LibreOffice help menu

Dave_Howorth · January 18, 2017, 12:54pm

I run LibreOffice Version: 5.2.3.3 Build ID: 20m0(Build:3) on openSUSE
Leap 42.1

I just clicked on LibreOffice Help in the Help menu and discovered that
it opened a web page instead of a help window. The web page is
https://help.libreoffice.org/index.php?title=5.2/Common/Help&Language=en-US&System=UNIX&Version=5.2#bm_id3149178
and I can't figure out how to use it to get help! It seems to be some
kind of overview/index but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually
invoke help. How do I use it?

Thanks, Dave

branko-4 · January 18, 2017, 2:01pm

This behavior is as you have clicked F1 on the keyboard. Tray what will
happen - click Alt to activate menu, then down arrow to expand menu and then
right arrow up to 'Help'. Is there something (submenus) under Help or
nothing. Or only 'LibreOffice_Help F1'?

Branko

Dave_Howorth · January 18, 2017, 10:28pm

I'm sorry but I don't fully understand the meaning of what you are
trying to say. I suppose English is not your first language.

I have not used the keyboard; I am using the mouse.

Alt does NOT appear to activate the menu, although I would expect that
it should. The hot keys are permanently underlined. Instead pressing
Alt together with H pops up the help menu, without down arrow. Right
arrow moves to the File menu.

I repeat my original question in case somebody can help:

I run LibreOffice Version: 5.2.3.3 Build ID: 20m0(Build:3) on openSUSE
Leap 42.1

I just clicked on LibreOffice Help in the Help menu and discovered that
it opened a web page instead of a help window. The web page is
https://help.libreoffice.org/index.php?title=5.2/Common/Help&Language=en-US&System=UNIX&Version=5.2#bm_id3149178
and I can't figure out how to use it to get help! It seems to be some
kind of overview/index but there doesn't seem to be any way to actually
invoke help. How do I use it?

Thanks, Dave

Paolo_Debortoli · January 18, 2017, 10:54pm

Hi. I don't understand your problem exactly. maybe you didn't install the help package 'offline help' from the site. the package name is: '
LibreOffice_5.2.4_Linux_x86-64_deb_helppack_it.tar' (it for italian, en for english etc...). when you call for help, it opens a local application/window full of voices. Paolo

This behavior is as you have clicked F1 on the keyboard. Tray what
will happen - click Alt to activate menu, then down arrow to expand
menu and then right arrow up to 'Help'. Is there something (submenus)
under Help or nothing. Or only 'LibreOffice_Help F1'?

Branko

I'm sorry but I don't fully understand the meaning of what you are
trying to say. I suppose English is not your first language.

I have not used the keyboard; I am using the mouse.

Alt does NOT appear to activate the menu, although I would expect that
it should. The hot keys are permanently underlined. Instead pressing
Alt together with H pops up the help menu, without down arrow. Right
arrow moves to the File menu.

I repeat my original question in case somebody can help:

I run LibreOffice Version: 5.2.3.3 Build ID: 20m0(Build:3) on openSUSE
Leap 42.1

Thanks, Dave

Remy_Gauthier · January 19, 2017, 12:46am

Hi,

Was this version installed from the LO download page? If so, you must also
install the help for offline use package if you do not want to be redirected
to the WEB help pages. If this is an install from your OS, you may need to
also install an applicable package but I do not know which one for your OS.

I hope this helps.

Rémy Gauthier.

Dave_Howorth · January 19, 2017, 9:04am

Hi. I don't understand your problem exactly. maybe you didn't
install the help package 'offline help' from the site. the package
name is: ' LibreOffice_5.2.4_Linux_x86-64_deb_helppack_it.tar' (it
for italian, en for english etc...). when you call for help, it
opens a local application/window full of voices. Paolo

I installed the application from the distro repositories. It doesn't
seem to be packaged like that. I'll take it up on the distro mailing
list.

nasrin_khaksar · January 19, 2017, 5:48pm

hi.
did you try installing offline version of libreoffice help file?
you should download and install the help file separately.
if you did not this, when you open libreoffice help, you view the help
in website of libreoffice, not locally on your system!

Philip_Jackson · January 19, 2017, 6:35pm

Hi - I recognise your problem, Dave. I had exactly this on Ubuntu1404
LTS using the distro supplied version of LO.

I've just refreshed my memory of how I dealt with it. On the page your
link gets to, in the left hand column, second entry down is "Main Page".

This takes you to : https://help.libreoffice.org/Main_Page
and here you find more interesting links to each of the components in LO
suite.

hth
Philip

Dave_Howorth · January 20, 2017, 6:25pm

> I run LibreOffice Version: 5.2.3.3 Build ID: 20m0(Build:3) on
> openSUSE Leap 42.1
>
> I just clicked on LibreOffice Help in the Help menu and discovered
> that it opened a web page instead of a help window. The web page is
> https://help.libreoffice.org/index.php?title=5.2/Common/Help&Language=en-US&System=UNIX&Version=5.2#bm_id3149178
> and I can't figure out how to use it to get help! It seems to be
> some kind of overview/index but there doesn't seem to be any way to
> actually invoke help. How do I use it?
>
Hi - I recognise your problem, Dave. I had exactly this on Ubuntu1404
LTS using the distro supplied version of LO.

