Customizing Apache OpenOffice

Getting Started with OpenOffice 4

Chapter 11: Setting up and Customizing Apache OpenOffice

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Customizing Apache OpenOffice

You can customize menus, toolbars, and keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice, add new menus and toolbars, and assign macros to events. However, you cannot customize context (right-click) menus.

Other customizations are made easy by extensions that you can install from the OpenOffice website or from other providers.

Customization to menus and toolbars can be saved in a template. To do so, first save them in a document and then save the document as a template as described in Chapter 2 (Styles and Templates).

Customizing Menus

You can add and rearrange items on the menu bar, add items to menus, and make other changes.

To customize menus:

1. Choose Tools → Customize.
2. On the Customize dialog, go to the Menus page.
3. In the Save In drop-down list, choose whether to save this changed menu for the application (for example, OpenOffice Writer) or for a selected document (for example, MyDoc.odt).

Figure 281: The Menus page of the Customize dialog

1. In the section OpenOffice [name of the program (example: Writer)] Menus, select from the Menu drop-down list the menu that you want to customize. The list includes all the main menus as well as submenus (menus that are contained under another menu). For example, in addition to File, Edit, View, and so on, there is File | Send and File | Templates. The commands available for the selected menu are shown in the central part of the dialog.
2. To customize the selected menu, click on the  Menu  or  Modify  buttons. You can also add commands to a menu by clicking on the  Add  button. These actions are described in the following sections. Use the up and down arrows next to the Entries list to move the selected menu item to a different position.
3. When you have finished making all your changes, click  OK  (not shown in illustration) to save them.

Creating a New Menu

In the Customize dialog, click  New  to display the dialog shown in Figure 282.

1. Type a name for your new menu in the Menu name box.
2. Use the up and down arrow buttons to move the new menu into the required position on the menu bar.
3. Click  OK  to save.

The new menu now appears on the list of menus in the Customize dialog. (It will appear on the menu bar itself after you save your customizations.)

After creating a new menu, you need to add some commands to it, as described in “Adding a Command to a Menu”.

Figure 282: Adding a new menu

Modifying Existing Menus

To modify an existing menu, select it in the Menu list and click the  Menu  button to drop a list of modifications: Move, Rename, Delete. Not all of these modifications can be applied to all the entries in the Menu list. For example, Rename and Delete are not available for the menus supplied by AOO.

To move a menu (such as File), choose Menu → Move. A dialog similar to the one shown in Figure 282 (but without the Menu name box) opens. Use the up and down arrow buttons to move the menu into the required position.

To move submenus (such as File → Send), select the main menu (File) in the Menu list and then, in the Menu Content section of the dialog, select the submenu (Send) in the Entries list and use the arrow keys to move it up or down in the sequence.

In addition to renaming, you can specify a keyboard shortcut that allows you to select a menu command when you press  Alt  +    + an underlined letter in a menu command.

1. Select a menu entry.
2. Click the  Modify  button and select Rename.
3. Add a tilde (~) in front of the letter that you want to use as an accelerator. For example, to select the Save All command by pressing Alt  +  V  (after opening the File menu using  Alt  +  F ), enter Sa~ve All.

Be careful when using these shortcuts. In the example above, if the File menu is not already open, then pressing  Alt  +  V  opens the View menu; if some other menu is open,  Alt  +  V  might activate some other command.

Adding a Command to a Menu

You can add commands to the supplied menus and to menus you have created. On the Customize dialog, select the menu in the Menu list and click the  Add  button in the Menu Content section of the dialog.

On the Add Commands dialog (Figure 283), select a category and then the command, and click  Add . The dialog remains open, so you can select several commands. When you have finished adding commands, click  Close . Back on the Customize dialog, you can use the up and down arrow buttons to arrange the commands in your preferred sequence.

Figure 283: Adding a command to a menu

Modifying Menu Entries

In addition to changing the sequence of entries on a menu or submenu, you can add submenus, rename or delete the entries, and add group separators.

To begin, select the menu or submenu in the Menu list near the top of the Customize page, then select the entry in the Entries list under Menu Content. Click the  Modify  button and choose the required action from the drop-down list of actions.

Most of the actions should be self-explanatory. Begin a group adds a separator line after the highlighted entry.

Customizing Toolbars

You can customize toolbars in several ways, including choosing which icons are visible and locking the position of a docked toolbar, as described in Chapter 1 (Introducing Apache OpenOffice). This section describes how to create new toolbars and add other icons (commands) to the list of those available on a toolbar.

To get to the toolbar customization dialog, do any of the following:

• On the toolbar, click the arrow at the end of the toolbar and choose Customize Toolbar.
• Choose View → Toolbars → Customize from the menu bar.
• Choose Tools → Customize from the menu bar and pick the Toolbars page (Figure 284).

To customize toolbars:

1. In the Save In drop-down list, choose whether to save this changed toolbar for the application (for example, Writer) or for a selected document.
2. In the section OpenOffice <name of the program (example: Writer)> Toolbars, select from the Toolbar drop-down list the toolbar that you want to customize.
3. You can create a new toolbar by clicking on the  New  button, or customize existing toolbars by clicking on the  Toolbar  or  Modify  buttons, and add commands to a toolbar by clicking on the  Add  button. These actions are described below.
4. When you have finished making all your changes, click  OK  to save them.

Figure 284: The Toolbars page of the Customize dialog

Creating a New Toolbar

To create a new toolbar:

1. Choose Tools → Customize → Toolbars from the menu bar.
2. Click  New . On the Name dialog, type the new toolbar's name and choose from the Save In drop-down list where to save this toolbar: for the application (for example, Writer) or for a selected document.

