A really cool feature Search Commands is merged recently in the upcoming LibreOffice 7.2 dev branch. It’s super productive. We take a look at how it works.
Following the last release of LibreOffice 7.1, many new features are landing in the upcoming LibreOffice 7.2 release. The feature sets are huge across Writer, Calc, Impress, Math, etc.
One of the notable features named ‘Search Commands’ is recently merged to the development branch. This is based on a 2015 feature request/bug report which is requested by many users.
LibreOffice 7.2 Search Commands
This feature helps you find any option, menu item, and sub-menu item with a searchable free-text dialog. Here’s how it looks.
This option is available under Help > Search Commands in the main menu. Also mapped to Keyboard shortcut as CTRL+F1 so that you can kick off this search from any workflow.
This option is available for all the components – Writer, Impress, Calc, Math, base – at the same menu position.
The search is a LIVE search, that means, you get to see options based on wild card search from your search string and results are refreshed in each keystroke.
You can click, or hit enter on the results to kick off that menu item.
This feature is now merged to the LibreOffice 7.2 branch here. If you are interested, you can download the LibreOffice 7.2 development packages from the below link and try. Remember, this is not yet ready for general users at all at the moment.
Closing Notes
This feature reminds me of the Unity desktop where the “HUD” menu used to provide the same features across application menu items. Oh, I miss Unity! Now that Unity is kind of gone from the mainstream Linux desktops, I believe this is a welcome feature in this free and open-source office suite. LibreOffice 7.2 is due to release in August 2021 when you get to experience this feature.