Hi Philip,

Many thanks for your reply. It seems that both openSUSE and Ubuntu
dropped the ball when packaging this version, which perhaps points to
some communication omission on LO's part. I've submitted an openSUSE
bug for it but haven't had any feedback yet.

I've just refreshed my memory of how I dealt with it. On the page
your link gets to, in the left hand column, second entry down is
"Main Page".

This takes you to : https://help.libreoffice.org/Main_Page
and here you find more interesting links to each of the components in
LO suite.

Thanks for those instructions; they'll definitely help until the distro
is fixed. It's a pity the menu entry in the application doesn't link
directly to the online help for that application. Then it might be
almost usable!

Cheers, Dave

Tom_Davies1 · January 24, 2017, 3:05am

Hi
It sounds like the 'in-built' help package has not been installed.

When installing LibreOffice from the upstream website (ie the LibreOffice
website, as you would install stuff if you were using Windows) there are
usually 3 packages to install;
1. The main installer for the LibreOffice program/suite itself
2. The 'in-built' help file/package
3. Your language, unless En-US is your language in which case this package
would be bundled in with the main installer.

So for the LibreOffice version from your repos you may need to use a
package-manager to search for "LibreOffice help" of "LibreOffice help
files" or something like that. When i have installed LibreOffice in Ubuntu
in the past (when else right??) i'm sure the help-files were all selected
by default, automatically. This behaviour may well have been changed
either temporarily or deliberately for many different reasons.

Personally i seem to remember the 'in-built' help seems to cause problems
for native-English-speakers whereas the "Published Guides" are excellent;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications

The translations of the 'inbuilt' help into almost all other languages
other than English seem to be fantastic. For the English version the team
that does the 'in-built' help has always been incredibly tiny and more
'geeky' than 'normal', and as a separate team from the one that works on
the published guides their process of review-proofreading etc has been
somewhat different too. Recently quite a lot of work has been done on the
'in-built' help to make it more 'normal' for us to understand more easily.
However this work too is being done by non-native English speakers as it
requires unusual technical skills that The Documentation Team doesn't find
easy to learn. Hopefully the in-built help will remain just as good to
translate from because it's always been particularly brilliant for that.

Good luck and many regards from
Tom

Dave_Howorth · January 24, 2017, 11:17am

Hi
It sounds like the 'in-built' help package has not been installed.

Agreed.

When installing LibreOffice from the upstream website (ie the
LibreOffice website, as you would install stuff if you were using
Windows) there are usually 3 packages to install;
1. The main installer for the LibreOffice program/suite itself
2. The 'in-built' help file/package
3. Your language, unless En-US is your language in which case this
package would be bundled in with the main installer.

So for the LibreOffice version from your repos you may need to use a
package-manager to search for "LibreOffice help" of "LibreOffice help
files" or something like that.

That was the first thing I tried. There is no such package. Neither is
there in Ubuntu from what Philip says.

When i have installed LibreOffice in
Ubuntu in the past (when else right??) i'm sure the help-files were
all selected by default, automatically. This behaviour may well have
been changed either temporarily or deliberately for many different
reasons.

The question is, why? And what are we supposed to do now? I've raised
an openSUSE bug #1020931. I tried installing the help from the
LibreOffice site but there's a dependency failure for libobasis5.2-en-GB

PS Please don't send me a separate copy of any reply.

Tom_Davies1 · January 24, 2017, 7:06pm

Hi
I recommend using the Published Guides instead. From the link i gave and
from the official LibreOffice website they are free to download. You can
buy them from various "app stores" type of places for a minimal charge and
they are available as 'paper back' books from the Lulu bookstore.

As for the 'in-built' help, just forget about it - unless you are prepared
to put a lot of work in and give some serious help (in which case please do
join the Documentation Team as they always need new peope. If you just
need the help sections to help figure out how to do something then the
Published Guides are the way forwards.

It's also beginning to sound like your whole install of LibreOffice has
gone a bit wonky. If i were getting that sort of error-message then i
would just uninstall LibreOffice and then reinstall it. All of the
settings and configurations should remain untouched so the new version of
LibreOffice should pick up on all those allowing you to "carry on as
normal". In Ubuntu that would be something like;

sudo apt-get remove libreoffice*
sudo apt-get install libreoffice

In between those 2 lines i might "update" or check or reload my repo.s by
doing something like;

sudo apt-get update

before doing the install line above just to make sure my repo.s are all
working properly. openSuSE will have similar commands but just replace
"apt-get" with "yum" or whatever and the command to reload the repos might
use some other command.

