‘Recent Documents’ in Open Office Calc’ shows files of all formats.
Is it possible to display recently used files only relevant to Office Calc such as .xls and .ods
When I go to ‘Recent Documents’ in Office Calc all the ‘Recent Documents’ are taken up with pointless ‘Office Writer’ documents and the spreadsheet I used a week ago has long since dropped off the bottom of the list! - And I have to trundle off into Explorer to find it.
Any help in this matter would be much appreciated.
N
You are here on the Ask-LibreOffice page but not on Ask-OpenOffice.
LO is an integrated application with specialised components (Writer, Calc, …). When you launch LO, a document, a component, …, you launch in fact the global app which analyses the launch target to route the job to the proper component. The File menu (at least the top items) belong in the global app and is used by every component.
This has the drawback of showing all recently used documents, independent from the module, cluttering the list. It has also the advantage you can launch any recently used document from any module (for instance, you may work on a set composed of a Writer document and a Calc spreadsheet which is incorporated into the Writer document; the spreadsheet can be opened from Writer without fuss).
This is a periodic request. Search the site. If you consider this could be a beneficial improvement, submit a feature request on Bugzilla with a good argumentation.
LibreOfficeDev. 7.5.
Additionally, in Windows as you appear to be, if you hover over right-click the Calc icon on the Taskbar it will show a list of recent Calc documents.
Note, it might be right click but I am not at computer right now
It is right click.
We always appreciate thanks and feedback. But this is no solution to your question. Please, repost as a comment (only you as answer owner can do it). There should be a command in the … link under the post, wrench tool to do it. Otherwise, transfer manually to a comment, then delete your “non-answer”. This is done so that other users can know from the home page if there is a solution or not.
Not the icon you pinned to Taskbar.
If Calc is opened, an icon will appear on the Taskbar. If you right click that icon then you can see a list of recent Calc documents
Thank you very much Hrbrgr, ajlittoz , Mike, Earnest & Wanderer
I appreciate your comments. I did search with all the key words I could think of and couldn’t find any relevant posts before I started.
I am on Windows 10 - which I recognise is a failure on my part! - But I run the sequencer Cubase and have also never managed to get my printer to work on Linux. I have an aversion to splash-screens.
Earnest your solution does not work for me. I have tried a number of variations opening, closing and opening again different Calc spreadsheets. I do not get any ‘recent documents’ when right clicking on the taskbar icon.
It’s ok I will carry on as I am opening up my spreadsheets from the Explorer. By the way I think Libre Office is fabulous…
Nick
I am on Windows 10, and I don’t recognize that as a failure on my part, nor as something preventing me from contributing. I personally like the OS.
Hi Mike You’re totally valid. I guess I was just trying to say that during the 25 years I’ve been using Windows it has become increasingly insidious and I seem to spend quite a lot of time turning its stuff off, but I fear I’m now off-grid.
Ajlittoz I think I understand, in principle, what you have said about LO being an integrated application. But I notice that the menu at the top of Calc and Writer are different, and many of the drop-down sub-menus are different. So why can’t the different applications recognise their own file types of ‘Recent Documents?’
One reason is, that LibreOffice does not rely on file extension to tell if it’s a Writer document, or Calc document, or Draw document … Being a cross-platform application, LibreOffice “knows” that relying on file extension is Windosw-specific “feature”, and that many times, the correct file type can only be detected by analyzing the file bytes. So you may name your spreadsheet “myfile.DOC”, and it would open in Calc.
That means, that to show a filtered list correctly, LibreOffice must not only save the file names, but also their detected types; or it must do the detection (that is slow!) when showing the list. By the way, the filtering that I demonstrated in the screenshot above is incorrect, relying on extensions … something to improve later.
But indeed, that is possible.
I’m no developer so I just guess. Menus can be different because it is easy to compose them with some XML description individualised per component. But behind the scene, the code corresponding to menu items is the same. It looks, though, according to @mikekaganski’s post that some evolution is on the road.
Hi Mike
It’s great to get that insight, however for practical purposes my point, I think, remains the same.
You say that Libre Office analyses ‘Recent Documents’ through an in-depth study of its 1’s and 0’s and not through a face-value acceptance of its file extension. Fair enough sounds like a good solid ‘belts and braces’ approach.
However for practical purposes when using the Office Calc part of the application it would be a whole lot more convenient for punters like me to just see recently used spreadsheets!
Nick
The Taskbar recent documents is a Windows setting: In Windows 10 click Start menu > Settings > Personalisation > Start and then turn on Show recently opened items in Jump lists on Start or the taskbar and in File Explorer Quick Access
What I see below
Thank you Earnest, I had switched off that facility in Windows settings, I see it works as you suggest.
All my best, Nick
This is also giving the same list on right click on my Win10, wich also shows in my Start-Menu - but the latter may be because I replaced the default with OpenShell.
