Choosing options for all of OpenOffice.org
This section covers some of the settings that apply to all the components of OpenOffice.org. For information on settings not discussed here, see the online help.
Click Tools > Options. The list in the left-hand box varies depending on which component of OOo is open. The illustrations in this chapter show the list as it appears when a Writer document is open.
Click the + sign to the left of OpenOffice.org in the left-hand section. A list of subsections drops down.
 |
The Back button has the same effect on all pages of the Options dialog. It resets the options to the values that were in place when you opened OpenOffice.org. |
Contents
User Data options
Because OOo uses the name or initials stored in the OpenOffice.org – User Data page for several things, including document properties (created by and last edited by information) and the name of the author of notes and changes, you will want to ensure that your name and initials appear there.
Fill in the form, or amend or delete any existing incorrect information.
General options
The options on the OpenOffice.org – General page are described below.
Help - Tips
When Tips is active, one or two words will appear when you hover the cursor over an icon or field, without clicking.
Help - Extended tips
When Extended tips is active, a brief description of the function of a particular icon or menu command or a field on a dialog appears when you hover the cursor over that item.
Help Agent
To turn off the Help Agent (similar to Microsoft’s Office Assistant), deselect this option. To restore the default behavior, click Reset Help Agent.
Help formatting
High contrast is an operating system setting that changes the system color scheme to improve readability. To display Help in high contrast (if your computer’s operating system supports this), choose one of the high-contrast style sheets from the pull-down list.
| High-contrast style | Visual effect |
|---|---|
| Default | Black text on white background |
| High Contrast #1 | Yellow text on black background |
| High Contrast #2 | Green text on black background |
| High Contrast Black | White text on black background |
| High Contrast White | Black text on white background |
Open/Save dialogs
To use the standard Open and Save dialogs for your operating system, deselect the Use OpenOffice.org dialogs option. When this option is selected, the Open and Save dialogs supplied with OpenOffice.org will be used. See [[../Open_and_Save_As_dialogs| Chapter 1 for more about the OOo Open and Save dialogs]].
Document status
If this option is selected, then the next time you close the document after printing, the print date is recorded in the document properties as a change and you will be prompted to save the document again, even if you did not make any other changes.
Year (two digits)
Specifies how two-digit years are interpreted. For example, if the two-digit year is set to 1930, and you enter a date of 1/1/30 or later into your document, the date is interpreted as 1/1/1930 or later. An “earlier” date is interpreted as being in the following century; that is, 1/1/20 is interpreted as 1/1/2020.
Memory options
In the Options dialog, click OpenOffice.org > Memory. On the OpenOffice.org – Memory dialog:
- More memory can make OpenOffice.org faster and more convenient (for example, more undo steps require more memory); but the trade-off is less memory available for other applications and you could run out of memory altogether.
- If your documents contain a lot of objects such as images, or the objects are large, OOo’s performance may improve if you increase the memory for OOo or the memory per object. If you find that objects seem to disappear from a document that contains a lot of them, increase the number of objects in the cache. (The objects are still in the file even if you cannot see them on screen.)
- To load the Quickstarter (an icon on the desktop or in the system tray) when you start your computer, select the option near the bottom of the dialog. This makes OpenOffice.org start faster; the trade-off is OOo uses some memory even when not being used. This option (called Enable systray quickstarter) is disabled in some Linux installations.
View options
The choices of View options affect the way the document window looks and behaves.
In the Options dialog, click OpenOffice.org > View. On the OpenOffice.org – View page, set the options to suit your personal preferences. Some options are described below.
User Interface – Scaling
If the text in the help files and on the menus of the OOo user interface is too small or too large, it can be changed by specifying a scaling factor. Sometimes a change here can have unexpected results, depending on the screen fonts available on your system. However, it does not affect the actual font size of the text in your documents.
User Interface – Icon size and style
The first box specifies the display size of toolbar icons (Automatic, Small, or Large). The Automatic icon size option uses the setting for your operating system. The second box specifies the icon set (theme); here the Automatic option uses an icon set compatible with your operating system and choice of desktop: for example, KDE or Gnome on Linux.
User Interface – Use system font for user interface
If you prefer to use the system font (the default font for your computer and operating system), instead of the font provided by OOo, for the user interface, select this option.
User interface – Screen font antialiasing
(Not available in Windows, so not shown in the picture.) Select this option to smooth the screen appearance of text. Enter the smallest font size to apply antialiasing.
Menu – icons in menus
Causes icons as well as words to be visible in menus.
