OpenOffice.org Help TNT: Tips'n'Tricks that somehow didn't make it to the help (yet).

Most users of OpenOffice.org already know that it is easy to change all icons at once, to find a totally new look of their Office. Only few StarOffice users know that they can enjoy an all new icon theme, too.

In OOo, you choose Tools - Options - OOo - View. Here you can select another Icon Style from a list box. Click OK, and you see the new icons immediately.

The supplied icon sets may be different for different distributions of OOo. In my version, I can select from the default set, Industrial, HiContrast, and Crystal.

I like the large icons of the Crystal set, so I want to see those icons in my installation of StarOffice, too.

Unfortunately, StarOffice does not offer the Icon Style list box. There may be a reason for this decision, but there don't seem to be any technical barriers to use an OOo icon set for StarOffice. You can even use a different icon set for every user on a network installation. This is how to proceed - but be careful, this is not an official method but more of a "hack":

1. Get the images_crystal.zip file from an OOo installation. The images*.zip files are stored in the {OOo_installation}/share/config folder.
2. Copy the file to your {StarOffice8_userfiles}/user/config folder. On Linux systems, this is ~/.staroffice8/user/config. On Windows systems, this is something like C:\Documents and Settings\your_username\Application Data\StarOffice8\user\config.
3. Rename the copied file to images.zip
4. Restart StarOffice 8 to see the new icons. You may want to select the "large" icon size in Tools - Options - StarOffice - View.

As a StarOffice user, I want to thank all OOo icon artists for their great work that they contribute to the community!