No wonder why I dumped ubuntu!!!
You always have to use the terminal.
If ubuntu was more user friendly (without the terminal) I would have no problem using it!!! Canonical should fix this!!!

Can I ask, what distro do you use?

TIA.

If you don't want to use the terminal, go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager, and right click the applications:
language-support-en
language-support-translations-en
openoffice.org-help-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-gb
openoffice.org-l10n-en-za
thunderbird-locale-en-gb
And select Completely Remove for each one.

This will replace the terminal step, but frankly, it's much easier and faster to tell the user to type a command than use the GUI.

the terminal is not a problem, it's a tool.

Each GUI is a program so if you have one for every little thing it makes the OS bloated, over-complicated, prone to errors and vulnerable to hackers. Windows spoonfeeds its users in this way and that is the price it pays.

If you've never used a terminal before it might seem daunting but is, in fact, very easy and a much faster, more flexible and secure method for this sort of thing.

whats a gui i still use a prompt! no need for rythmbox i use ogg123 and noo need for ooo writer vi works just as well!

why should this be the way to do it??
ive always hated partial apgrades =)

In fact, I have just upgraded to 3.1.0 and it never prompted for any partial upgrade thing. Instead, it automatically downloaded and installed in 6 or 7 minutes and without any terminal activity.

For those that what to upgrade in one step.
Copy and paste this in terminal.


echo -e 'echo "#PPA openoffice-pkgs
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ppa.list

gpg --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv 247d1cff
gpg --export --armor 247d1cff | sudo apt-key add -

sudo apt-get update

sudo aptitude -y safe-upgrade
sudo aptitude -y dist-upgrade
' > ./oooupgrade.sh
sudo sh ./oooupgrade.sh && rm ./oooupgrade.sh

Hello dougfractal,

I wanted to thank you very much. I copied all your commands at once into the terminal, and it could not have been easier. Your information was perfect, and the upgrade could not be made better and more convenient. Since I am also quite a newbie with Ubuntu, you really helped me double!!

Dougfractal,

You rule, the best method to upgrade to OO 3.1 period. Many thanks.

Thank you for the script. It worked great. I copied the resulting terminal output to read through. I am excited about having an OS that is not a black box like W_______. I look forward to getting proficient enough to offer help to the novices.

Thanks to you, dougfractal. It's going into my own SysOp manual.

i just copie and pasted in terminal...it is much easer and time saving than following whole tutorial

thank a lot

Hi Dougfractal,

Another newbie here. I used your terminal upgrade method after OO 3.1.1 came out, but my system upgraded to ver. 3.1. What should I have done differently to upgrade to the latest version?

Thanks, PlaterB

Thanks so much... quick and easy.

Thanks for the clear howto.

What about the language support? They need to be removed, but this is not a nice option for people who do not (only) want the English version.

Better Use windows and save time instead of wasting time on Linux doing unnecessary stuff.

Yes, better save your time instead of making unnecessary comment like this.

Like messing with anti-virus software! Oh, wait...

Viky,

I used Dos and all versions of Windows (except VISTA). Windows is a black box. If it works ok but if is doesn't there is nothing you can do. Linux is an open box. Once you understand it YOU are in control not MS. Remember the aphorism: " Give a man a fish feed him for a day; Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime." Linux is liberty and independence.

Viky

Continued oppression often takes the form of a comfort zone.
Not until you free yourself from someone else's choices, will you realise the joy of freedom.

I bet it will take MS not more than a few days to make it's OS the best. But that is never going to happen. There are many companies making billions out of it's shortcomings and viruse prone holes. You cannot slash these companies in a day. So, the oppressed users continue to fund these companies.

Honestly, I used M$ OSes since I was a kid. I tried out Linux roughly 2 years ago. When I was told the terminal was going to be your best friend in *NIX OSes I didn't believe them. 2 years later (now) I highly agree. When I need something specific I just type in the install command on my distro and it installs. Hardly ever do I download an executable file in Linux to install something.

Also, the only reason why I have anti-virus software on Linux is so that I can scan files that come in so that when I fwd them, nobody using Windows gets infected.

@viky

Quit trolling and go back to your mom's basement.

Thanks for the "how to". Upgrading as we speak. I would like to say though that being a very new to Linux and Ubuntu specifically, I am finding it more work to get things happening and a lot of things just don't work easily at all.. It really needs to be made simple to grab a larger audience. I know it can be done and it should. Let's face it, everyone should be using linux.. It's great. My machine starts in no time flat now and the memory usage is so small compared to Windows. I guess I just have a bit of learning to do until it becomes easy.

I cant get native gnome "open / save" dialogs, even though I checked this option under general in settings. Does anyone else have this problem? I couldnt find any info about it in the bugtracking of the PPA.

