Make soffice command of Libreoffice work on Mac OS X

Make soffice command of Libreoffice work on Mac OS X.md

Deprecated Notice

This script, originally created on April 29, 2015, addressed a different behavior of LibreOffice installation on macOS at that time. However, it is now outdated and no longer relevant. Please refer to the latest comments for updated information, as much has changed over the past 8–9 years.

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Quick Start

sudo curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/pankaj28843/3ad78df6290b5ba931c1/raw/soffice.sh > /usr/local/bin/soffice && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/soffice

Create a Bash Script at /usr/local/bin/soffice with the Following Content

#!/bin/bash

# This workaround is necessary because a symlink won't work.
# It may complain about missing .plist files.
/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice "$@"

Make the Script Executable

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/soffice

Usage

Convert an Excel File to PDF

soffice --headless --convert-to pdf:"calc_pdf_Export" /path/to/some/file.xlsx

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This version clarifies the instructions and ensures proper grammar.

soffice.sh

#!/bin/bash

# Need to do this because symlink won't work
# It complains about some .plist files
/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice "$@"

Your paths are missing the L in local.

/usr/loca/bin/soffice

Does this work in latest version ? Because I am not able to locate soffice script under Applications

please change /usr/loca/ to /usr/local/ 😄

Please, change psjinx to your new nickname

Thanks for the tip, to simplify I just use

/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS/soffice

brew install --cask libreoffice also creates a soffice binary.

Why go to all this trouble when you can create a symlink from a local bin folder in your PATH?

I’ve updated the README to note the deprecation of this script. It was created years ago to assist a colleague using macOS while the rest of the team worked on Linux at a fast-paced startup.

add local path in environment
# libreoffice
export PATH="/Applications/LibreOffice.app/Contents/MacOS:$PATH"