The new toolbar now appears on the list of toolbars in the Customize dialog. After creating a new toolbar, you need to add some commands to it, as described below.

Adding a Command to a Toolbar

If the list of available buttons for a toolbar does not include all the commands you want on that toolbar, you can add commands. When you create a new toolbar, you need to add commands to it.

1. On the Toolbars page of the Customize dialog, select the toolbar in the Toolbar list and click the  Add  button in the Toolbar Content section of the dialog.
2. The Add Commands dialog is the same as for adding commands to menus (Figure 283). Select a category and then the command, and click  Add . The dialog remains open, so you can select several commands. When you have finished adding commands, click  Close . If you insert an item which does not have an associated icon, the toolbar will display the full name of the item: the next section describes how to choose an icon for a toolbar command.
3. Back on the Customize dialog, you can use the up and down arrow buttons to arrange the commands in your preferred sequence.
4. When you are done making changes, click  OK  to save.

Choosing Icons for Toolbar Commands

Toolbar buttons usually have icons, not words, on them, but not all the commands have associated icons.

To choose an icon for a command, select the command and click Modify → Change icon. On the Change Icon dialog, you can scroll through the available icons, select one, and click  OK  to assign it to the command.

Figure 285: Change Icon dialog

To use a custom icon, create it in a graphics program and import it into AOO by clicking the  Import  button on the Change Icon dialog. Custom icons must be 16 x 16 or 26 x 26 pixels in size and in the PNG file format.

Assigning Shortcut Keys

In addition to using the built-in keyboard shortcuts (listed in the included Help), you can define your own. You can assign shortcuts to standard AOO functions or your own macros and save them for use with the entire Apache OpenOffice suite.

Be careful when reassigning your operating system's or AOO's predefined shortcut keys. Many key assignments are universally understood shortcuts, such as  F1  for Help, and are always expected to provide certain results. Although you can easily reset the shortcut key assignments to the AOO defaults, changing some common shortcut keys can cause confusion, frustration, and possible data loss or corruption, especially if other users share your computer.

To adapt shortcut keys to your needs, use the Customize dialog, as described below.

1. Select Tools → Customize → Keyboard. The Customize dialog opens.
2. To have the shortcut key assignment available in all components of OpenOffice select the  OpenOffice  button.
3. Next select the required function from the Category and Function lists.
4. Now select the desired shortcut keys in the Shortcut keys list and click the  Modify  button at the upper right.
5. Click  OK  to accept the change. Now the chosen shortcut keys will execute the function chosen in step 3 above whenever they are pressed.

All existing shortcut keys for the currently selected Function are listed in the Keys selection box. If the Keys list is empty, it indicates that the chosen key combination is free for use. If it were not, and you wanted to reassign a shortcut key combination that is already in use, you must first delete the existing key. Shortcut keys that are greyed out in the listing on the Customize dialog, such as  F1  and  F10 , are not available for reassignment.

Example: Assigning Styles to Shortcut Keys

You can configure shortcut keys to quickly assign styles in your document. Some shortcuts are predefined, such as  Ctrl  +  0  for the Text body paragraph style,  Ctrl  +  1  for the Heading 1 style, and  Ctrl  +  2  for Heading 2. You can modify these shortcuts and create your own.

1. Click Tools → Customize → Keyboard. The Keyboard page of the Customize dialog (Figure 286) opens.

Figure 286: Defining keyboard shortcuts for applying styles

1. To have the shortcut key assignment available only with one component (for example, Writer), select that component's name in the upper right corner of the page; otherwise select  OpenOffice  button to make it available to every component.
2. Choose the shortcut keys you want to assign a style to. In this example, we have selected Ctrl+9.
3. In the Functions section at the bottom of the dialog, scroll down in the Category list to Styles. Click the expansion symbol (usually a + sign or triangle) to expand the list of styles.
4. Choose the category of style. (This example uses a paragraph style, but you can also choose character styles and others.) The Function list will display the names of the available styles for the selected category. The example shows some of AOO's predefined styles.
5. To assign Ctrl+9 to be the shortcut key combination for the List 1 style, select List 1 in the Function list, and then click  Modify . Ctrl+9 now appears in the Keys list on the right, and List 1 appears next to Ctrl+9 in the Shortcut keys box at the top.
6. Make any other required changes, and then click  OK  to save these settings and close the dialog.

Saving Changes to a File

Changes to the shortcut key assignments can be saved in a keyboard configuration file for use at a later time, thus permitting you to create and apply different configurations as the need arises. To save keyboard shortcuts to a file:

1. After making your keyboard shortcut assignments, click the  Save  button at the right of the Customize dialog (Figure 286).
2. In the Save Keyboard Configuration dialog, select All files from the Save as Type list.
3. Next enter a name for the keyboard configuration file in the File name box, or select an existing file from the list. If you need to, browse to find a file from another location.
4. Click  Save . A confirmation dialog appears if you are about to overwrite an existing file, otherwise the file will be saved immediately.

Loading a Saved Keyboard Configuration

To load a saved keyboard configuration file and replace your existing configuration, click the  Load  button at the right of the Customize dialog, and then select the configuration file from the Load Keyboard Configuration dialog.

Resetting the Shortcut Keys

To reset all the keyboard shortcuts to their default values, click the  Reset  button near the bottom right of the Customize dialog. Use this feature with care as no confirmation dialog will be displayed; the defaults will be set without any further notice or user input.