Hi all,

I am running Ubuntu 20.04.4, not 20.0.4.

Since I bought a new laptop in January, a lenovo ideapad, no drop down menus are visible in libre office. The whole set of menus is not there at all: File - Edit - View - Tools - Help etc. All absent.

All there is two toolbars, standard and formatting, with the usual icons.

That's been enough for several months but I decided to try to fix it today.

I had assumed all along it would be a setting change, but the only settings I can access is to customise just those two toolbars. So, I can add new buttons to the standard or formatting toolbars, but I can't find any way to display other toolbars, or display the main menu items.

All these controls are under either view menu or tools menu, which I can't have access. Keyboard shortcuts such as Alt T Alt T-C Alt-V, Alt-VC not working either.

Going round and round with libreoffice help, but the impression I get is that there is no user interface option which turns the menus off, so there may be nothing in Help.

Others with related issues had success by turning off openGL, but I understand it is disabled on Ubuntu.

I have tried installing libreoffice 7.2, no difference.

Finally, please note that I am running xfce 4, not gnome, kde etc. Maybe relevant?

Any Thoughts Welcome!!

Cheers...

andrew

Maybe this page can be useful for you:

https://ask.libreoffice.org/t/i-do-n...nu-bar/58481/6

Many Thanks ADEPLUS...

I tried the command in that link, and writer was launched with menus showing, but there was also terminal output, which seemed a problem:



$ SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice --writer
javaldx: Could not find a Java Runtime Environment!
Please ensure that a JVM and the package libreoffice-java-common
is installed.
If it is already installed then try removing ~/.config/libreoffice/4/user/config/javasettings_Linux_*.xml
Warning: failed to read path from javaldx


libreoffice-java-common was not installed, so I installed it. No difference. Removed the suggested config file. NO difference.
Then I installed hotspot openJDK runtime environment, and started writer from the applications menu. No menus. Then started it again with the command, SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice --writer , and this time writer starts, with menus, and no terminal message.

So, JRE is now in the clear.


So, I come to the rest of the answer give in the link, about "a discrepancy between the widget handling driver and the widget used by your desktop"........

"Do you get the menu bar?

If so edit your question to tell which desktop you installed (there are many, KDE Plasma, GNOME, MATE, LXDE and Xfce are the more frequent). Check also which widget handling packages are installed. I know of libreoffice-gtk3 for GNOME, MATE and derivatives, libreoffice-kf5 for KDE, libreoffice-x11 (is a generic one, UI quality is poor but works everywhere). The names are for Fedora distro and may vary."

I am using xfce4 and libreoffice-gtk3 is installed but libreoffice-x11 is not found at all.

I have no idea what to do next, but at least this is on the way towards a solution, so thanks again, and in advance for any more insights people may now be able to provide.

Cheers....

Andrew.

Hi All,


I tried using

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gtk soffice --writer

And writer launches with NO MENUS. Same with

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=x11 soffice --writer

Widget incompatibility with my (xfce4) desktop looks pretty reasonable.


Is there any good reason why I should not just edit the launcher, replacing whatever the present command is with

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice --writer

Cheers.....

Andrew.

Finally, I tried using a Ubuntu session, instead of xfce4, and writer now starts with menus showing.

Hi All,

I am almost ready to mark this thread solved. This command works, when run from a terminal window, without needing root access:

SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen libreoffice --writer

All I need to do is to get that command to run in some kind of a launcher, either on the Desktop or from the applications menu in xfce4.

I have not succeeded. However, I have been able to get it to run, as root, with "run in terminal" checked, with this as the launcher command:

sudo SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice --writer

This is obviously not acceptable, however it must provide a useful clue: That command won't run at all in a launcher as user, only as root, although it works fine from a terminal. I have tried running:

sh SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen soffice --writer

in a launcher, with no joy.

Also, I found a file in \home\andrew\.local\share\applications\libreoffice7.2-writer.desktop which will launch properly, but again, this only works when I am running Thunar as root.

What's going on?

Many thanks for any help!

Regards.....

Andrew.

Got it.

I put the command SAL_USE_VCLPLUGIN=gen libreoffice7.2 --writer in a text file named libre.sh on my desktop and gave it execute permissions.

Strangely, this did not run until I added the .sh file extension.

Thanks for all the help along the way.