I want to upgrade Apache OpenOffice, what about my settings for languages?

I want to upgrade Apache OpenOffice, what about my settings for languages?

From Open Office.org 3.0 and up and Apache OpenOffice 3.4 and up Dictionaries are installed as extensions, and added words are put into the User profile instead of into the installation directory as previously. This eliminates the problem of customizations being overwritten as the user profile is not changed by the installation of an upgrade.

Version Apache OpenOffice 2.0 and up

Beware, at each minor upgrade (2.#.# branches), the <OOo install folder>/share/dict/ooo folder is overwritten by the new one. So you loose any customization (installed dictionaries and removed ones), both on Windows and Linux; except that installed dictionaries in the user profile are kept of course. You'll also get the whole bunch of dictionaries delivered out of the box again. For major upgrades (2.# branches), the former /dict folder should remain.

As a workaround, you can put the content of the <OOo install folder>/share/dict/ooo folder in <OOo user profile>/user/wordbook (dictionary.lst + dictionaries), same as Linux. So, keep a dictionary.lst file with the added dictionaries here and it will be taken into account in parallel with the dictionary.lst and the standard dictionaries in the main program folder. But you still have to edit the standard dictionary.lst to remove all the unwanted dictionaries at each upgrade (see above).