I'm someone who has used a lot of software, but office suites aren't among the programs I've used most. About 10 years ago (although I tried to avoid it by suggesting alternatives) I was forced to use Microsoft Word, and it was very annoying to discover that the keyboard shortcuts I took for granted didn't work there. Now I do use these kinds of programs occasionally, and LibreOffice It usually has the same problem.
LibreOffice aims to be the free alternative to Microsoft Office, so it should make things easier for users of the Windows operating system suite. Therefore He decided to copy Microsoft's keyboard shortcutsThis can be good if you're used to them, or very bad if you're not. What we're going to do here is explain how to use English keyboard shortcuts—that is, the ones used by practically all other programs.
Why use English keyboard shortcuts
It's unusual for a program to change its keyboard shortcuts depending on the language it's used in. Most programs use the keyboard shortcuts of the most common language in software development, which is English. Furthermore, in languages other than English, the keyboard shortcuts are inconsistent. The clearest example is the save options: Want to Save? No problem: just press S for Save along with Ctrl. Want to "Save As…"? At least the default shortcut in LibreOffice is Ctrl+Shift+S, which is S for "Save".
What we will achieve is something very simple: that keyboard shortcuts are always the same and more consistent, also in LibreOffice.
How to change keyboard shortcuts in LibreOffice
The process is relatively simple:
- We open LibreOffice Writer, for example, although Calc, Impress and others are also valid.
- Go to the Tools/Customize menu and then to the Keyboard section.
- At the top right, you'll see the LibreOffice and Writer options, but that's because I did this from the text editor. If you do it from Calc, Calc will appear. We'll start by clicking on "LibreOffice" to configure the shortcuts globally, if that's what we want.
- Now we'll go through the keyboard shortcuts and reconfigure the keys to use. For example, if we want Ctrl+S to be "Save," we'll press the keyboard shortcut to take us to that option, and then look for "Save" in the section below.
- With the action selected, we click on "Assign". We repeat the process for all the keys we want to modify.
- There's one more step, although I'd prefer the global modification to work without it. You have to click on "Writer" and delete the actions you've modified globally, or there will be conflicts. For example, press Ctrl+S again, which will still show "Underline" in the Writer section, and delete that option. Now it will use the global shortcut.
To undo the changes, simply click "Reset" in the previous window.
Some recommendations
I recommend making at least these changes:
- Ctrl+S: Save. The S stands for "Save".
- Ctrl+I: Italic. The I stands for "Italic".
- Ctrl+B: Bold. The B stands for "Bold".
- Ctrl+U: Underline. The U stands for "Underline".
- Ctrl+N: New document. The N stands for "New", but in this case it also works for "New".
- Ctrl+A: Select all. The A stands for "All".
- Ctrl+F: Search. The F stands for "Find". The direct translation into Spanish would be "Encontrar", but we use "Buscar" when we want to find something.
And speaking of recommendations, I don't recommend making this change if you use multiple office suites and don't always use the same computer. Implementing changes takes time, and sometimes it's better to get used to the old system. The advice here is meant to improve productivity, not to decrease it and end up working more.