Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Good evening folks,

Somehow I opened a themes tool bar and have been unable to close it. I would appreciate your help in getting off my window.

Jer

Title Edited. A descriptive title for posts helps others who are searching for solutions and increases the chances of a reply. (TheGurkha, Moderator)

Have you tried unchecking it in: Views>Toolbars?
Also what is this happening in? Cal, Writer, all, etc. Windows, Mac, Linux?

LYes I've tried that but nothing shows up. Here is a photo of the problem.

Do you mean the Styles and Formatting sidebar? Try pressing F11.

If this has answered your question please go to your first post and use the Edit button, and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can use the green tick icon at the same time if you like.

F11 does not do it so I'm still stuck in my loop. Thanks for your help however.

Can you post a screenshot so we can see what you are seeing?

[Forum] How to attach a document here.

Here's a "screen shot". not very good but I think you willl get the idea. Thanks for your assistance

Jer

That is the picture gallery.
Tools>Gallery should uncheck and remove it.

+1.

(Easy when we can see it!)

If this has answered your question please go to your first post and use the Edit button, and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can use the green tick icon at the same time if you like.

How ilogical is that. It says themes on the top left hand side, so a new user will have no idea that it is the gallery window. It solved my problem, but without this post, I would have spent another hour tryting to close it. Thanks

It's now 2014. This problem was posted in 2009! I also had the same issue and found the answer very quickly through this forum. You guys are doing a fantastic job. Kudos.

It is now 2016, I too have been helped by this post for this highly illogical (microsoft-like) menu item having searched using '"close themes" etc.
The most frustrating point as I so often found with MS Office is spending so much time to find how to perform something so incredibly simple, purely due to poor use of vocabulary in help facilities or, the help facility using only 1 word where a user may know a different word with the same meaning.
Classic examples (in English) are the use of 'Quit' (apple) or 'Exit' (MS/OO) and 'Search' (Word) or 'Find' (WordPerfect). The airline industry has solved this problem by using "Simplified English"; a formally developed structure to improve communication and reduce the risk of errors & accidents.

It's very illogical, so I never had problems with it. The menu item should go in the View menu instead of Tools, but this kind illogical things has one advantage: it forces the user to learn to use the software in a more rational way than just go for it and muddle through.
When you are new to some software, first make a tour through the interface. Wade through the menus, with a blank document, experiment with the option you come across, let yourself be guided by your curiosity. When you find yourself doing something in a clumsy way over and over again, remind yourself that this is a productivity tool, and that the developers probably found some better way of doing it and implemented that, and it's your job to find out that better way of doing it.

There's more than one way to find answers. Look for activated icons on the toolbars and deactivate each one that is unfamiliar. That quickly reveals that the Gallery icon opens and closes the "New Theme" bar.

Sometimes a Google search is more helpful than searching through Help. Enter openoffice new theme in a Google search. This will find several posts on this forum that tell how to close the Gallery.

It is now 2018 and I found this thread very useful. Thank you for keeping it available!

OpenOffice is a great program and I also found that I could not intuitively locate the option to hide from view that mess of icons near the top of the screen (with all due respect for whomever took the time to make it). I cannot understand why I have to select Tools>Gallery to turn off an annoying and intrusive list of arrows and graphics when the View drop-down seems like a much more sensible and convenient place to hide/unhide something which is in view. Now the next thing to find how to turn off is that bar along the right side of the screen.

Do you mean one similar to this (from Writer)? Hover the cursor over the vertical dots and see what happens Spoiler: a tool tip appears with the text "Hide" - you can click to hide or drag to a larger/smaller width as required.

Actually thats a great little tip as well. A couple minutes after I posted (and I read the other moderators message above mine) I hovered over all options again in the drop downs to see what was active and I found the sidebar in plain sight under View. By unchecking it, it hides completely, including those little dots. I'm just trying to configure AOO so it replaces many instances of windows notepad with the added benefit of auto-saving multiple open documents every 1 minutes. Gotta love AOO.