[Solved] Changing user profile location

[Marezathus]

I'm a newbie tot the Open Office; I've just installed the program on the D-disk.
I found out in this forum that the defaults/configuration files are stored in C:\Documents and settings\<user>\etc etc
Is it also possible to write those files to another disk? For instance the D-disk?

Kind regards

Marezathus

[Hagar Delest]

Hi,

As this is a rather different issue as the one in the thread you'd posted in, I've split the topic to create this new one. Please don't hijack threads, one issue per thread will make the forum easier for future searches by others.

To change the profile location, you've to bootstrap OOo, see here : Bootstrapping the Configuration.

Once OOo has been installed, close both OOo and the Quickstarter, open the bootstrap.ini file with a text editor. It's located in \Program Files\OpenOffice.org 2.#\program.
Change the line
UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/OpenOffice.org2
into
UserInstallation=file:///d:/OOo2 (for example).

Thanks to add '[Solved]' in your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

[acknak]

Wow! Cool. I had no idea you could do that.

However, if you do that, what happens for other user logins? Where do their configurations go?

Marezathus: Note that this is only the program configuration, not the documents you create. The configuration doesn't take a lot of space and needs to be separate for each user. If you use the standard configuration, you can easily change where OOo will store your documents, without affecting any other user.

Even if you have only one user using the computer, I think it is unwise to move the configuration without a compelling reason and some careful thought.

[Hagar Delest]

However, if you do that, what happens for other user logins? Where do their configurations go?

As soon as I shut down the computer I thought about that. All other users will use that folder because the bootstrap is in the installation folder. In fact, it's generally used with the $SYSUSERCONFIG to keep the user location.

But I've made further searches and it seems there is a command line argument available (at least under Linux) : -env:UserInstallation. Here are some examples :
/opt/openoffice.org2.3/program/soffice -env:UserInstallation=\$SYSUSERCONFIG/.Custom_folder (user sensitive)
/opt/openoffice.org2.3/program/soffice -env:UserInstallation=file://home/A_place/.A_folder (for all users)

I guess that the trick would be to have different shortcuts for each user if needed.

Even if you have only one user using the computer, I think it is unwise to move the configuration without a compelling reason and some careful thought.

The only reason I can think of is a network profile or a single user who wants his configuration on a different partition than the OS itself (in case the profile of the user - OS point of view - is on the same drive).

[Hagar Delest]

I've tested the soffice.exe -env:UserInstallation=$USERNAME command line and it creates a /<user> (Windows user login name) in the OOo installation folder/program folder.
But the best is that argument :
-env:UserInstallation=file:///c:/OOo/$USERNAME => A single shortcut for everyone and all the profiles will be in C:\OOo\<user>, so each user has his own profile in a common parent folder !

To be complete, I'd like to know the shortcut full command line to be put in the target field of a Windows shortcut. I just manage to run OOo with the lines above when running the command line from the /program folder (in a terminal).