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Tips & tricks for installing FreeOffice on a USB flash drive

FreeOffice for Windows

If you want to carry SoftMaker FreeOffice for Windows and important documents with you, you can copy FreeOffice to a USB flash drive. You can then insert this USB flash drive in any Windows-based computer (for example, those of friends or in Internet cafes) and run SoftMaker FreeOffice. When you unplug the USB flash drives, no traces of FreeOffice are left behind on the PC.

Proceed as follows:

  1. Install SoftMaker FreeOffice on your regular PC's built-in hard disk. This lets you work with the applications in the regular way, even without a USB flash drive.
  2. Click on the Windows Start button, then select Programs > SoftMaker FreeOffice > Utilities > Install SoftMaker FreeOffice on a USB stick.
  3. Follow the instructions in this program. The program now copies the complete SoftMaker FreeOffice folder and the complete folder My Documents\SoftMaker to your USB flash drive. This makes all SoftMaker FreeOffice program files, all documents and all settings from My Documents\SoftMaker available on the USB flash drive.

When the program is done, your USB flash drive contains a fully functional copy of SoftMaker FreeOffice which does not register itself in Windows, as well as all your documents and configuration files.

To launch one of the programs, open the SoftMaker FreeOffice folder on the USB flash drive and click on the program you wish to run (for example, TextMaker.exe or PlanMaker.exe).

FreeOffice for Linux

You can run SoftMaker FreeOffice for Linux from a USB flash drive, too. Proceed as follows:

  1. Install SoftMaker FreeOffice on the built-in hard disk of your Linux PC. This lets you work with SoftMaker FreeOffice in the regular way, even without a USB flash drive.
  2. Create a folder on the USB flash drive and copy the contents of the SoftMaker FreeOffice application folder (for example, /usr/share/freeoffice) to this folder:
    3. mkdir /media/disk/freeoffice (replace /media/disk with the path of your USB flash drive)
cd /usr/share/freeoffice
cp -Rv * /media/disk/freeoffice (replace /media/disk with the path of your USB flash drive)
  3. In this new folder on the USB flash drive, create a file with the name portable.txt. Its content does not matter:
    4. cd /media/disk/freeoffice (replace /media/disk with the path of your USB flash drive)
touch portable.txt

    The portable.txt file is just a "marker file" that informs SoftMaker FreeOffice that it should run in portable mode and not leave any configuration files on the host operating system.

  4. Then, launch TextMaker:
    5. ./textmaker

    TextMaker will create two folders now:

    /media/disk/freeoffice/SoftMaker – that's where the documents and templates go
/media/disk/freeoffice/.softmaker – that's where the configuration files go

    TextMaker now installs its default document templates and configuration files into these folders. This can take up to half a minute. After that, TextMaker starts.

    The installation is complete now.

    If you like, you can now also copy additional documents and templates to the flash drive. Place documents in /media/disk/freeoffice/SoftMaker and templates in /media/disk/freeoffice/SoftMaker/Templates 2012.

  5. To launch one of the programs, open the SoftMaker FreeOffice folder on the USB flash drive and double-click on the program you wish to launch (textmaker, planmaker, or presentations).