LibreOffice 3.5 small bugs in released version – Template exists and Recent Documents

After updating LO3.5 from RC to the final release (Linux) I noticed that two “bugs” showed up.

The first is a message that “Error creating new document: templates already exists” and the second was the Recent Documents list was not being populated.

LO 3.5 (under Linux) keeps its config files now in ~/.config/libreoffice/3/user rather than
~/.libreoffice/3/user (oops, I had them reversed, now corrected, thanks to Mark Richardson for spotting my mistake here)

I fixed this by renaming the file registrymodifications.xcu to registrymodificationsOLD.xcu and also renaming the old folder (~ /.libreoffice) to ~ /.libreofficeOLD.

I copied the registrymodifications.xcu file from the previous folder to the .config/libreoffice/3/user folder and this worked, I had the correct template list, no error messages, and my Recent Documents list was ported across ok.

It seems that LibO migrates data from the previous profile and the registrymodifications.xcu file was not being properly generated. This worked for me as I had been using a relatively recent snapshot of LibO 3.5 before installing the release version.

If the solution above does not work, I suggest to just rename the file and folders mentioned above and let LibO recreate the new registrymodifications.xcu file itself.

Note: The problem has been reported as occurring also on Windows installations.

About Martin

Computer enthusiast, radio amateur
This entry was posted in IT General and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to LibreOffice 3.5 small bugs in released version – Template exists and Recent Documents

  1. Mark says:

    Martin
    thx for that – although to me you seem to have confused the new location in your post.
    for me the new location was ~/.config/libreoffice/3/user
    the old 3.4.5 was ~/.libeoffice/3/user/

    otherwise all good.

  2. John Kimble says:

    This is extremely useful. Thank you!

  3. Uwe Kaspers says:

    That was very helpful indead. Another effect of that bug seems to be the complete loss of the names of the data sources (F4 in calc). The modifcation solved that problem as well.

  4. Steve says:

    I can confirm that deleting Library/Application\ Support/LibreOffice/3/user/registrymodifications.xcu also fixes the issue on OS X Lion.

    Regards,
    Steve

  5. Jayneil says:

    Hey man, thanks a lot. Your solution worked like a charm! I had this problem using Libre Office 3.5.0 rc2 on Ubuntu 11.10.

  6. Phil Hill says:

    Martin – thank you very much for a nicely worded fix which unlike some other posted fixes clearly explains what needs to be done. The beauty of it is also that it is then self explanatory as to why the issue occurs as Libreoffice is looking in the wrong location for directions.

    Thank you once again it is very much appreciated.

    ..Phil

  7. Patrik Frank says:

    Wow, thanks. I had this issue on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) and your solution worked like a charm. Great! Thank you again!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Spam Protection by WP-SpamFree