Customising Toolbars

Overview

Open Office already has many toolbars, any of which can be modified, but I find that the best approach is to design my own toolbar from scratch, and turn off the default toolbars, which are then unchanged in case you want to backtrack.

1. Adding a New Toolbar
2. Context-Sensitive Toolbars
3. Icons for Macros
4. Organising Toolbars
5. Fullscreen Mode

Adding a New Toolbar

From the Tools menu, select customize, and click on the toolbars tab. Click on “New” and name your toolbar as “Standard Plus” or whatever you want. Then click on “Add” and select any functions you wish to add to your new toolbar. I like to dock it vertically on the left.

Use the Up and Down arrows to change the order of the toolbar icons. Begin new groups with separators to divide them into logical sections, and select the check box to the left of the items that you want to be displayed by default. When you’ve finished adding commands to the toolbar, click on “Close” to return to the Customise Toolbar dialogue.

Icons for Macros

Macros that are assigned to toolbars won’t have an icon by default, but you can assign one by clicking on “Modify” and selecting “Change Icon...” You can choose one from the palette or import one of your own. To create an icon to launch an external program like Babelmap, for example, open the executable in Irfan View and resize the icon to 16x16 pixels, then save it as a PNG image.

Context-Sensitive Toolbars

Some users dislike the context sensitive toolbars because they change the layout when the cursor moves into a table and out of it, or into bulleted text and out of it. I have added the Table icons that I want to my customised “Standard Plus” toolbar and turned off the Table toolbar

• Activate a context- sensitive toolbar by using that context

• Turn it off from the View, Toolbars menu

• Add any icons you need to a standard toolbar or a new one

Another method is to organise the toolbars so that the context-sensitive toolbars temporarily push the permanent toolbars to the right, until you finish the context-sensitive task. See below.

Organising Toolbars

Toolbars can be displayed or hidden from the View menu. To view your new toolbar select it from the View, Toolbars submenu.

Some toolbars are context-sensitive. The Table toolbar will be shown if the cursor is placed in a table, the Frame toolbar will be shown if a frame is selected, etc.

To minimise on toolbar use, drag the Standard toolbar just slightly to the right of the docked toolbar area.

Insert a table to display the table toolbar. Drag the table toolbar to the left of the Standard toolbar.

Insert a frame to display the frame toolbar. Drag the frame toolbar to the left of the Standard toolbar.

Insert a list to display the bullets toolbar. Drag the bullets toolbar to the left of the Standard toolbar.

When in page preview, you don’t usually edit the text, so only the page preview toolbar is needed.

This saves screen space by displaying just the tools that you actually need at the moment. If you normally work with Open Office maximised, as I do, this single toolbar may be sufficient for most tasks, with the Frame or Table toolbars popping up only when they are needed.

Fullscreen Mode

From the View menu, or from a custom button as on my customised toolbar, you can select the option to enter a fullscreen mode that turns off the menu bar and Windows Title bar. This alone saves a worthwhile bit of space, but the floating fullscreen toolbar gets in the way. Move it to the bottom of a vertical toolbar or to the right of a horizontal toolbar, where it is less obtrusive. To escape from fullscreen mode, press the Escape key or click on the fullscreen toolbar button.

I have renamed it to F11 because I am accustomed to using F11 to enter and leave fullscreen mode in Opera. I have also assigned the F11 key to a macro that enters fullscreen mode, and turns off the Status bar and Rulers.