[Solved] Deploying custom template directory

[nienberg]

While deploying Lo 3.4.2 I would like to set a central template directory for each machine on my network.

The wiki article regarding adding a template directory is outdated:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... late_Files

It seems to me that the information is no longer stored in paths.xcu. Rather, it appears to be stored in each user's registrymodifications.xcu along with a lot of other stuff.

Is there a way to roll this out per machine, rather than trying to customize each user's registrymodifications.xcu?

Thanks,

[Hagar Delest]

Can you make a script that copy a "template" profile (configured as you want) from a network location for example?

[nienberg]

Can you make a script that copy a "template" profile (configured as you want) from a network location for example?

Yes, but then when I need to update any setting that is stored in "registrymodifications.xcu" I will have to overwrite the file, which will delete any settings that the user made. The file holds many, many preferences in addition to the few that I want to set on a system-wide basis. I really only need to set the template directory and some keyboard shortcuts. This was easy prior to OOo 3.3, which is when I think the registrymodifications.xcu file was introduced.

[Hagar Delest]

Right. Perhaps there is a code somewhere (to be run as command line) to add the correct string in the registrymodifications.xcu file.

[nienberg]

Some experimentation shows that you can still use the old method to specify some system-wide settings.

On Windows, find the folder
C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3.4\Basis\share\registry

inside of it create the folder structure
C:\Program Files\LibreOffice 3.4\Basis\share\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office

Inside the Office folder you can put files like
paths.xcu and Accelerators.xcu
and they will be applied to every user.

[Hagar Delest]

Well done!
It means that the code handling this aspect has not been removed in fact.

[gwargk]

Hi,

I've been having a similar problem for quite some time now as I'm trying to distribute Openoffice Writer settings for every user over a network.
I've tried the proposed method but unfortunaly this doesn't do anything on my computer. Now I've read elsewhere that if a user modifies a setting by him/herself the setting cannot be managed using this method anymore. Is this true?

[RoryOF]

With any change to the main configuration files of an application, it may not take effect until the program has been restarted (including the Quickstarter). It seems to be becoming quite common that computers are left for days/weeks without restarting. Long time users who grew up with memory leaks will often restart a computer at more frequent intervals (verb. sap.).

[gwargk]

Sure, I'm aware of that. I did shut down all the soffice processes (including the quickstarter) and check in the windows task manager.
Normally this is enough to accept any changes, I use this for example when I have changed a macro in an external editor. This works.
However, even after restarting the whole computer openoffice does not accept the new configurations. So either I'm doing something wrong, or maby it doesn't work in all cases.
I do remember some site mentioning that user settings permanently overrule all setting changes made by using the proposed method in this thread or setting changes made by using an extension. I'm not yet convinced if this is correct, but in that case this is no solution for me (changing the registrymodifications.xcu by hand is undoable).