Controlling What Actually Appears On My Toolbar In Writer

[frankd]

Hello. Let me explain why I am using this forum. Firstly, because I new to Writer.
More importantly because my toolbar is in such a state that I cannot find anything
regarding any suggested answer. It is as if someone went out of their way to PREVENT me
from using Writer. So if I Google my question the answer will say, for instance,
‘go to Tools’. The problem is that I cannot see ‘Tools’ at all since my toolbar does NOT include text and I have no clue what the icon for Tools is.

       Trying to simplify my question, I would ask : 

         How can I set the toolbar so there is text for each of the  icons 
          AND I can retrieve any missing icon/text ?

        Please remember that for any facility/icon you suggest I use, 
        that first I must be able to access it ‘blind’. Thanks.

[ajlittoz]

Welcome on this Question & Answers site (not a forum, so rules and usage are a bit different). Please edit your question (contrary to forum, any question or answer is not frozen and can always be improved). As such, there is no enough information to understand your problem.

First, general data about your configuration: OS name and LO version (there are subtle differences between platforms and releases).

From your description, it may be you have chosen a “ribbon” UI instead of the traditional menu interface (which has less icons then the tabbed UIs). Which one? If this sounds like Klingon to you, attach a screenshot to show what you see.

Please, once again, edit your question instead of adding a comment. This is more contributor-friendly as they won’t need to fumble through a possibly lengthy thread.

[frankd]

This is a mac and I do not recall being offered options when I installed Libreoffice.
I did do a screenshot of the toolbar but what I got was this :

[ajlittoz]

Well, you were asked to edit your question, instead of using a comment. But as a newcomer, you’re forgiven.

Under MacOS, there is a single menu bar. Consequently, the UI is split between the window and the top of screen. Copy the information from Tools>About LO to tell us the exact version.

In principle, when you hover over the icons and menus in the toolbars, you should get tooltips explaining the purpose of the tools. You may need to stop a bit as there is some (intended) latency between the flight of the mouse over an item and tooltip popup (to avoid bothering you once you know the goal of the tool).

[Hrbrgr]

You have set one of the two options:

Tabbed Compact - then go to the right “Home”

Groupedbar Compact - then go to the right “Menu”

there you can choose “User Interface”.

Take “Standard Toolbar”

---

User interface in Writer

[ajlittoz]

According to the screenshot, I think @frankd has the “standard toolbar”. I had forgotten that MacOS UI exhibits a single menu bar which is switched when an application receives the focus. So this is not a matter of choosing some UI, but rather probably of staying long enough over an item.

If tooltips don’t appear, OP may go to Preferences (don’t remember how you get to it under MacOS), Options if there is such an item but I think Preferences cover that. In LibreOffice>General, tick Extended tips. If tips still don’t appear, installation is faulty.

[frankd]

Thank you in particular for Writer Guide MacOS Edition 7.2 which I have now downloaded to my desktop.

Also to EarnestAl for that screenshot. Seems part of my problem is my lack of familiarity with MacOS itself.

The row at the top has the apple logo and particularly ‘Tools’.

Case closed, I think. Thanks everybody.

[EarnestAl]

The problem is that the menu is not visible.
Right click on the top toolbar and select Customise from the context menu. It will take a few seconds for the dialogue to appear.
In the left-hand pane select the icon Menubar, click the right-facing arrow to add the icon to the standard toolbar and click OK
Click the newly added icon to toggle display of the menu.

Virtually all the instructions refer to menu items

[Edit]
Following @ajlittoz comment:
The Mac Writer screen from page 17 of The Writer Guide MacOS Edition with my circle showing location of Tools

Download The Writer Guide MacOS Edition 7.2 from around a third of the way down this page English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides

[ajlittoz]

I am not sure this is the issue. OP mentioned he was under MacOS where the menu bar is positioned at top of screen, not at top of application window. His screenshot showed only part of the application window, not the whole screen.

There is always some sort of menu bar in MacOS. The GUI is not the same as under other OS’s.

And unless I’m wrong, the question was about the significance of all the items in the toolbar. There are myriads of them and the symbol is not always obvious.

[Vanadium]

The toolbars in Libreoffice can heavily be customized. The dialog for this is reached when, from the main menu, you select Tools, then Customize in the pull-down menu. The “Toolbars” tab presents a comprehensive interface to add and remove toolbars, and add and remove icons on each of them.

For each toolbar, you can control how it is displayed, with icons only, icons and text, or text only.

1. Select the toolbar you want to change from the dropdown button under the label Target.
2. To the right of that dropdown, you find a hamburger menu (the button with the icon ≡). This is where you set whether to display only icons, icons and text or only text for the toolbar you selected in step 1.