That's strange.... anyway, for that you need to install a package called openoffice.org-gnome. From the terminal, run:

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-gnome

Or open Synaptic, search for openoffice.org-gnome and install it.

Ben, keep in mind that (1) Linux is not supported by many hardware/software vendors, (2) windows does not even have a native method for installing/using such a large variety of software for (a) free, (b) automated fashion, (c) with upgrades.

I have 4 computers which I use Ubuntu on. On the first one I used this install:
http://webupd8.blogspot.com/2009/05/install-openoffice-31-in-ubuntu-jaunty.html
This worked ok but I lost the ability to use the OO database.

On the second computer I used this method. Things didn't quite work out like the screen shots showed, but ultimately it is installed. Again I lost the ability to open the OO database.

After spending half a day trying to fix that issue from the first install, I finally came up with the solution:
sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-evolution
Once that is done, the OO database works perfectly in both methods on installing OO 3.1.

I use Thunderbird for my e-mail. The database for evolution is tied in with the OO database. That link gets lost in the installation of either of the two methods I've used.

Hopefully if anyone else uses the OO database, this will save them a lot of time and frustration.

"sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-evolution"

Many Thanks for your comment on that. That was the immediate fix here as well!

@Vicky the MS troll,

Of course, keep using expensive but buggy M$ software and with the economy down the tubes already, empty out all your pockets and makes Gates and Ballmer richer. Meanwhile I save my money get myself a nice shining dual XEON quad core PC with dual nvidia 280GTX. Definitely nothing beats the warm fuzzy feeling of being suckered out of $$$ which comes everytime you buy a M$ OS or more expensive MS Office app, that nice ribbon, the aero, all that can't be beat.

Why does it still say 3.0 on the screenshots?

Only on the header and the splash says 3.0. That's how SUN left it as far as I know... we've tested Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 1 last night, which has the final release of OpenOffice.org 3.1.0 installed by default and the splash says 3.0. If you look closer in the About window of OpenOffice.org you'll notice the 3.1.0 version and when it was created.

This got me in some trouble, first installing per the instructions here for intrepid - the database part of the program wouldn't run - then doing a full system upgrade to jaunty, re-enabling the repositories here for jaunty, and running the upgrade for OO - and now not only wont the database part run, but the main OO screen won't come up. I can invoke it as -write from the command line. But it sure looks like this OO version is not safe on Ubuntu - at least on AMD64.

This worked so well.
I used your famous "How to Install OpenOffice.org 3.0 on Ubuntu 8.10" and was very pleased.

& happy to say am pleased that I followed this artcle too.

Thank you, Keep up the good work, God Bless.

Please cleanup the comments and the guide itself here.
Go to sun.com and select other downloads.
you can download 3.1 as a precompiled .deb from them.
http://download.openoffice.org/other.html#en-US
If you are offering support to people on how to back-out of a non-standard method of installing this simple to install program, fine.
Otherwise, please refer people to the source of the application and the more straightforward methods of installing it.
This kind of "guide" is why more people do not adopt open-source software and opt to pay good money for software that is not up-to-snuff instead. just say no.

Dear austin,

it's clear that you did not installed those precompiled .deb packages of Ooo 3.1.0 from Sun in Ubuntu 9.04. Why? and Why this guide is much better then installing the original packages from Sun? Here are a four big reasons:

1. Installing the original packages from Sun can ONLY be done from a terminal.
2. The installed packages will NOT appear in the GNOME menu.
3. The packages will be installed in the /opt folder.
4. The packages will never be automatically updated. If a security issue is discovered in time for Ooo 3.1.0, the user needs to download the entire archive again and install it... manually from the terminal!

So I think everyone agrees at this moment that "this kind of guide" is much easier and helps people understand what they're doing.

The problem is that 3.1 won't load and when I use the add/remove I still end up with the same problems. I can not use font colour, or highlighting colour, or other options. It won't let me. I ve tried the above but my Update Manager will NOT do a partial upgrade. So I give up. I just use OO on the windows side. Less annoying.

Indeed, I am running 8.04 and have installed OO 3.1 using the appropriate key and I can't get the updates to work either. OO 3.1 still seems to be working fine, just won't do the partial upgrade. This error:

"An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade."

I followed your tutorial and installed it on my ubuntu 9.04 but the problems is that it removed the Language support packages which i need to support my local language , i think there is some sort of conflict between them.

i also have problems with the language packs - i want my openoffice in dutch but if i use language packs via synaptic it wants to remove the installed office

how can i install the dutch language pack

Thanks! I had never run across a partial upgrade before.

