LibreOffice 4.0 now opens Microsoft Publisher files

News and Events
1

One of the things I see repeated a lot on my travels around Linux forums and websites is “if only I could open Microsoft Publisher .pub files in Linux” …

Well I’ve just installed LibreOffice 4.0.1 in Peppermint 3 from this PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~libreoffice/+archive/ppa

And LibreOffice Draw had no problem opening .pub files … I must add, I’ve only tried a few, and I have no idea which version of MS Publisher they’re from … but things are looking good :slight_smile:

I’d also like to add that LibreOffice 4.0.1 seems quite a bit quicker than 3.5 was, and opens nearly instantly on my PC ;D

Amongst other things there’s supposed to be better compatibility with .docx and .rtf files.

You can check out the new features here:
https://www.libreoffice.org/download/4-0-new-features-and-fixes
and at The Document Foundation Blog here:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2013/02/07/the-document-foundation-announces-libreoffice-4-0/

So far I’m liking what I’m seeing …

–

2
LibreOffice Draw had no problem opening .pub files ..

God to know. Though I could have done with it 2 years ago. But as they say better late than never.
Have been using version 4 for a while (sneaked in one of the updates) but never actually loked at the release notes.
You are right it does appear to be a bit quicker (than 3.6) to start up but that never bothered me aniway. :smiley:

So this is the end of the road for Publishers exlusivity?

3

It’s looking that way :slight_smile:

4

OK so how do I get 4.0.1.2 the most up to date version. I presently have version 3.5 is there any way to get the update manager to do this automatically?

5

In which Linux distro ?

If it’s Ubuntu based -

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge

then

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:libreoffice/ppa

then

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get upgrade

should do the trick.

6

I am running mint 13 32bit. This did not result in my Libre Office upgrading to version 4.0…Would I be better to download the Deb files from there website?

7

Odd … it should have ???

the same instructions are also online:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=127592
and
http://www.ossdoc.com/2013/03/upgrade-libre-office-40-from-official.html

You could try:

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
8

Could this be the reason no upgrade?

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/dists/maya/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found

W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/libreoffice/ppa/ubuntu/dists/maya/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

9

Yeh, that’s exactly the problem. (and one of the PITA moments you get with Mint)

You have 2 options …

  1. edit your sources to say

Distribution: precise
Components: main

For both libreoffice PPA’s (sources and binary)

instead of

Distribution: maya
Components: main

or

  1. as you say, download the .debs and install

If you decide to want to go with option 1 … post the output from:

ls -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d

and the if it exists, the contents of:

gedit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/libreoffice-ppa-maya.list

–

10

went with option one and all is OK now have version 4 looks good.

Will post the info you requested next time I am on that computer.

As a matter of interest I had no problems with upgrading to version 4 on mint 13 64bit system everything was done automatic.

As with other issues seems they are mainly in the 32bit version of mint 13.

11

Thanks Mark

upgraded to version 4 on peppermint 3
your reply 4 code did not work but the code on reply 6 did.

again thanks

Keith

12

The version at #6 also worked for me. However, did I just purge all the repositories? If so, how do I go back to the normal ones for updates?