Thursday August 16, 2007

A Favorites Menu in StarOffice / OpenOffice.org

I wonder if I am the only person missing such a feature.

There are a few documents which I need quite regularly. Unfortunately they are sometimes not in the recent file list when I need them, and it's also nice to have some special bookmarks for them.

So why wait for it?! It's easy to extend or customize OpenOffice.org via macros and extensions, so I created a simple macro to get my favorites menu.

If you are interested, you can find the macro in the OpenOffice.org Wiki. Simply copy&paste the macro text into the standard library from OpenOffice.org or StarOffice ( Tools / Macros / Organize Macros / StarOffice Basic => My Macros )

To have the menu automatically all the time, simply go to "Tools / Customize... / Events", and add "InsertFavoritesMenu" to "Start Application". On the bottom of the dialog, make sure to save the information with the application, not with the current document.

This is not the optimal implementation, but it works for me and didn't take much time.

Things to improve:

• Don't code the documents into the macro, but provide some XML configuration
• Make it an installable extension, instead of a plain macro
• Optional: Make the Favorites menu as sub menu of the File menu
  
• Optional: Add UI for configuring menu entries
  

Any volunteers? ;)

Posted by Malte Timmermann ( Aug 16 2007, 02:52:39 PM CEST ) Permalink Comments [11]