Customizing keyboard shortcuts
The Appendix to this book lists the default keyboard shortcuts supplied with Impress. You can change these defaults or add new shortcuts. You can assign shortcuts to standard Impress functions or your own macros and save them for use with Impress only, or with the entire OpenOffice.org suite.
 | Be careful when reassigning your operating system’s or OOo’s predefined shortcut keys. Many key assignments are universally understood shortcuts, such as F1 for Help, and are always expected to provide certain results. Although you can easily reset the shortcut key assignments to the OOo defaults, changing some common shortcut keys can cause confusion, frustration and possible data loss or corruption, especially if other users share your computer.
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As an example, suppose you wish to assign a shortcut key to easily insert a duplicate slide in your presentation. You could assign the Insert key as a logical shortcut for this purpose, as described below:
- Choose Tools > Customize.
- On the Customize dialog, pick the Keyboard page.
- As the shortcut key assignment is only relevant with Impress, and not OpenOffice.org in general, select the Impress button (at the upper right corner of the Keyboard tab).
- Next select Insert in the Category list and Duplicate Slide in the Function list.
- Now select the shortcut key Insert in the Shortcut keys list and click the Modify button at the upper right.
- Click OK to accept the change. Now the Insert shortcut key will insert a duplicate slide immediately after the currently selected slide.
Customizing keyboard shortcuts.
 | All existing shortcut keys for the currently selected Function are listed in the Keys selection box. Since there was no currently assigned shortcut for the Insert > Duplicate Slide function the Keys list was empty. If it had not been, and you wished to reassign a shortcut key combination that was already in use, you would first have had to Delete the existing Key.
Shortcut keys that are greyed-out in the listing on the Customize dialog, such as F1 and F10, are not available for reassignment.
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Saving changes to a file
Changes to the shortcut key assignments (and other configurations) can be saved in a keyboard configuration file for use at a later time, thus permitting you to create and apply different configurations as the need arises. To save keyboard shortcuts to a file:
- After making your keyboard shortcut assignments, click the Save button near the bottom right of the Customize dialog.
- In the Save Keyboard Configuration dialog, select All files from the Save as Type list.
- Next enter a name for the keyboard configuration file in the File name box, or select an existing file from the list. If you need to, browse to find a file from another location.
- Click Save. A confirmation dialog will appear if you are about to overwrite an existing file, otherwise there will be no feedback and the file will be saved.
Loading a saved keyboard configuration
To load a saved keyboard configuration file and replace your existing configuration, click the Load button near the bottom right of the Customize dialog, and then select the configuration file from the Load Keyboard Configuration dialog.
Resetting the shortcut keys
To reset all of the keyboard shortcuts to their default values, click the Reset button near the bottom right of the Customize dialog. Use this feature with care as no confirmation dialog will be displayed; the defaults will be set without any further notice or user input.
Running macros from key combinations
You can also define shortcut key combinations that will run macros. These shortcut keys are strictly user-defined; none are built in. For information on macros, see
Chapter 13 (Getting Started with Macros) in the Getting Started guide.