As mentioned before, the language packs are essential to make 3.1 a useful upgrade for the non-English peoples in the world. If I want to install the ubuntu version it prompts me to not only remove Ooo language packs, but the firefox and thunderbird locales as well. I cannot do that.
Now I've only seen the langage packs for Ooo 3.1 in the latest ubuntu version (karmic). I hope that launchpad will include these in earlier versions (I use hardy LTS)

I have always disliked a certain OS cough*W_____s* and have recently switched to Ubuntu (Hardy), could not be happier. With the help of websites like this I am able to run a great system, with great programs, all for free.
P.S. I have only been using Ubuntu for a few weeks, and I have already converted some of my friends.
Spread the joys of Ubuntu, create live Cd's bring them with you during your day, and get others to do so to.

Is OpenOffice.org3.1 as described in your tutorial the version from openoffice.org or the version from go-oo.org (including their patches)?

As far as I know, the version of OpenOffice.org that comes with the default installtion of Ubuntu is based on go-oo.org. As I am using lots of SVG graphics in my documents, I need to use the go-oo.org version.

Thanks
Aldi

Excellent! Thanks for the help!

Im a a brazilian user of Ubuntu, and I'm using the brazilian version to OO (brOffice), and I could make the update to the version 3.1 following this instructions.
Perfect, simple and friendly. It's great!!
And for whose doesn't know how to operate a Linux OS, all I can tell is: IT is not for lazy people. There's people working hard to do the best, as dougfractal done.
Who don't want Linux buy anything... and don't complain after.
Best regards for all you who are spending your time to help us.

In Windows, I just download, double-click,click,click & that's it !!

As good as this guide (& ubuntu) is, Ubuntu still has a long way to go in user-friendly app installing. As long as you need a guide to do (what should be) a simple app install, it's unacceptable. And waiting 6 months for the next ubuntu release to get the -by then not so- new OOo is also unacceptable.

still, a very nice how-to ... thanks

All I did was added the repo, added the key, clicked upgrade and upgraded. Now, even if I don't open OOo for the rest of the life of my machine, it will always be the newest edition, fully up to date.

If you do the same on a Windows box, the moment you try and start up OOo, it will need so long for upgrades, you could grow tomatoes before it ever finishes.

Seen all this and have used the tutorial given at the start to install updated version of Open Office and had no problems. However, need to install ALSA 1.020. Can anyone help me with installing this please?

Thanks

Pretty nice HowTo. But I have a doubt. Before going through this how-to had uninstalled OpenOffice 3.1 manually through synaptic and then installed all the debian files in the setup that I downloaded from their official site. i also installed the deb file DebianMenus which had a conflict with openoffice.org-core. So obviously I had to remove openoffice.org-core and then install that. I thought all was done but it wasn't showing up in Applications -> Office.

So then I came across your How-to and while doing the partial upgrade, it removed Debian-menus and installed openoffice.org-core yet again. Now it works! I cannot fathom why did the original setup have Debianmenus setup when it wasn't required for the setup to complete?

I had started a thread regarding this on this page:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1194232

Didn't have to do the partial upgrade, but many thanks!

One question: Do I still need to remove the obsolete packages even without doing the partial upgrade? I'm an Ubuntu newbie, and loving it! (Old Windows jock who's getting tired of the crap coming out of Redmond.)

Thanks again.

Not really :)

Thanks. There was a step in between for me, where I had to remove 'evolution', too as it uses some common files with openoffice. This will cause some conflicts which prevent openoffice.org Suite to be installed. (added this line for future search :D)
Maybe you should add this to your guide, as I think others had this same problem and have commented.

Everything worked like a charm. Thank you!

The only problem I found was that it removed some ACROREAD packages (http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/8522/screenshot2grz.png) and it wasn't supposed to. Now I can't bring those packages back, as they are not on Synaptic anymore. What should I do???

Thank you!

you know what, this is the most comprehensive tutorial that I have come accros.
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
THANK YOU
Instructions and screen shots are awesome and super useful and easy to follow. Thanks again and more power...as well as more tutorials

Thank you!
A very little "problem":
When I completed STEP2, when you say: "At this moment, you don't have any OpenOffice.org suite installed in your system."
I have a complete working installed OOo3.1! :-) so I do not take STEP3.
Maybe the answer: Before I have started I had installed ALL components of Openoffice 3.0.1.

(I'm sorry may poor english.)

Thanks. This obviously helped a good many people and started out well for me. However, when I go to update manager, I am told the system is up-to-date (even though I manually removed open office), and there is no opportunity to do a partial update. What am I leaving out?

The partial upgrade was actually the step in which OOo was removed from the system. Since you've removed OOo from your system already, the partial upgrade wasn't necessary. Just make sure you have the repositories added and enabled and install OOo back.

