Understand Toolbars, Menu Bars, Title Bars

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The Title Bar lists the current document that is open.

Untitled means that it has not been saved yet. When OpenOffice 3 saves a document it will be given a .odt extension. One common extension of documents is the “.doc” extension which comes from Microsoft Word documents. Because this is a Writer document and not a Word document, it will have a different extension. However, even with a different extension the documents are compatible.

Just above the text portion of a page is the Ruler which is a Bar that you may view page dimensions and set the tabs. The first example is in inches. Often users will prefer a different system of measurement. This is easy to change by right clicking on the Ruler and choosing from the options.

The Toolbar is a bar that you will use every time you edit or create a document. Be sure to understand its use and configuration as it will enhance your experiences with Writer considerably. Icons have been enhanced to provide a more intuitive selection. A glance is all that is needed to determine what the icon represents. Try each icon on to become very familiar to what each will do.

Notice that at the start of each of these bars there is a series of dots. Click on these dots with the cursor and you will be able to move these bars to become floating or to move anywhere around your document.

The Status Bar, found at the bottom of the page, provides information concerning which page you are modifying out of how many available pages, the viewing percentage and text selection mode. The Status Bar can be changed by right clicking on the appropriate section; for example the viewing percentage can be changed by right clicking where the 100% is and choosing a percentage.