How to view 'full path' of open document?

Is there a way one can view/check the complete path of a document that’s currently open in LO? — i.e., e.g., if you don’t remember the drive or directory you opened it from?

Is there a ‘preference’ to have the ‘full path’ displayed with the document name (at the top of the screen)?

Thanks.

===Editing many years later (@Lupp)===
To limit possible confusion;
This thread contains comments related to the behavior and usability of “this site”.
However, most of these comments seem to come from a time when “this site” still used a rather different software (“askbot” instead of “discourse”). Much of what’s mentioned there is no longer valid.

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Thanks Lupp. I’m in the process of switching from Win7 to macOS. Chose LO to replace MS Office Pro Plus 2010 (!). Finally figured out what I was doing wrong in creating a macro (Record only with keyboard input, not mouse movements; I shouldah figured that out), and happened upon this reply (post) of yours. Good idea, good code, now incorporated in my instance of LO. Thanks again.

The very first item in the ‘Standard’ toolbar, named ‘Load URL’ will show the full path-name (if not a new ‘Untitled’ document is active). You may have to “check” it customising the toolbar if the control doesn’t show.

Editing:

How to customise the toolbar is described in more detail in the second comment below.

===Edit 2020-08-30 about 21:25 UTC===
Being back to the thread due to a recent comment on my answer, I visited the bug mentioned by @mariosv and decided to write a little macro offering a workaround for the purpose:

Sub showFileLocationInTitleBar()
u = ThisComponent.URL
If u = "" Then Exit Sub REM The document was not yet stored.
uWithoutProto = Split(u, "file://")(1)
ThisComponent.Title = uWithoutProto
End Sub

(I didn’t thoroughly check for every possible issue with the code.)

I just assigned the above macro for my own LibreOffice to the Activate Document event via >Tools>Customize and saved the setting for all LibreOffice. It works for me as expected, and I consider to work permanently with it.
However, I cannot check with different OS, and I don’t work in an environment with any specialties.
[Edit time=2020-08-31 about 19:10 UTC]After some additional considerations, and rgearding specific effects occurring during the debugging of any Basic code, I would dissuade from assigning the macro to Activate document. I assigned it instead to View created and to Document has been saved as as well. So far this works as I like it.[/Edit]

If you also want to give the workaround a try on your system, and you want to get the location shown regarding its path conventions, you may use the variant:

Sub showFileLocationInTitleBarSystemStyle()
u = ThisComponent.URL
If u = "" Then Exit Sub REM The document was not yet stored.
ThisComponent.Title = ConvertFromUrl(u)
End Sub  

[Edit 2021-08-16 about 19:40 GMT]
Final version:

Sub onViewCreated()
showFileLocationInTitleBar(True)
End Sub

Sub onDocumentSavedAs()
showFileLocationInTitleBar(True)
End Sub

Sub showFileLocationInTitleBar(Optional pUrlStyle As Boolean)
On Local Error Goto fail
If IsMissing(pUrlStyle) Then pUrlStyle = True
url = ThisComponent.URL
If url = "" Then Exit Sub REM The document was not yet stored.
If pUrlStyle Then
  urlSpl = Split(url, "file://") REM Just to save some space.
  tN = urlSpl(Ubound(urlSpl))
Else
  tN = ConvertFromURL(url)
End If
ThisComponent.Title = tN
fail:
End Sub  

[/Edit]

1 Like

Not sure we’re talking about the same thing. Nothing to do with URLs, just document names (& paths).

But if we are:

Please specify the actual steps to take. I don’t see anything about ‘Standard’ toolbar or ‘Load URL’ in the toolbar area or in any dropdown menu. Thanks.

A local file location is equivalent to an URL in this context and therefore the control is short-named ‘Load URL’. It will nonetheless also show the full path-name of a local file under work.

Do you know how to customise the toolbars?

‘View’ > ‘Toolbars’ > ‘Customise’ > ‘Toolbars’ or

‘Tools’ > ‘Customise’ > ‘Toolbars’ lead there.

Choose ‘Standard’ and check the first ‘Toolbar Content’ ‘Commands’ named ‘Load URL’.

It’s a pity that this isn’t set by default. (Mimicking bad MS style?)

Thanks! Found it via your instructions, but would otherwise have been anything but obvious.

@mkraft - If you now think the answer was simply correct you may “ceck” it giving a hint for other users. If you think it shoiuld be completed or rewritten in another way you may answer your own question again.