Regards from
Tom

Mike_Adams · January 24, 2017, 8:36pm

In between Uninstalling and Installing if you choose this route i
would look to reset the User Profile Data as well. Information here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile#Default_locations

Hi
I recommend using the Published Guides instead. From the link i gave and
from the official LibreOffice website they are free to download. You can
buy them from various "app stores" type of places for a minimal charge and
they are available as 'paper back' books from the Lulu bookstore.

As for the 'in-built' help, just forget about it - unless you are prepared
to put a lot of work in and give some serious help (in which case please do
join the Documentation Team as they always need new peope. If you just
need the help sections to help figure out how to do something then the
Published Guides are the way forwards.

It's also beginning to sound like your whole install of LibreOffice has
gone a bit wonky. If i were getting that sort of error-message then i
would just uninstall LibreOffice and then reinstall it. All of the
settings and configurations should remain untouched so the new version of
LibreOffice should pick up on all those allowing you to "carry on as
normal". In Ubuntu that would be something like;

sudo apt-get remove libreoffice*
sudo apt-get install libreoffice

In between those 2 lines i might "update" or check or reload my repo.s by
doing something like;

sudo apt-get update

before doing the install line above just to make sure my repo.s are all
working properly. openSuSE will have similar commands but just replace
"apt-get" with "yum" or whatever and the command to reload the repos might
use some other command.

Regards from
Tom

> Hi
> It sounds like the 'in-built' help package has not been installed.

Agreed.

(trimmed)

Dave_Howorth · January 24, 2017, 9:46pm

In between Uninstalling and Installing if you choose this route i
would look to reset the User Profile Data as well. Information here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/UserProfile#Default_locations

This isn't Windows! I'm not reinstalling something that my distro has
installed unless I first know exactly what has gone wrong, if anything.

My personal suspicion is that this still looks like a build error.

Girvin_Herr2 · January 25, 2017, 12:01am

Dave,
I understand where you are coming from, and I agree with you that it looks like a build problem. I currently run LO 5.1.6.2 on a Slackware Linux system. For years, I have been building my own Slackware installation packages from the downloaded LO "rpm" binaries. When I download the LO program, I always download the corresponding LO help package along with it. I have a shell script that takes those two distributions and makes a single Slackware installation package. I have never seen the symptoms you describe you are having, so my guess is that the helppack did not get built or installed into your LO distribution.

As for the "reset the user profile" answer, that seems to be the stock knee-jerk reaction to strange LO behavior for years. Instead of deleting my user profile (which is more than one file and I have never been told exactly which file is the culprit), what I do, is to move (or copy-delete) the profile directory, ~/.config/libreoffice/4 (if you are using LO 4+) on my Slackware system, to a temporary directory and start LO again. These files are not part of the LO distribution, but are created by LO when it does not find them on startup. Thus "resetting" them to the default configuration hard-coded into LO. If that works, then you get to reconfigure LO to your liking and all is well. If not, you can move the saved files back (after closing LO) and you are back to where you are now. Consider it a diagnostic procedure. So, it is a bit different than a windows environment: reboot for everything.

HTH.
Girvin Herr

Philip_Jackson · January 25, 2017, 1:07pm

Just for the record, I was speaking about Ubuntu 1404LTS. That is why I
had to refresh my memory of how I got away from the LO website page that
appeared so unhelpful.

The later version of Ubuntu, 1604 LTS, does indeed have the internal
help files installed in the distro supplied version.
But as Tom and others have remarked in the past, the internal help files
often appear incorrect and out of date.

Philip

Tom_Davies1 · January 27, 2017, 9:02am

Hi
The user-profile contains all the Extensions/plugins/addons in one folder.
It is usually one of them that causes any weird problems that 'shouldn't'
be happening (but are). However it also contains galleries, libraries and
configurations any of which may have gone wonky to produce a weird and
unusual error.

So renaming the user-profile is like a "magic pill" that cures a wide
variety of completely unrelated errors. If you have the time and patience
to track down the specific problem you may well find it relates to one file
in the user-profile that got hit by cosmic rays or some other unlikely
event. This can then allow you to fix a problem with surgical precision.
However the specific problem is very unlikely to arise again and if you are
unlucky enough to have another problem, even one that is very similar, then
it could easily be one of the other files in the user-profile. So the
"nuke 'em 'till they glow" solution is usually a 'better' approach if you
just want the problem fixed without spending ages over it.

Of course if renaming the user-profile doesn't fix a particular problem
then you can always rename it to overwrite the fresh new auto-generated
one. If it did work then you can start on a process of elimination such as
copying half the user-profile's folders back in until something gets broken
again - or you could just stick with the fresh new profile that does work.

Yes, uninstalling and reinstalling is a very Windowsy answer but it's
beginning to sound as though the repos got updated with a newer version of
LibreOffice and for some weird unknown reason the normal upgrades route
somehow hasn't upgraded all the LibreOffice components but has upgraded
some of them. This is, of course, impossible but has happened on other odd
occasions. Perhaps it was a timing issue, or perhaps the problem will
magically sort itself out in a few days when upgrades finally work.
However you could force the issue by using the Windowsy answer.

Regards from
Tom