How to downgrade from 4.0.2. to 3.6.6

users
#1

All,

While I appreciate the tremendous amount of work that has gone into LO 4, it's still a little too buggy for me and I'd like to go back to LO 3.6.6. Is it a simple matter of uninstalling 4 and re-installing 3? (I'm running Windows 7).

Thanks,
Bill

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
Yes.

It should be that easy.  The only issue is that the 3.6.x branch wont pick-up all the settings and configurations of branch 4.0.x, but that might be advantageous anyway.

Before doing the uninstall-reinstall it might be worth considering a couple of other options
1.  Renaming your user-profile often fixes weird and unlikely problems
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/UserProfile
branch 4.0.x might not be picking-up the settings and configurations you set for branch 3.x.x but i think you can rename folder 3 to folder 4 to sort that out.

2.  Maybe install 3.6.x alongside 4.0.x.  I wouldn't advise this as it can get a bit confusing
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Installing_in_parallel

3.  Wait a few days and then install the 4.0.3 when it gets released.  Typically new branches have added tons of functionality and better compatibility with MS formats but have been a little buggy sometimes until they reach around x.x.3 or x.x.4.  That 3rd digit is a little like the "Service Packs" that MS uses for it's stuff except they only do 3 whereas LibreOffice does about 6 during the life-cycle.  Many people wouldn't consider installing an MS product until at least Sp1.  Prior to the 4.0.x i usually didn't upgrade until around x.x.3.  I've been quite happy with the 4.0.x but maybe that was luck or that i didn't use it so much.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Bill,

I hate to say it, but that was my experience as well with 4.0. There was an important feature (to me at least) that worked well on 3.6 but no longer worked in 4.0. I found the regression to be especially distressing.

I simply uninstalled 4.0, and reinstalled 3.6. If I recall, the uninstall process (I also use Win7) did not delete the 4.0 user profile "users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Libreoffice\4.0\etc, so I was able to copy what I needed to the Libreoffice\3.0\etc. user profile after installing 3.6.

I've decided to be more deliberate about upgrading in the future. Study the release notes and check out bug reports. LO 3.6 works very well for me, so I probably won't upgrade until the latest/greatest has a feature I really need or fixes bugs that have bothered me in the past.

Virgil

#4

<...>

Bill and Virgil, it might be helpful to the developers if you could point
out the specific bugs/missing features, etc, that have been causing you
problems in 4.0....

Henri

#5

Have you looked in your Download folder?;
           if you still have the older version there, then merely delete
the newer one and re-install the older.

       I'm so glad I don't have that urge to 'upgrade immediately, if not
sooner';
           bugs frustrate me ...
               2 weeks ago, I was trying to get rid of a red ant hill -
again - and 2 of those nasty things bit my ankle; it's just now healing :wink:
                   [oh, there I go off topic a-g-a-i-n :wink: ]

All,

#6

Henri wrote:
Bill and Virgil, it might be helpful to the developers if you could point out the specific bugs/missing features, etc, that have been causing you problems in 4.0....

Henri

I did.

Virgil

#7

Hi :) 
On my own machine at home and at work I think it is a good policy to download and install new versions of new branches asap.  Preferably even at beta-release stage (ie pre-release).  That allows me to test out all the features i think i use and play around to see if it feels alright.

Then i can post bug-reports while the devs are still most keen and most focussed on fixing things and smoothing it out.  It's not always quick to fix but it helps the devs.  It might be really great if people could test out a new branch at pre-release stage and then go through some of the existing bug-reports to quickly see if they are still a problem with the newer release.  That might really help the devs.

Of course on colleagues machines i stick with the stable branch.  Any release after x.x.3 is much more stable, with x.x.6 being about as rock-solid as it's possible to get.

The question is are you happy to just sit&hope that someone else happens to notice issues that you personally find crucial?  I'd rather have an active say in pushing forwards things that i want to see fixed.

After having a test drive i can always reinstall the older version if i need to/  "Simples" :slight_smile:

Errr, in the case of the 4.0.0 i got really lucky and found everything i cared about just seems to work!  WooHooo :smiley:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
I remember.  You did what i wish i did but never quite get around to. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

Do you have a link to the beta versions? I have the opensuse version of
4.0.2 with latest update (yesterday) and 4.0.2 from LibreOffice parallel
installed. Both had same two major problems for me since my cleints now
usually send .docx documents and I do alot of table formatting with the
number formatting columns, some of it doesn't work again.

If I could get a hold of 4.0.3 and if it still has the problems I'll
report them again as bugs.