@Lupp . . . Actually, I find the messaging format here very confusing. Especially without quoting I often can’t tell whose comment is being addressed in a reply (unless there’s an “@”).

How do I ‘check’ the answer (if that’s what you meant by ‘ceck’) – i.e., to mark it as a ‘correct’ one?

@mkraft - There is a clickable “checkmark” below the “upvote/downvote” marks. But don’r worry. Many questioners don’t regard it. Thus it isn’t very helpful for other users anyway.

@Lupp @mkraft - I feel it would be much better if people would flag answers as correct when they are. However, I am also of the impression that the “check mark” is not sufficiently intuitive. A “click here when answer is correct” button would be better. Also the “up” and “down” button for voting is the same. “vote up”, “vote down” would be better. When people do flag an answer correct, we would get a much better picture of the situation.

The suggested solution by @Lupp is nice but the file name box near top left of the open window is often too small (short) to display the full path (URL) to the file that is open. It would be much better (IMHO) if the full path were displayed in the top bar (title bar) of the window where now only the file name is displayed. As far as I can tell, the requested enhancement has never been acted upon by the developers. What does it take to display the full path, when LibreOffice is certainly aware of exactly where the open file is located?

I have not been able to find an extension to LO that might accomplish this. Perhaps I have missed it.

I apologize if I seem agitated about this, but this “problem” is a frequent source of uncertainty and bother in my daily activities when using LibreOffice.

3 Likes

@ve3oat: As an experienced user of this site you surely know that discussion about bugs and enhancements is going on in https://bugs.documentfoundation.org. Except for a few developers also posting here, you only will be read by ordinary users, and you won’t ghet much attention anyway for comments of this kind, I’m afraid.
However, it’s very simple to show the full path in ThisComponent.Title which is the string displayed in the title bar of the window in front of the module notification.
You may place the following “macro” in a module of your local Standard library, and assign it to a new item added to one of your toolbars:

Sub showFileLocationInTitleBar()
u = ThisComponent.URL
If u = "" Then Exit Sub REM The document was not yet stored.
uWithoutProto = Split(u, "file://")(1)
ThisComponent.Title = uWithoutProto
End Sub  

(I didn’t thoroughly check for every possible issue with the code.)

You are right, of course, @Lupp. And I am sorry. I was “googling” for an extension to solve the problem and this item from AskLO came up – couldn’t resist making my comment. I shouldn’t have. Sorry.

Thanks very much for the code. I will try that.

I just assigned the above macro to the ‘Activate Document’ event via >Tools>Customize and saved the setting for all LibreOffice. It works for me as expected, and I consider to work permanently with it.
However, I cannot check with different OS, and I don’t work in an environment with any specialties.

Lupp- that is NOT a “simple” answer. And as the problem is so undemanding, it is disappointing that we even have to discuss the issue. I can’t think of another app I use that doesn’t have this “feature” easily available. I’m toying with using Libre Office. If you want to “grow” the community, YOU encourage the developers. I’ve just waste 20 minutes with log in hassles. And I am not new, or inexperienced. Or impressed.

Without any consideration of the “comment” by @MSPhobe (who declared that @Lupp must do anything beyond trying to share their knowledge on this user-to-user site), just noting that there’s the related Location clickable link in File|Properties as of version 7.2.

I will suppress this time my tendency to also be phobic concerning this or that.

I can well understand the desire to see the full URL / location / other complete information in the title bar. of the ContainerWindow. (In rare cases there may be need to abbrviate it. I won’t plea for impossible things.)

The (load) URL windowlet is a kind of a surrogate, but needs to be enabled specifically for every document type, and can’t be adapted in width. (I would recommend to enable it anyway, and also to make this the default.) The DocumentProperty doesn’t even look like a surrogate to me.

Why suppress information? That’s MS doctrine, imo.

I surely dont know the lots of applications @MSPhobe knows, but some (to me) relevant ones like 7zip and Notepad++ actually show the full path. What’s bad about that.? LibO also should show, not hide.

There is a request for enhancement Add an option to show the full path in the window title.. Please add you comment.

As I already commented in the other thread under not too rare circumstances the title bar might not be wide enough to fit the complete path-name in. The control I named may also not be wide enough but it can be scrolled moving the cursor.

> Please add you comment.

Done.

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=82952