Font Lists - Show preview of fonts
Causes the font list to look like the left picture below, with the font names shown as an example of the font; with the option deselected, the font list shows only the font names, not their formatting (right picture). The fonts you will see listed are those that are installed on your system.
Font Lists - Show font history
Causes the last five fonts you have assigned to the current document to be displayed at the top of the font list.
Graphics Output – Use Hardware Acceleration
Directly accesses hardware features of the graphical display adapter to improve the screen display. Not supported on all operating systems and OOo distributions.
Use Anti-aliasing
Enables and disables anti-aliasing, which makes the display of most graphical objects look smoother and with fewer artifacts. Not supported on all operating systems and OOo distributions.
 |
Press Shift+Control+R to restore or refresh the view of the current document. |
Mouse positioning
Specifies if and how the mouse pointer will be positioned in newly opened dialog boxes.
Middle mouse button
Defines the function of the middle mouse button.
- Automatic scrolling – dragging while pressing the middle mouse button shifts the view.
- Paste clipboard – pressing the middle mouse button inserts the contents of the “Selection clipboard” at the cursor position.
The “Selection clipboard” is independent of the normal clipboard that you use by Edit > Copy/Cut/ Paste or their respective keyboard shortcuts. Clipboard and the “Selection clipboard” can contain different contents at the same time.
| Function | Clipboard | Selection clipboard |
|---|---|---|
| Copy content | Edit > Copy Control+C | Select text, table, or object. |
| Paste content | Edit > Paste Control+V pastes at the cursor position. | Clicking the middle mouse button pastes at the mouse pointer position. |
| Pasting into another document | No effect on the clipboard contents. | The last marked selection is the content of the selection clipboard. |
Selection – Transparency
Determines the appearance of selected text or graphics, which appear on a shaded background. To make the shaded background more or less dark, increase or decrease the Transparency setting.
If you prefer selected material to appear in reversed color (typically white text on a black background), deselect this option.
Print options
On the OpenOffice.org – Print page, set the print options to suit your default printer and your most common printing method.
In the Printer warnings section near the bottom of the page, you can choose whether to be warned if the paper size or orientation specified in your document does not match the paper size or orientation available for your printer. Having these warnings turned on can be quite helpful, particularly if you work with documents produced by people in other countries where the standard paper size is different from yours.
|
If your printouts are coming out incorrectly placed on the page or chopped off at the top, bottom, or sides, or the printer is refusing to print, the most likely cause is page size incompatibility. |
Path options
On the OpenOffice.org – Paths page, you can change the location of files associated with, or used by, OpenOffice.org to suit your working situation. In a Windows system, for example, you might want to store documents by default somewhere other than My Documents.
To make changes, select an item in the list and click Edit. On the Select Paths dialog (not shown), add or delete folders as required, and then click OK to return to the Options dialog. Note that some items have at least two paths listed: one to a shared folder (which might be on a network) and one to a user-specific folder (normally on the user’s personal computer).
|
You can use the entries in the OpenOffice.org – Paths dialog to compile a list of files, such as those containing AutoText, that you need to back up or copy to another computer. |
Color options
In the OpenOffice.org – Colors dialog, you can specify colors to use in OOo documents. You can select a color from a color table, edit an existing color, and define new colors. These colors are stored in your color palette and are then available in all components of OOo.
To modify a color:
- Select the color to modify from the list or the color table.
- Enter the new values that define the color. If necessary, change the settings from RGB (Red, Green, Blue) to CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) or vice versa. The changed color appears in the lower of the two color preview boxes at the top.
- Modify the Name as required.
- Click the Modify button. The newly defined color is now listed in the Color table.
Alternatively, click the Edit button to open the Color dialog, shown below. Here you can select a color from one of the color windows in the upper area, or you can enter values in the lower area using your choice of RGB, CMYK, or HSB (Hue, Saturation and Brightness) values.
The upper right color window is linked directly with the color input fields in the lower area; as you choose a color in the upper window, the numbers change accordingly. The two color fields at the lower right show the value of the selected color on the left and the currently set value from the color value fields on the right.
Modify the color components as required and click OK to exit the dialog. The newly defined color now appears in the lower of the color preview boxes shown in the figure above. Type a name for this color in the Name box, then click the Add button. A small box showing the new color is added to the Color table.
Another way to define or alter colors is through the Colors page of the Area dialog, where you can also save and load palettes, a feature that is not possible here. However, if you load a palette in one component of OOo, it is only active in that component; the other components keep their own palettes. In Draw or Impress, open the dialog directly using Format > Area; in Calc and Writer, draw a temporary draw object and use the context menu of this object to open the Area dialog.