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
I found this link on the official website
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/
I got there from the main website
http://www.libreoffice.org/
then the trail
"Main website" - "Get involved" - "QA"

got me to

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/qa-testers/

Hmm, you caught me out.  What i described is what i wish i did and i keep promising myself i will do next time, this time, each time but never quite get around to it.  Errr, well tried the 4.0.0 fairly early but really liked it and stuck with it.  I was going to hunt around the different articles published at the time to solve problems raised in their various lists of comments.  A few seemed so very trivial that it made me wonder if the commenter had ever installed anything before.  Sadly i didn't even get through that let alone helping with testing out listed bugs.  So, this time i really have downloaded the beta.  Hopefully my good intentions wont get so side-tracked this time!

Regards from

Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Well, I may wait for 4.0.3 and see if that fixes anything. I did check the bugs list and I don't see my specific bug mentioned, but it may manifest itself in different ways, so maybe it will be fixed in 4.0.3.

The bug that makes LO 4 unusable for me is drawings no longer save when pasted into Writer (exit LO, re-open the document, and the drawings are gone). A significant amount of my work involves making drawings in LO Draw and using them in Writer documents. What I have been doing as a workaround is pasting screenshots of the drawings into Writer.

Thanks for all the replies...

-Bill

#12

Hi :) 
Thanks :slight_smile:

Hmm, that vanishing images problem kinda sounds familiar! :(  It was discussed on the Documentation Team's mailing list a couple of years ago so i have CC'd this email to them as they found a good work-around.

I found that bumping up the memory settings seemed to help a bit
Tools - Options - Memory
but mostly the problem seemed to vanish when i had saved the images in the same folder as the document, or in a sub-folder as would happen with html pages.  I was never completely sure if the main answer was having the document and images on my local desktop rather than some on the network and some on the file-server.  The problem eventually disappeared for me but i was never entirely certain why.

The issue is a long-running bug that really seems to be a collection of bugs each of which has the same final outcome but each having very different causes with different variables.  The Docs Team managed to pin-down 1 specific instance and that seemed to get fixed.  Another problem is that the bug(s) is/are very rare and difficult to reproduce so it's difficult to pin anything down.  After it almost magically stopped misbehaving on my own machine i could not get it to happen again on any machine at work :(   (or should that be a smiley rather than a frown?)

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#13

Thanks

Russ

#14

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile:

Hmm, that vanishing images problem kinda sounds familiar! :frowning: It was
discussed on the Documentation Team's mailing list a couple of years
ago so i have CC'd this email to them as they found a good
work-around.

<Quote>

I found that bumping up the memory settings seemed to help a bit
Tools - Options - Memory
but mostly the problem seemed to vanish when i had saved the images in
the same folder as the document, or in a sub-folder as would happen
with html pages. I was never completely sure if the main answer was
having the document and images on my local desktop rather than some
on the network and some on the file-server. The problem eventually
disappeared for me but i was never entirely certain why.

</Quote/
Did you bump the "Use for LibreOffice" or "Memory per Object" or Both?

that could be my problem with the graphics. Will experiment later today.

#15

Hi :slight_smile:
Both and any other settings in there too.

For some reason i drop the number of undo steps as 100 seems fairly excessive to me but then it depends on the type of editing.  I think i usually create back-ups or newer versions more often than that anyway.

The defaults seem set for ancient machines or VERY mobile ones that might not have much or any Ram or anything.  Nowadays, on a reasonable desktop, 10-15Mb per object doesn't seem unreasonable and i might have quite a lot of objects.  Adding front and back-pages of my newsletter i get around 25 images but then it's mostly just 2 per page for the rest.  I've not really messed around with this machine and it seems very low with only 20Mb for the "use for LibreOffice" so i might bump that up quite a lot.  I do have over 1Gb of Ram after all! :slight_smile:

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#16

Hi.
I have had this with EPS drawings (with/without preview) for a long time. For those to not cause a problem I turn off

Load/Save>General>Save auto recovery information.

Just a suggestion, you could give it a try.
Steve

#17

Hi :slight_smile:
Steve!  I think that was the trick the Docs Team mentioned!  Turn off the auto-back-ups and stuff.  Just remember to save often and make your own back-ups. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#18

<QUOTE>

Hi.
I have had this with EPS drawings (with/without preview) for a long
time. For those to not cause a problem I turn off
>Load/Save>General>Save auto recovery information.
Just a suggestion, you could give it a try.
Steve

</QUOTE>
Did not make a difference.
Thanks for the idea.

Russ

#19

Hi :slight_smile:
Steve! I think that was the trick the Docs Team mentioned! Turn off
the auto-back-ups and stuff. Just remember to save often and make
your own back-ups. Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Turned off everything on the options/load-save/general page, still no
help.

#20

The problem is solved. I increased memory as was suggested and that fixed it. The strange thing is, I reverted back to the old memory settings and it's still fixed. Don't know why. There was a Windows update this evening. I wonder if that had anything to do with it and it wasn't a LO issue at all?

-Bill