Standard Toolbar

Although AbiWord has a bunch of pretty buttons you can click on, if you are in the middle of typing something you may want to take advantage of a keyboard shortcut, if one exists. Common ones are included below.

The standard toolbar is normally displayed directly under the menu bar. Depending on your operating system, you may be able to move it around.

Creates a new, untitled document. This document appears in a new window (see the explanation of AbiWord’s Single Document Interface [not written yet] for details). (Shortcut: Ctrl+N)

Opens the Open File dialog. (Shortcut: Ctrl+O)

The Save button. If you have not previously saved your document, clicking it opens the Save dialog. If you have previously saved your document, clicking this button saves the current version of your document with the name you have already given it. This means that the previously saved copy is lost. Saves cannot be undone, so you should be a little cautious.

(Shortcut: Ctrl+S)

Save As button. Pressing this button always opens the Save File As dialog. The current name of the document is suggested as a name for the saved version, but you can change this in the normal way.

Opens the Print dialog, so that you can print your document. (Shortcut: Ctrl+P)

[no image] Opens the Print Preview window, so that you can see what your document will look like when it is printed. This button is not available on all operating systems.

Starts the spellchecker (Shortcut: F7).

The standard Cut (Ctrl+X), Copy (Ctrl+C) and Paste (Ctrl+V) buttons.

Undo and Redo

Undoes your most recent action. If no actions remain to undo, this button is grayed out.

Shortcut: Ctrl+Z.

AbiWord has a somewhat sophisticated notion of a “single action.” If it were to undo typing a single keystroke at a time, it would take too long to do anything useful. Thus, a run of typing counts as a single action. The run is ended by a different kind of action: deleting something, typing a return, or selecting a menu action.

AbiWord has “unlimited undo.” This means that you can undo all the actions you have taken since opening the document. If you save a document, close it, and reopen it, you cannot undo things you did before saving it. If you save a document but leave it open, you can undo your actions.

Undo itself does not count as an action.

Press this button to Redo the most recently undone action. If there are no undone actions, this button is grayed out.

Shortcut: Ctrl+Y

Like undo, redo can be applied repeatedly to redo a large number of actions.

It is not possible to undo six actions, then leave the last undone and redo the rest. Actions can only be undone and redone in order.

Other buttons

Set the number of columns in your document. The leftmost sets a single column, the centre button sets two columns, and the right sets three columns.

Insert a picture into your document at the current insertion point. Pressing it opens the Insert Picture dialog.

Displays non-printing characters, such as tabs, paragraph markers, and margin boundaries when the button is depressed.

Select the document zoom. The box displays the current zoom. The percentage shown is relative to the size at which the document will be printed, so that 100% zoom means that the document is shown on screen at the size it will be printed. Press the small triangle to the right of the box to see the menu, and select the new zoom from it. You cannot change the zoom by typing in the box, although some operating systems will, apparently, allow you to select its contents.

sets the size so that the whole width of the page is just displayed within your window.

sets the zoom so that a whole page can be displayed at once.

Opens the front page of the Help system. The help page opens in a web browser, whichever one is the default one for your system. Opera or Mozilla are the best at displaying the help correctly.