Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Help! My menu bar has disappeared and I can't get it back. That's the bar that says "File Edit View etc".
Is there a key stroke sequence that can restore this?

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Try to reset your OOo user profile. But during the welcome process (if you had 2.x before), don't transfer your personal data, former configuration files might corrupt the new profile.

Thanks to add '[Solved]' at beginning of your first post title (edit button) if your issue has been fixed.

The only situation I know where the menu bar disappears is in fullscreen view, but then all toolbars vanish too. Press Escape (top left key on the keyboard, labeled Esc or Escape) to exit from fullscreen mode.

If you have closed a window while in fullscreen mode, there may be a hangup that won't be resolved directly with the escape key. Open a new Writer window, press cmd+shift+J to enable fullscreen mode, then press escape.

I reset my User Profile by downloading the latest version of OOo. Still no luck. The menu bar is still missing.

pachu05 wrote:I reset my User Profile by downloading the latest version of OOo. Still no luck. The menu bar is still missing.

Downloading or reinstalling OOo doesn't reset the user profile. You have to manually delete or rename the folder containing the user profile.

Voila! I have the menu bar back. To recap, I did rename the folder containing the user profile and after that I downloaded OOo. It looks like the menu bar didn't show up immediately (or possibly I didn't notice it). However the menu bar is back and I am relieved. Thanks gents for your assistance.

Thanks Keme directed me to this thread.

I have the same issue. the Menu bar never show up since I installed the OOo 3.2.0 in my Mac OS 10.5.8. Intel, even I uninstalled it then downloaded it again. Now, how I can locate the folder and the user profile? Would anyone please shed me some light here? Appreciate that.

Hagar's post (the second one in the thread) contains a link to the info you need, but I'll repost here:

info on removing/renaming the profile is here
and this post provides the location of the profile on different platforms

kabing

Thanks kabing.

I did follow Hagar's instruction to fix it but no luck yet. I located the user folder and rename it as user old, then restart OOo, a new user come in, went through the welcome process, but the menu bar didn't show up. I uninstalled OOo and download it again, there is still no menu bar. I found even no user folder and OOo where it supposed to be under library. What else I could do? Thank you.

I located the user folder and rename it as user old, then restart OOo, a new user come in, went through the welcome process, but the menu bar didn't show up. I uninstalled OOo and download it again, there is still no menu bar.

A few questions.

• 1. Did you have an older version of OOo, and if you did, did you have a menu bar?
  2. Is OpenOffice.org.app installed in your applications folder?
  3. Could you take a screenshot of your whole screen [Command (⌘)-Shift-3] when you have OOo open and post it to this list?

Thanks Lgusaas,

1. no, I didn't. The only OOo I downloaded and installed in my Mac is 3.2.0. I haven't ever seen a menu bar since.
2. yes, it is in the applications folder, from where I can start OOo by clicking at the icon.
3. please see as attached.


Your thought would be appreciated. Cheers.

weneve wrote: 3. please see as attached.

You did not include a screenshot of the whole screen. The menubar is at the top of the screen. It is not part of the OOo window. The OOo window in your screenshot contains everything it should in the toolbars.

I've attached a screenshot of my whole screen.

Close OpenOffice.org completely (including the quickstarter, if it is running).

On Windows, open up the folder c:\Program Files\OpenOffice.org 3\Basis\share\config\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter.
On Linux, look in /opt/openoffice.org/basis3.0/share/config/soffice.cfg/modules/swriter/menubar/.
I have not access to a Mac so cannot say where the file is kept in its profile.

Tip: To modify Calc instead of Writer, substitute scalc for swriter and similarly for the other OpenOffice components.
Tip: The path varies for OpenOffice.org version 2 and on many Linux systems, so if you can't find it, do file search for swriter.

Is there a file in the menubar directory called menubar.xml? If not, that may be the problem. A new User Profile should recreate the standard menubar, but if it doesn't I'm sure some Mac user can supply you with a copy of their menubar to insert; possibly a menubar.xml from any version of OpenOffice Writer will do, but best to use a Mac version just in case.
If there is and you rename menubar.xml to menubar.xml.bak your menubar will be missing next time you start OpenOffice.

This information is based on http://www.oooninja.com/2009/03/april-f ... ranks.html

Thank Lguaas,

Yes, I have the menu on the top now.

I just cut the screenshot of the whole screen before posted to minimise its size. Thank you all for the helpful information.

I had the same problem: my top bar (with maximize, etc.) disappeared as well as the Ubuntu top bar (clock, etc.)--only in Office Writer. I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Office 3.2.0. With help from this thread and some experimentation I was able to fix the problem by changing a few characters in one file--preserving all other settings!

Here's how: edit 'Setup.xcu' located in
/home/<user name>/.openoffice.org/3/user/registry/data/org/openoffice
(Make a copy of the original file first, of course.)

Look for the section:
<node oor:name="Factories">
<node oor:name="com.sun.star.text.TextDocument">
<prop oor:name="ooSetupFactoryWindowAttributes" oor:type="xs:string">
<value>340,162,920,875;1;0,0,0,0;</value>

Change the numbers for <value>: the ones shown are the default for my 1200 x 1600 display resolution. If you're running a low resolution, pick some smaller numbers... The last 5 numbers should be as above (1;0,0,0,0;). Save, and you're done!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you're curious (like me):
The numbers seem to represent the location of the window borders in pixels for 'Windowed' mode (LEFT;TOP;RIGHT;BOTTOM -- mine was set to 0;0;1600;1200--no room for menu bars!), followed by one digit ('1' = 'Windowed' '5' = 'Maximize' what else?) followed by the border locations for 'Maximize' mode (all zeros if not currently Maximized).

When I jump to 'Maximize" I get:
<value>296,47,1301,1126;5;0,47,1600,1128;</value>
leaving 47 pixels for the top Ubuntu bar and 72 for the bottom bar. (There seems to be some other things going on here. I'll leave that part for you.)