can I change styles without using mouse?

[mrodent]

I hate being forced to use the mouse.

I’m aware of F11… but is it possible to change styles without then ever touching the mouse? And then make the Styles dialog disappear… without touching the mouse?

I’m also aware of macros and customisation (of hotkeys). Obviously I could set a hotkey combo for a particular style… perhaps I could write a macro which will let me choose a particular style “by hand” without using the mouse.

There is also the little box at the far left in the style toolbar, where the style is displayed… maybe it’s possible to access this box using a hotkey? And then change the style and then return to the document with another keyboard command?

Any help appreciated…

[Regina]

LibreOffice should be usable without mouse, although the way to the operations is often not short (see next paragraph). If something is not doable without mouse, it is a bug. You find a lot of information with the search term “accessibility” in the help. Because of the long ways to get the desired operation, defining own short-cuts for often needed features is advisable, see answer by JohnSUN.

With accessibility ways you jump from part to part of the Style&Formatting pane by tab and shift-tab, and move inside a part with arrow-keys. You assign the selected (dark blue, simple highlight is light-blue-gray) style with Enter, which in addition sets the focus back to the document. But annoying is the fact, that F11 opens the pane, but the pane does not get focus. So you would in addition use F6 and Shift+F6 to traverse the toolbars and windows to set the focus to the Style&Formatting pane. It has the focus, when there is a dotted rectangle around the word “Styles”.

A quicker way besides the short-cut way, is using access-keys, those underlined characters, which you use together with the Alt-key. For an English UI you get Alt y to open the Styles menu and then e.g. Alt x to assign style “text body”. Here you might need to once add your often used styles to the menu.

[mrodent]

Thanks… in fact the Styles menu in my version of LO Writer (5.1.6.2) has access key “S”, not “Y”, and in fact I’d prefer those underlinings to be on permanent, not just when you press “Alt”. Yes, “X” selected Text Body, but that’s one of the few styles which has an in-built hotkey (Ctrl-0). Yes, I’ll probably add some styles to that menu. I wonder whether you can stipulate in a macro this “multi-F6/Shift-F6” to get to or from the F11 panel? Pretty annoying!

[techsquirrel]

You’re probably already aware of these, but if not…
Here are a few bits to help in your future mouse-avoidance efforts:

Working with the LibreOffice user interface without mouse

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Shortcuts_Accessibility#Working_with_the_LibreOffice_user_interface_without_mouse

General Shortcut Keys in LibreOffice

https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/General_Shortcut_Keys_in

Shortcut Keys for LibreOffice Writer

https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Shortcut_Keys_for_Writer

[PYS]

Hi

In addition to the answers already given, it is possible to modify the current style without the mouse. Use the keyboard key to display the pop-up menu (or Shift+F10) then Styles▸Edit Style.

This is limited to the current style but if you mainly use the heading styles and the Text Body, they are applicable by the shortcuts Ctrl+0, Ctrl+1, and so on.

So we can apply / edit very quickly without the mouse.

HTH - Regards

[gabix]

In addition: Shift+Ctrl+0 sets the Default paragraph style. However, for any particular style (almost) any key shortcut can be assigned.

[JohnSUN]

Of course you can, why not? Your idea about hot keys is the most faithful (IMHO)

[mrodent]

Thanks… as I said, I know about this. It seems bizarre that you are forced to use the mouse to use the F11 (styles dialog) properly, to gain access to all the styles…

[mrodent]

What I’ve found so far:

• pressing F6 takes you on a circular path around both windows (the main LO Writer window and the Styles dialog)
• pressing Shift-F6 takes you on a circular path around both windows - seemingly the same path as F6 but in reverse
• with focus in the Styles dialog pressing Ctrl-F6 takes you back to the Writer window
• if you are in Writer and you press F11 and then Down-arrow you find that the focus in the Styles dialog is typically the top icon in the little column of 5 icons at the top right “Sidebar settings” - this is no help, but if you then press Up-arrow the focus goes to the styles displayed - you can then use the Up-arrow and Down-arrow to navigate through them
• if you are in Writer and you press F11 and then Up-arrow the focus usually seems to go to the last icon of these 5 small icons is put in the list of styles… press Down-arrow to get focus to the styles list
• once in this list you can press Shift-F10 to make the context (right-click) menu appear: this will usually contain “New” and “Modify” and sometimes “Delete”
• if you press “Delete” without bringing up this context menu it will delete the style only if this style is deletable; if it isn’t, pressing “Delete” actually deletes something (text) back in the actual document! (but also leaves the focus unchanged in the Styles dialog)
• it is “difficult” to get “out of” your list of styles (or to change to another list) without using the mouse… but the key here is to press Tab (or Shift-Tab, reverse circling direction)… this can then take you to the drop-down list at the bottom of the dialog.
• once the cursor is in this drop-down list its contents (all drop-down items) can be displayed at once by going Alt-Down-arrow. You can also circle through them by pressing Up-arrow and Down-arrow, and if you press a letter S, C, H, A, T, L or I this will also take you to the next “choice of style list” beginning with this letter (e.g. A → “All styles”)
• using Tab is the way to navigate around the various elements in the Styles dialog, excluding the little column of 5 icons to the top right. So it circles you through 1) being “in the list” 2) “choice of style list” drop-down 3) style category (paragraph, character, frame, page, list); 4) the two oddity icons in the top right of this main part of the Style dialog, “fill format mode” and “new style from selection”
• pressing F11 at any point when the focus is on anything in the Styles dialog will dismiss the dialog and return you to the document

Using all the above you can, seemingly, do pretty much anything you need to, whilst shunning the mouse as an Unclean Thing.

• NB should you ever want to go from the 4 circling items (circling using Tab) in the main part of the Styles dialog to the 5 little icons in the upper right of the dialog your best bet seems to be to press F6 and then Shift-F6 and then Down-arrow or Up-arrow: every time focus returns to the Styles dialog it appears as though focus is then “waiting” to go to the top or bottom of this column of 5 icons at the top right.