice 6.0, only its help pack.

#9

OK. I will try that. Thank you!

#10

I uninstalled 6.0, reinstalled 5.4, then reinstalled 6.0. All is well, with one exception: when the 6.0 Help is open, there is text showing the contents on the left, but no text displayed on the right.
This glitch was present before I uninstalled and reinstalled, but I hoped it would go away after reinstalling. Any thoughts about what might be happening?

#11

Since this question is a little different from the topic of this post, I created a separate post with screenshot here:

#12

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