MacOS Services in AOO Writer

[WoodBe RhoBust]

This is my first post....thanks for any help.

I am unable to activate MacOS Services in an AOO Writer document.
Does AOO support MacOS Services?

In detail: I create a new text document in AOO Writer. I select the text in it. Then I click "Open Office", "Services" and I see that "No Services Apply" above the "Services Preferences" option.

If I do the same in a Microsoft Office 2011 Word document OR in Mac TexEdit.app, all the activated services show up. In particular, all the OpenPGP functions (encrypt text, decrypt text etc).
I specifically want to encrypt the text within the document and not the document itself.
I hope that's clear enough. Thanks.

[MrProgrammer]

Hi, and welcome to the forum.

I am unable to activate MacOS Services in an AOO Writer document. Does AOO support MacOS Services?

AOO can support MacOS services, as long as someone creates the service. I have one service I created with Automator, FMA, which is available in Writer, though it has nothing to do with OpenPGP and doesn't help you. Perhaps there is an extension for OpenPGP encryption/decryption.

[in] Microsoft Office 2011 Word document OR in Mac TexEdit.app, [OpenPGP functions] show up.

For TextEdit this is because the OpenPGP developers created services which could interact with text, and TextEdit sees those. (Disclaimer: I have neither Microsnot Office nor OpenPGP.) For Office 2011 this is because their developers created a way for that application to interact either with OpenPGP services or possibly all text services. No one has done this interfacing for Writer.

I specifically want to encrypt the text within the document and not the document itself.

You should ask about this in an OpenPGP forum. Someone may have implemented an OpenPGP interface that OpenOffice/Writer can use. If no one has done that, you will have ask for someone to do it for you, or you'll have to do it yourself. For the latter, begin by learning about how services work. Making a Systemwide Service is a link to Apple's introduction. A web search will find numerous resources, some of which may reference OpenPGP. A library, either physical or online, may have books about the subject.

If you're neither willing to wait for someone to implement this nor to study how to do it yourself, a simple workaround is to copy the text from Writer to TextEdit, encrypt it there, and copy the encrypted text back to Writer. You should test encryption on a copy of your document until you have verified that the decryption process is successful.

Edit: NeoOffice (a derivative of OpenOffice) says this about "Support for Mac Services": In NeoOffice, many of the menus within the NeoOffice > Services menu will be enabled whenever you highlight data in your document. When you select any of the submenus in the NeoOffice > Services menu, the highlighted data will be sent to the Mac application that matches to the Services menu that you select. NeoOffice also supports Mac services that change the highlighted data in your document.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.

[WoodBe RhoBust]

Dear Mr Programmer, Thank you for your helpful reply but unfortunately it does not quite solve this issue for me.

Indeed I also would rather not have to use Microsnot Office especially as my version (Office 2011) is 32 bit and will not work in MacOS Mojave.

Also, Apple's textedit.app, where GPG services do work, has the horrible habit of keeping all previous versions of a document, including the one with the plain unencrypted text! So, not much use.

I have briefly checked GPG support for available extensions but could find no mention of this topic. I can start a post there too.

In the meantime your excellent link to creating systemwide services using Automator is a possible solution for me but will obviously take a bit of time for me, a non-user, to get my head around.

So for the moment I will not mark the problem as SOLVED - hope there might be another, maybe easier solution. Looks as if for the moment, I will have to continue with the non-opensource software.