Font options
You can define replacements for any fonts that might appear in your documents. If you receive a document containing fonts that you do not have on your system, OpenOffice.org will substitute fonts for those it does not find. You might also prefer to specify a different font from the one the program chooses.
On the OpenOffice.org – Fonts pafe:
- Select the Apply Replacement Table option.
- Select or type the name of the font to be replaced in the Font box. (If you do not have this font on your system, it will not appear in the drop-down list in this box, so you need to type it in.)
- In the Replace with box, select a suitable font from the drop-down list of fonts installed on your computer.
- The checkmark to the right of the Replace with box turns green. Click on this checkmark. A row of information now appears in the larger box below the input boxes. Select the options under Always and Screen.
- In the bottom section of the dialog, you can change the typeface and size of the font used to display source code such as HTML and Basic (in macros).
Security options
Use the OpenOffice.org – Security page to choose security options for saving documents and for opening documents that contain macros.
Security options and warnings
If you record changes, save multiple versions, or include hidden information or notes in your documents, and you do not want some of the recipients to see that information, you can set warnings to remind you to remove this information, or you can have OOo remove some information automatically. Note that (unless removed) much of this information is retained in a file whether the file is in OpenOffice.org’s default OpenDocument format, or has been saved to other formats, including PDF.
Click the Options button to open a separate dialog with specific choices.
Remove personal information on saving. Select this option to always remove user data from the file properties when saving the file. To manually remove personal information from specific documents, deselect this option and then use the Delete button under File > Properties > General.
Ctrl-click required to follow hyperlinks. In older versions of OOo, clicking on a hyperlink in a document opened the linked document. Now you can choose whether to keep this behavior (by unchecking this box). Many people find creation and editing of documents easier when accidental clicks on links do not activate the links.
The other options on this dialog should be self-explanatory.
Macro security
Click the Macro Security button to open the Macro Security dialog (not shown here), where you can adjust the security level for executing macros and specify trusted sources.
File sharing options for this document
Select the Open this document in read-only mode option to restrict this document to be opened in read-only mode only. This option protects the document against accidental changes. It is still possible to edit a copy of the document and save that copy with the same name as the original.
Select the Record changes option to enable recording changes. This is the same as Edit > Changes > Record. To allow other users of this document to apply changes, but prevent them from disabling change recording, click the Protect button and enter a password.
Appearance options
Writing, editing, and (especially) page layout are often easier when you can see the page margins (text boundaries), the boundaries of tables and sections (in Writer documents), page breaks in Calc, grid lines in Draw or Writer, and other features. In addition, you might prefer to use colors that are different from OOo’s defaults for such items as comment indicators or field shadings.
On the OpenOffice.org – Appearance page, you can specify which items are visible and the colors used to display various items.
- To show or hide items such as text boundaries, select or deselect the options next to the names of the items.
- To change the default colors for items, click the down-arrow in the Color Setting column by the name of the item and select a color from the pop-up box.
- To save your color changes as a color scheme, click Save, type a name in the Scheme box; then click OK.
Accessibility options
Accessibility options include whether to allow animated graphics or text, how long help tips remain showing, some options for high contrast display, and a way to change the font for the user interface of the OpenOffice.org program.
Accessibility support relies on Java technology for communications with assistive technology tools. See Java options. The Support assistive technology tools option is not shown on all OOo installations. See Assistive Tools in OpenOffice.org in the Help for other requirements and information.
Select or deselect the options as required.
Java options
If you install or update a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) after you install OpenOffice.org, or if you have more than one JRE installed on your computer, you can use the OpenOffice.org - Java options page to choose the JRE for OOo to use.
If you are a system administrator, programmer, or other person who customizes JRE installations, you can use the Parameters and Class Path pages (reached from the Java page) to specify this information.
If you do not see anything listed in the middle of the page, wait a few minutes while OOo searches for JREs on the hard disk.
If OOo finds one or more JREs, it will display them there. You can then select the Use a Java runtime environment option and (if necessary) choose one of the JREs listed.
Online Update options
On the Online Update page, you can choose whether and how often to have OOo check the OOo website for program updates. If the Check for updates automatically option is selected, an icon File:OnlineupdateIcon.png appears at the right-hand end of the menu bar when an update is available. Click this icon to open a dialog where you can choose to download the update.
If the Download updates automatically option is selected, the download starts when you click the icon. To change the download destination, click the Change button and select the required folder in the file browser window.
Improvement Program
On the OpenOffice.org – Improvement Program page, you can choose whether or not to participate in the OpenOffice.org Improvement Program, which collects anonymous statistics about how you use OOo.
| Content on this page is licensed under the Creative Common Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY). |
