Docking Palettes

Overview

Open Office relies heavily on the use of styles, so the Style List is used frequently. However, it takes up rather too much space to have it on screen constantly. It can be toggled on and off with the F11 key and used as a floating palette, or docked on either side of the screen.

Docking the Style List

To dock the Stye List, hold down control and double-click on the grey border of the palette.

By default, the Style List will be docked on the left of the screen. I prefer to keep it on the right for two reasons:

  • The scroll bar is also on the right, so the mouse cursor will most often be on the right side of the screen already.
  • Toggling the palette off and on will not make the page jump sideways so that you lose focus on your reading position.

Many new users complain that Open Office doesn’t centre the page in the Window. On high resolution monitors there is often a large grey area to the right of the page. This grey area is the ideal place to put the style list palette.

The Document Navigator (which is toggled with the F5 key) is used rather less than the style list, but since it can be docked underneath the style list, why not have that easily available too? If you have a long list of styles, you can resize the docked Navigator palette to allow more space for the style list. After docking the navigator it will be beside the style list. You can drag it underneath.

The palettes can be toggled on by clicking anywhere on the long vertical strip at the window edge. Click the toggle button on the other side to turn them off. I wish this button would always remain on the edge of the Window as a full length toggle strip.

 Vote for Issue 56932 if you agree.