How to create easy-access templates via right-click : Ubuntu (5.10 / 6.06.1 / 6.10)
How many of us regularly use certain types of files or documents during our day-to-day work? I know I am always in & out of documents and editing or creating .html files. Well, this tuturial will shave off precious seconds as you scramble for world domination.
Take a second and right-click on your GNOME desktop. You’ve probably got a few options like “Create Folder”, “Create Launcher”, etc.. Well what about that “Create Document” option. Have you ever used it? I know I didn’t for a long time because there were “No Templates Available”. Let’s create a couple of templates for your commonly used programs!
The first step is to create a “Templates” folder within your HOME folder. You can use the following command or navigate to your home folder and create a new folder called “Templates”
mkdir ~/Templates
After this folder is created simply save any file templates you have into that folder and they will appear in your right-click navigation menu.
For example, save a blank OpenOffice.org document (call it OpenOffice.odt) into that folder and you’ll now have a quick-launch for a blank OpenOffice document. Save a blank .txt file inside the Templates folder for quick access to an empty Text Editor file. Even save a template .html file to the folder and have quick access to any html templates you work on. This works great if you ever work from file templates and need to re-create them on the fly.
Enjoy. Now what are you going to do with all that time you’ve saved?!
technorati tags:openoffice, OOo, gnome, right-click, template, document, html
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What I’d really like to do is integrate an OpenOffice template with the Gnome right click menu. So when the user selects the (template) from the Gnome menu, they get a new _document_ based on the template (rather than creating a copy of the template itself).
Nice hack. Know how this can be done under KDE?
The same question? I am very eager to know how this can be done under Kubuntu. How?
I tried this and similar solutions and found it wasn’t working for me with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy). After some research I found the solution. This solution also allows the user to hide the templates folder. Just edit ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs and set the XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR to whatever you want it to be. If you want it hidden, just make sure to use a dot directory.
I was having that problem too. Thanks's John! Worked perfectly!
You could also make a symlink from within the Templates folder to the Open Office templates folder:
ln -s ~/.openoffice.org2/user/template/ OpenOffice
This works on Gibson at least.
Hi, nice hack.,, can you tell me how i can to this for system wide? I means there should be one template directory for all users.