I performed the upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04.
It worked somewhat differently than described above. I did not get the "Partial Update" option after starting "Update Manager". Instead I check "Install Updates". But that did not give me Office 3.1.
Then I went to "Software Sources", and checked "Pre-released update" and "Unsupported updates". Next again "Reload" and "Install Updates". This worked!
So I did not need to remove the previous version and install the new one explicitly.
Maybe this is something special for Ubuntu 8.04?

So anyway: Thank you very much for this helpful page!

Busy upgrading using dougfractal's method as I type.

Quick question though, I presume that I still need to add the deb file to Software Sources and the key to ensure that my upgrade is maintained with the latest files. ?

Guys, even though i did all the updates why is it still showing OpenOffice 3.0 when I open my docs & stuff. Even the screenshots provided above shows 3.0. Any reason or I did sth wrong...

I used this tutorial.I did the step 1 and i had changed the repositories.

But after the step 2 of the update manager. My Open office was upgraded to the latest version. So I cannot understand why i have to go to step 3 as my software was automatically upgraded.

So after the upgrade was done I had the now Open office in my menu. Jist i do not understand why to pass to step 3. Moreover i had not a menu to ask to click on a package to remove all was done automatically.

Same here, I wasn't asked about any partial updates and etc. It just was updated.

Thank you for the key.

A few of the steps differed between this document and what I experienced on my local machine. Is this expected? Especially starting at step 3, I still had OpenOffice icons present in my app menu. Is there a way to start over or verify I do not have a double installation or anything like that?

Also, when asked to remove obsolete packages, I clicked "keep" intending to keep a particular package and not all of them. I have tried "apt-get autoremove" and it did not clean up the packages that were intended to be removed, is there another way?

Normally, no icons should have been left in the menu after completing step 1. You can try fixing it by removing OpenOffice using the Synaptic package manager (just mark all the openoffice packages), then refresh the package lists and mark OpenOffice.org - the first package in the list - for installation. This should automatically mark the other necessary packages and, after you click apply, install everything correctly.

Actually what worked for is after inputing the key and closing the source... run synoptic manager for all upgrades....

If you use Kubuntu (and I guess any flavour of KDE) and your menu icons disappear after the latest update, then reinstall openoffice.org-kde and openoffice.org-style-oxygen.

More or less the opposite to the problem with 3.0 - someone keeps forgetting KDE I think!

Went through all the steps and I see it and the key in my Software Sources, but doesn't show up in Add/Remove.

Try opening the Synaptic package manager, then press "Reload". After the package lists update themselves, search for the openoffice.org package and mark it for installation. By clicking "Apply", you will install the whole OpenOffice.org suite. Good luck!

I work at M$ and it's amazing some of the uninformed almost cult like comments..but I am not hear to convince folks what os is best...that's a dead end argument.

I am playing with ubuntu just to learn it for the sake of curiousity and some new and different...and free. It's a ashme people can't express opinions without the personal attacks that follow.

Back to my point...thanks for pasting the script...as I mentioned I am pretty new to Ubuntu (Love what I see so far)...there's room for people that want to explore more than one os....but even in technology tolerance seems lacking here too.

Again thanks to those that ACTUALLY HAD SOMETHING TO CONTRIBUTE instead of cutting someone down for simple comment. People will like debian...fedora...ubuntu...and even windows!!!!!

...one last comment. Also a big thanks to the person that put this tutorial together...my experience was a bit different but I learned something new going through the tutorial and stumbled upon something in ubuntu I had not seen before....so again thank you for taking the time to share also.

after adding the key and letting ubuntu install updates, i got no 'partial upgrade' message and found that 3.1 had been installed, without having to go through all the other jazz!

I'm using hardy heron. I never got the 'partial upgrade' message. 2.4 hasn't been removed. I tried going on further, but 2.4 is still not removed. Obviously this doesn't work the way you say it does.

I tried what what dougfractal said to do and that didn't work either. I was thinking I could use Ubuntu for work, but I'm seriously starting to doubt that, if it's really THIS hard to upgrade one program.

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! There are some minor tweaks between 3.0 and 3.1 I needed for one of my master class homeworks. This solved that problem! Thank you for this!

It appears that the PPA repositories are empty right now, so these instructions won't work.

e.g. for
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Web-browsing to
http://ppa.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/ppa/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/binary-i386/Packages
shows that the file exists, but it is empty.

In the meantime, it's necessary to install openoffice the command-line way.

Indeed, all but the latest version are no longer supported by the PPA OpenOffice Scriblers:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/openoffice-pkgs/+bug/430783/comments/1