Writer Guide

Activate design mode
Click the Design Mode On/Off button on the Form Controls toolbar to turn
design mode on. (Click it again when you want to turn it off.) This activates the
buttons for inserting form controls and selects controls for editing.
When design mode is off, the form behaves as it would for the end user. Buttons can
be pressed, check boxes selected, list items selected, and so on.
Insert form controls
1) To insert a form control into the document, click the control’s icon to select it.
The mouse pointer changes to look like this:
2) Click in the document where you want the control to appear. (You can move it
later.)
3) Holding the left mouse button down, drag the control to size it. Some controls
have a fixed size symbol followed by the name of the control (for example,
Check Box or Option Button).
4) The control button remains active, so you can insert several controls of the
same type without needing to go back to the toolbar.
5) To change to another tool, click its icon on the toolbar.
6) To stop inserting controls, click on the Select button on the Form
Controls toolbar, or click on any of the controls you have just inserted. The
mouse pointer changes back to its normal appearance.
Tip
Holding down Shift when creating a form control makes the control
square. If you press Shift when resizing an existing control, its
proportions are kept the same.
Note
When you insert a group box, list box, or combo box, a wizard is
launched to guide you through the setup. If you prefer not to run the
wizard, click the Wizards On/Off button on the Form Controls
toolbar.
Configure controls
After inserting the controls, you need to configure them to look and behave as you
want. Right-click on a form control within your document and select Control from
the pop-up (context) menu to open the Properties dialog box for the selected control.
Double-clicking on a form control also opens this dialog box.
The Properties dialog box has three pages: General, Data, and Events. For simple
forms, only the General page is of any interest. On this page you can set the look and
feel of the control. See “Configure form controls” on page 421 and “Form control
formatting options” on page 431 for more information, and the descriptions in the
Help for details. Configuration for use with a database is discussed in “Creating a
form for data entry” on page 426.
The fields on this dialog box vary with the type of control. For example:
412 OpenOffice.org 3.3 Writer Guide