Redocking the Slide Pane in OpenOffice Impress

Note: This is a repost, for two reasons: A) it's still not searchable through Technorati and B) it's been a year, so I figure it's now at "classic" status. ;>

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I just found a very byzantine solution to an annoying problem.

I'm doing training this week and was finishing up my slides for an Impress class and accidentally undocked the Slides Pane. It was floating all over the place and I couldn't dock it again.

I understand that in some versions you can just drag the Slides Pane back to the edge and it'll redock. Sometimes you can hold down Ctrl and drag it back, and it'll redock.

But not with the December 2.0 update of OpenOffice.org.

I finally found the solution in one of the [email protected] mailing list archives.

You have to hold down Ctrl, then double-click the gray area next to the word slides in the slides pane. Not the top title bar Slides but the second time Slides appears.

See this screen shot. I'll do a better one when I'm done with the training class but you'll see what to do when you click on this thumbnail and look at the big screen shot. You have to hold down Ctrl, then double-click the circled area. This will dock your pane again.

Phew.

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Comments

[Diane Gottschalk]

Solveig,

Thanks, I had this situation in class today!

[Solveig]

Hi Diane,

Glad to hear it! I actually reposted it since I was in Irvine doing training and wanted to make it obvious for my own class. ;>

[Kevin]

Wow thanks! You just saved my life :)

[Anson MacKeracher]

Thank you so much! I've been trying to figure this out for ages!

[Satish]

thanx a ton...this was annoying especially when u have a deadline !..

[Anna]

thank you thank you thank you!

[Jens]

One small issue:
with OO 2.0.2 I had the problem that the procedure above did not work, because I had many different presentations open. (Some docked , some not)
When I open the "un-docked" separately, the procedure worked! Strange...

Thx you very much!

[Andy]

Thank u and finally resolved my problem.

[Seb]

Thank you very much for the tip!

[Matt]

Thanks so much. It was driving me crazy!!

[Mulchi]

Thanks alot ! I almost freaked out ;)

[Solveig]

It's funny how many people are helped by this blog entry. ;> I hope the issue is fixed in the next release!

Solveig

[Riz Ainuddin]

this is so annoying. thanks for the tip! been searching for this.

[Leo]

I also was in this situation. It's annoying. I quickly found your solution and it helped. Thanks a lot!

I did't really understood your explanation "You have to hold down Ctrl, then double-click the gray area next to the word slides in the slides pane. Not the top title bar Slides but the second time Slides appears." I even thought: what is "word slides"? Maybe it's some kind of slides? :) Also, I thought that "gray area" is some gray area between slides on the right.

It wasn't immediately clear to me that you simply talk about GRAY AREA BELOW THE TITLE "SLIDES PANE" in the Sides Pane.

But your picture helped me a lot.

It's interesting are OOO developers aware of this issue.

[Simon]

i'm wondering why no one's asking about "WHY??" why is it the way it is? why this non-intuitive behaviour?

[Solveig]

Ours not to reason why. ;> But it is one of my most-frequently-commented-on blog posts. I like to think that this will be improved upon or fixed in the next release. I actually haven't tested it in 2.3 yet.

Solveig

[Esther]

Oh my God.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you.

As a non-expert user, I've searched the openoffice help, the user forums, and still couldn't find the answer to this problem. I actually googled "openoffice impress slide pane out" and got this result.

Thank goodness. Keep up the great work!

[Solveig]

Hi Esther,

It's funny how many people comment on this blog entry -- too bad that it's that hard to figure out, for me too, but I'm glad I could help.

Solveig

[Joao Moreno]

Thank you!

I was nearly banging my head on the wall.

[Rijk]

Thank you! I had to install US version i.s.o. Dutch, just to find out it was called a "slide pane", after which I could google on this and found your solution!
It is still the same in version OO 2.3 by the way....

[Spencer]

Thanks for the tip! A friend of mine was having trouble with this, and in the process of helping him, I was too! Gladly I found this page in seconds with a Google search, and now everyone is happy! :-)

[David]

I was also impacted by this bug. Very useful picture about how to fix this.

[Thajan]

Thank you very much. I had this problem a while ago and it was driving me crazy!
Didn't need the screen shot, ctrl+doubleclicked the gray area and it did the trick.

-Thajan

[8ch]

Thanks for the post. I was ready to load a debugger and reverse engineer to find a solution :)

[Assface Jackson]

Great! This page comes up as the first result on Google for "impress dock slide pane" and it's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

[samar]

Thanks a million to you !! :) I have been trying for this from quite a lot time and couldn't able to fix this one. It's not a bug as people are calling, Just we are not acquainted with Open office.

[Evan Sutton]

thanks, this had been frustrating me for a week!

[joel]

a million thanx. My wife wanted to kill herself and she was swearing...she never swears. What a stupid program. I've liked it untill this release.

[joel]

a million thanx. My wife wanted to kill herself and she was swearing...she never swears. What a stupid program. I've liked it untill this release.

[Solveig]

Hi Joel, Evan --

I'm just hoping this is easier to repost in 3.0! ;>

solveig

[fco]

Thaaaaaaaaks!

[Larry W]

Adding to the roll of "users whose life was saved by this post" ...

[rabin]

Thanks !

Rabin

[Roy]

Thanks a lot, save my day ;p

[cirano]

Thank you Solveig. That certainly did the trick for me. Been struggling with this issue for about three weeks now and I finally couldn't take it anymore.

[Paige]

Thank you Thank you thank you!

[Javed]

Hi There,

I was really in a fix,until I came across your resolution which is awesome.

Thanks a ton
Javed

[John Pye]

This doesn't work for me on Ubuntu Hardy with OpenOffice 2.4.1 -- has anyone else seen this? Any suggestions?

[anonymous]

THANK YOU!!!

[sarv]

Thank you, thank you, thank you.
This was driving me crazy. You have to wonder about the UI design - there has to be a more intuitive way to re-dock the pane. Something as simple as right-clicking inside the undocked pane should provide an option to re-dock it!
And don't even get me started on OO's convoluted way of printing envelopes!

[Solveig]

Yeah, this is a little crazy. I think I get more comments on this blog post than any other! As for envelopes, yes, well, there's that. I actually suggest rolling your own re envelopes. See http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid39_gci1146815,00.html and try the Simple Approach where you just create a new document and then set the page size to Envelope under Format > Page.

[fritzthecat]

It works for 'Pages' in drawing documents too. What a pain in the backside!

[Marco]

Thanks for the tip... it was driving me mad.
It still this way in 2.4.1

[me not really]

Thanks so much for this info Saved my life ..

:)

A

[stoopid_name]

Thanks this has been doing my head in for month on Staroffice !

[Andrew]

Thank you!!!

[Demián]

Thanks a lot! This was a big headache

[John Weston]

I think I've had to re-look at your solution three or four times on the web now. Thanks.

[Morgan]

Thanks... been trying to figure this out for weeks... interesting to not that even OO3 retains this problem...

[Tony Cowan]

You rock!
I would never have figure that out.
What a disastrous user interface.

thanks,
tc.