Customising Menus

Overview

Open Office is extremely flexible. You can create new menus or modify existing menus. You can rename menu items, set the accelerator key, and assign macros to menus.

  1. Zoom Menu
  2. Submenus
  3. Vertical Alignment Submenu
  4. Adding Icons to Menus

Zoom Menu

The first stage is to record macros for each zoom level you wish to have available on the menu. You might record macros for zoom to page, page width, optimal, 100% up to 600% in 100% increments. Give each macro an appropriate name (no spaces are permitted in macro names).

Next, from the Tools menu, select customise, and click on the menus tab. Click on “New” and name your menu as “~Zoom.” (The tilde character defines the accelerator key as “Z”. Then click on “Add” and scroll down to the bottom of the “Category” field to OpenOffice.org Macros, Standard, where you will find your recorded macros. Select them one by one in the “Commands” field and click on “Add” to add them to your Zoom menu.

When you’re done, click on “Close” to return to the Customise Menu dialogue box. Finally, you can rename the menu entries, adding spaces, and shortcut accelerator keys if you wish, e.g. “Page ~Width” or “Full ~Page”

Use the Up and Down arrows to change the order of the menu items. To change the order of the menus themselves on the menu bar, click on the “Menu” button, and choose move to open the “Move Menu” dialogue.

To add separator lines to your new menu, to divide it into groups, click on the item that you wish to be the last in a group, click on the modify button, and select “Begin a group.”

Submenus

Submenus are indicated in the Menu dropdown list by a vertical bar. Suppose we wish to add an item for “Long Date” to the Insert Fields submenu. First, record a macro to insert the long date in the format that you prefer: Insert, Fields, Other, Date, Format, and pick the format you want, Insert, and close, end recording, and name it as “LongDate” or whatever you like.

Then Tools, Customise, Menus, click on the drop list and select the “Insert | Fields” submenu. Select “Date” to insert an item below it. Click on “Add” and scroll down to the macros in the category field to select the macro that you just recorded. Rename the submenu item to “~Long Date” for example, and OK to accept it.

Vertical Alignment Submenu

By default, the vertical alignment option for table cells is on the Alignment submenu of the Format menu. Since it applies only to table cells, not to paragraph text, nor even to text in frames, it seems much more logical to put it on the Table menu. I created a submenu called Vertical Alignment on the Table Menu and put the alignment options there. I renamed the Alignment submenu on the Format menu as “Justification” and removed the alignment options.

Adding Icons to Menus

Although there is no option to add icons when modifying menu items, there is an option when modifying toolbars. To add an icon to a macro that you assigned to a menu, assign the same macro to any toolbar, and modify its icon there. The icon will then be displayed on the menus. There is no need to display the icon on the toolbar if you don’t wish to. Just uncheck the box beside the icon to hide it.