Custom Bitmap Background on OpenOffice Impress 2.x
I was building my slides for a speak I’ll make on this Sunday when I came to such a disappointment with OpenOffice that I had to scream! And I was searching for the adequade place to do it when I remembered of my blog. So forgive me for any english mistakes, but this post is being written on the heat of emotion (anger, by the way).
Turns out that, if you want to define a custom background for your slide on OpenOffice Impress, you have to create a bitmap fill, then, go to the master slide, and then select the bitmap you created before, and then close the master slide. Can you imagine something less obvious to do? I mean, on PowerPoint, all you have to do is to right-click your slide and select “Change Background” or something like that. On the window that opens you choose for a bitmap, a gradient, a color whatever you want, and even choose if it will apply to all slides or not.
The model chosen by OpenOffice developers is absolutely pathetic. I’m sorry guys, you have made a GREAT software on the overrall, but this is exactly the kind of thing that blocks new users. How on earth would a normal user find out how to place a custom background? “Look on the help files” ? Two things: It’s not there, I looked. And if I, who work with computer and tech support for more than 10 years, looked and could not find, what would you say of the average end user (grand-ma)? Even if it is there, average end users DON’T look on the help files. They don’t know it exists. I’m serious. As I said, I work with tech support and you would be amazed the number of people to whom I’ve shown the help files and say “WOW! If I ever knew there was such a thing!”.
So, I’m not sorry for being angry, because it’s an absolutely ridiculous approach and I need to scream this aloud! MAKE IT SIMPLE FOR GOD’S SAKE! You’ll never beat MS Office working this way.
By the way, here is the procedure:
1) Go to Format / Area (Yes, believe me! We start going to “Format Area” )
2) Choose BITMAPS on the window and click the Import button
3) Name your imported bitmap
4) Go to View / Master / Slide Master (Shouldn’t it be Master Slide?)
5) Right click on a free area of the slide and go to Slide / Page Setup
6) On the background tab, choose bitmaps from the drop-down menu and select your previously created bitmap.
7) Find a way to tell OO developers that it is a terrible way to select a background.
My god, thanks for that, I thought I’d never find it.
And this isn’t the only thing that’s bad in OO, as a matter of fact I’m evenvcreating a VM right now so I can run MS Office
Thanks! I looked all over the place for a way to change the background. I feel like a real hacker getting it to use my own picture and then something other than “Gray 10%” or “Sun 2″ for a color. For years I thought they just didn’t think anyone needed to choose their own graphics/colors.
Thank you, I was really desperate.
Yes, I agree, it wasn’t easy and intuitive to change OOo’s Impress background. I’ve seen many other blogs, forums, etc complaining and describing about the non-intuitive way of changing background. One other site I visited has the instruction to insert regular picture on the Slide Master (btw, Slide Master is correct, see: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Impress_Terminology. MS Office 2007 also use the name Slide Master). Inserting regular picture to a slide is easier, BUT it isn’t semantically correct (people like me cares about things like that). Thanks for sharing another way.
Thank you so much for posting! I believe there are still many users out there sharing your feelings. I too, was equally frustrated–totally agree with you word-for-word–and here I stumbled upon the solution. Seriously, thanks & let’s all hope that OOo will fix this ASAP…
(and, once again, THANK YOU!!!)
Hey thanks for this info. Yeah how on earth people will know that they put it there and worst, its not in the help file. And I truly agree about what you said about those OO developers. They’ve made OO for free but so super anti-user-friendly and they will never beat MS Office. I mean, what are they thinking? Is this some kind of tactic to make people get pirated MS Office? If it is I’m sure as sunrise that it’s not even close to a good tactic.
Thanks. I had tried a long time ago and had given up. I am glad your were there for me this time.
Btw. If you add picture as written in point 1,2 and 3, there is no need to go to View / Master / Slide Master. Only Slide > Page setup is enough.
Ive also been searching for that for a long time
But thx
It is fixed in OpenOffice 2.4 now you can just right click on the slide master “Slide -> Set Background Picture for Slide”.
Anyway, it’s improving all the time, even with simple things like this.
@Anon: strangely, that did NOT work for me!!!!
Okay, it SEEMED to work at first…
But then, when I loaded the file (after saving and closing OOImpress), the BG images were gone!!! AAAAAAAAAAARGH! Give me my time back, OOImpress designers!!!!! You WASTED my time!!
Sorry about the flaming, but I SERIOUSLY considered uninstalling OOo and returning to, ahem, “MS_Office2007_with_CDKey.iso”…
You can make it a little easier. Keep steps 1-3 (an irritation), and then:
4) hit f11 (Styles and Formatting)
5) click background, ricght click, select modify
6) choose the bg bitmap as before.
I owe you my freaking life.
Thank you very much indeed. The OpenOffice UI just plain sucks. One would need a new open-source project using the existing engine, but creating a better interface…
Thanks!
Wonder why this is not to be found on the help pages.
Thanks man, I was about to give up on this AGAIN.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I don’t know what else to say.
Ah, yeah, I hope OO 3.0 will improve all this kind of stuff.
OO 3.0 has indeed improved on this kind of stuff, you can now set a background picture doing richtclick=>slide=>set background picture for slide. yay : )