macOS request - standard keyboard behavior, please

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#1

Hello! I’m a regular donor to LibreOffice. No really. I’ve donated annually since 2019. (Obviously, I’m mentioning this in the hopes that you care about the experiences and feedback of those who are able to and choose to financially contribute to LibreOffice.)

I’ve never really used LibreOffice as my primary office suite as I’ve usually used Apple’s Pages, Numbers, & Keynote. However, now that Apple is making these things “freemium” and infusing AI into them, I’m in the process of migrating my most important spreadsheet to LibreOffice Calc. Assuming this goes well, I will begin migrating more of my documents to LibreOffice.

Unfortunately, I just discovered that the keyboard behavior in LibreOffice Calc in macOS is non-standard. Particularly, the use of Shift + Option + Left Arrow / Right Arrow. Standard macOS behavior would be for these keboard shortcuts to mover the current text selection left or right one word at a time. Instead LibreOffice Calc uses this to change the column width. It’s very frustrating that LibreOffice does not stick to the standard keyboard shortcuts that basically all other apps on Mac use.

I plan to keep using, promoting, and financially supporting LibreOffice and so, I really hope that you will read this and decide to fix LibreOffice on the Mac to use standard macOS keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks for listening. :smile:

#5

AFAIK there isn’t a command in Calc to move text. There is in Writer but that is to move paragraphs a paragraph at a time.

Here is a list of default Calc keyboard shortcuts, bookmarked at Mac, Calc Guide 25.2 - Appendix A, Keyboard Shortcuts

Shift+Cmd+→ “Selects in the right direction to the edge of the current data range” so if you are editing a cell it will add the next word (strictly speaking, up until the next space) to the selection for every press ( well, it does in Windows). If you are not editing a cell it will select filled cells to the right until it comes to a blank cell.

#2

LibreOffice is cross-platform and keyboard shortcuts may not match the standards of other programs or users.

Because of this, keyboard shortcuts can be configured. Read the documentation to change the default settings.

#3

I think part of being cross-platform is honoring the regular conventions of each platform. It doesn’t make sense to not use the keyboard shortcut conventions of the respective platforms.

There’s plenty of things that LibreOffice does on Mac, Linux, and Windows that are unique to each of those platforms. On the Mac, for instance, LibreOffice uses the global menu bar and has the window close, minimize, and maximize buttons on the left instead of on the right.

That being said, I tried to do the customization that you suggested and I was not successful.

In the Customize window, when I go to Keyboard, and I find the Shortcut keys that are for Shift + Option + Left Arrow / Right Arrow, I do not find any Function in the Navigate category that sounds like it is for selecting left or right one word at a time.

Currently, the Shortcut keys for Shift + Command + Left/Right Arrow are set to Select to Left Block Margin and Select to Right Block Margin. Since Shift + Command + Left/Right Arrow is what currently selects word by word, I tried setting the Shift + Option + Left/Right Arrow to these settings. It doesn’t work.

So, all I’m seeing now is that the Shortcut keys setting for Shift + Command + Left/Right Arrow don’t actually match their current function. And, I see no setting that I can set Shift + Option + Left/Right Arrow to to get a word by word selection option.

Also, if it is possible to set LibreOffice (and I hope it is and I’ve just not found the right functions) to do the expected behavior for macOS, would that not then be an argument for this being the default setting on that platform?

#6

You can add an enhancement request at https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/, and share the bug number here in the format tdf#111111. Thanks.

In the meantime, I think that it could be possible to create a macro and assign it to the desired shortcut key stroke.

In Windows and Linux, this is done with Alt+Left Arrow and Alt+Right Arrow

#7

Just for test the Reply button below RussellM72 comment.

#4

I’m sorry I can’t help you because I don’t have a Mac and I don’t know if the keyboard shortcuts you indicate belong to the Mac or to the Mac spreadsheet program.

Maybe someone with a Mac can help you.

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