[Solved] Changing default & new docs from right click

[Bill Cameron]

I have been trying to change the font and size of my text documents from Times New Roman 12 to Tahoma 11. I thought I had done via load save option but when I right click "new" it comes up as the default. Help

Bill

[DrewJensen]

When you changed in your document did you change in the default template - when a new document is created it pulls this from the template file..

or

Tools > Options > Writer > basic fonts

Change the default font there, I believe that will do it also.

[bhmt]

If you continue to have the template issue, I see it as two very different ways of starting a Writer document.

One way (wrong way?), is when I right click in Windows Explorer to start a new OOo Writer file, a file of the correct type is created by Windows, but it seems to know nothing about Writer template choices. It's just a skeleton xml file. When I click on that existing, empty file and Writer opens it for the first time, I think it finds no template information. I think it then uses Writer's _factory default template_ because there was no template information in the file. It doesn't use anything I have customized and set as a default for _new documents_ (as this is an existing document, not a new one, to Writer!).

The other way (correct way?), is when I first open Writer, and click Writer's File/new, that will create a new document using my customized default template or whatever template I select. Nothing yet is written to my hard drive. I save it to a location and with a file name and the file is created on disk. If I exit Writer and later double click on that file, Writer opens that file and sees what template is associated with it and continues to use that.

Note 1: the directory where OOo will offer to save a _new_ file is the "My Documents" folder. You can navigate to a different location each time, of course. If a different default location would be more convenient can be changed via the Tools/options/Ooo/paths dialog (and can reset with the default button).

Note 2 (workaround): Writer will offer to save an _existing_ file at the location you opened it from. If you frequently need new documents at a small number of directories and are usually already there in Windows Explorer, consider creating a new empty document from Writer and copying it to those locations in advance. Then, when the need arises at those directories, right click the existing file, do a copy/paste and rename the copy as desired. Click on it and Writer will open with your template and such already on board. And, when you save it, the offered location and name is probably what you want already.

[Hagar Delest]

One way (wrong way?), is when I right click in Windows Explorer to start a new OOo Writer file, a file of the correct type is created by Windows, but it seems to know nothing about Writer template choices.

Right. See here to know why : Issue 40233 - Making a new document from a context menu doesn't use a template.

[bhmt]

Thanks for the point-out. That discussion mentioned making a new blank file in Writer using your favorite template and saving it as "soffice.odt", then using that to replace the missing or file in the user template directory C:\Documents and Settings\username\Templates\soffice.odt

Seems to work fine. Neat!