Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 82584
Ease access to Drives in OO File dialog
Last modified: 2014-03-02 11:28:35 UTC
For me and my wife, the File/Open Dialog in OpenOffice 2.3 very difficult to use. The problem is especially difficult when using a flash drive, since I have to go up the '/' directory and down into the '/media' directory. I suspect that the majority of users do not know where to find their flash drive in the directory structure, so I believe that this constitutes a severe usability issue for Linux users. My complete list of quibbles on the File/Open Dialog (and File/Save): 1. Important directories are hard to get to (e.g. flash drive) 2. Icons, text are small, hard to read. 3. The only view is 'details' - I would prefer not to see Type, Size, and Date Modified most of the time. 4. It is difficult to find out how to change the settings to use the default file/open dialog of the operating system. Maybe include a little button that says 'switch to <detected default dialog system>'? That way at least the user can get access to the usable interface. Thank you so much for providing OpenOffice. I find that it is very usable in general, and I especially appreciate the enhancements made to the spreadsheet in OO 2.3. Daniel Wilcox
Are you using the built-in dialogs? That can be configured in Options. If you select the system dialogs, you get your usual Gnome or KDE selectors, which in case of the Gnome file selector, I find very usable and convenient. The built in dialogs are more or less fallbacks for the rare cases where OOo is not run from Gnome or KDE. The option is Tools->Options...->OpenOffice.org->General->Use OpenOffice.org dialogs (untick) HTH
I was using the built-in dialogs, and have now switched to the Gnome ones. Is there any way that system dialogs could be the default, or maybe have the built-in ones provide a way to make the switch? Thank you again.
Are you using Debian? I think normally the system dialogs are already the default.
I was using Fedora 7. I just switched to Fedora 8, test 3 and the system dialog is default. Maybe the problem is Fedora 7 specific?
TM->requirements: please have a look, thanks !
Thank you for pointing me to the right options. I am using Debian, and the (default) file dialog is one of the largest drawbacks of OOo. It looks better to me that the GTK2 dialog, but lacks any shortcuts to jump to external drives etc. Any hints how to change this setting globally (i.e. for 1000 users)?
Hm, I think it's a more general problem you always have if you work with documents on different drives. With AOO File dialog you will have to do several "Folder 'UP one level'" actions in the path structure until you can switch to an other drive and then again some path selections until you reach your goal. A fix for feature request "Bug 123096 - Add "Favorite Folders" feature to AOO File dialog" would solve this problem, you simply would have to define the required drives as Favorites.
Flash drive missing in long click of "up one level" icon in open dialog window. AOO410m14(Build:9760) - Rev. 1573062 2014-03-01_04:11:01 - Rev. 1573123 Debian
As already stated more or less part of "Bug 123096 - Add "Favorite Folders" feature to AOO File dialog".