Identifying version of Writer used to create an odt document

users
#1

I have an odt dated from 14 JUN 2016 that was originally created in
LibreOffice that I need to revisit.

I have a copy of LibreOffice-dev (5.3.4.0.0+) still on my machine, but it
seems to have a serious problem with the font spacing in this document,
although the characters appear correctly.

So I tried loading the 5.3.4.2 version, but it has horribly distorted
graphics (barely recognizable and in black and white) on both the opening
displays of the recent documents as well as within my Jun 2016 document (and
any other document I open). I tried turning OpenGL on and off and so forth,
but no luck.

SO: then I loaded the 5.3.4.2-snap package (I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit);
due I suppose to its sandbox nature, it doesn't seem to know about any of my
system fonts or setups, so it had a great time reassembling my document in a
fashion Picasso would have loved. (e.g. Images and tables relocated, etc.)

So .... I would like to reload the original version of LibreOffice used to
create the document, but the date itself doesn't help - at the time I was
still attempting to settle on an LO version with only bugs I didn't care
about, so it might have been any of several versions.

Assuming the older versions are still available, is there a way to determine
the version last used to create the file, so I can reload it to make the
necessary changes?

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

#2

Hi,

CVAlkan schrieb:

I have an odt dated from 14 JUN 2016 that was originally created in
LibreOffice that I need to revisit.

[..]

The documents are actually zip-archives. Make a copy of the document and unpack it, e.g. using 7-Zip.
You will see a file meta.xml; open it in an editor.
Look for "<meta:generator>". Next this tag you get the exact version, which was used to generate the document.

Assuming the older versions are still available, is there a way to determine
the version last used to create the file, so I can reload it to make the
necessary changes?

The documents are actually zip-archives. Make a copy of the document and unpack it, e.g. using 7-Zip.
You will see a file meta.xml; open it in an editor.
Look for "<meta:generator>". Next this tag you get the exact version, which was used to generate the document.

Older LibreOffice versions can be downloaded from
http://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/old/

Kind regards
Regina

#3

Regina:

Thanks very much - something new to learn every day.

It turns out that the document was written using a version 5.3.4.0.0 which I
presume was another test version, but I loaded the next nearest copy and
that worked for me, although I had the usual problems of that era (page
breaks moving around with each load, etc.) but they're behaviors I remember
and know how to handle.

Interestingly enough, the document saved in the older version opens up fine
in TextMaker, so I'll probably finish it up in there.

In the future, if I need to work on a document in LibreOffice (which I plan
to avoid if I can), I'll be sure to save the installed Writer version I use
for the project so I won't need to go searching again.

Thanks again,

Frank