Disable find and replace feature in OpenOffice.org

Can you disable the find and replace feature in OpenOffice.org Writer?

We are a school, and the students are cheating by using this feature to avoid reading the entire document.

We're looking for a way to lock or disable this feature from being used. Is there a configuration or setting that can set this up?

dan eckstrom

Posted 2011-01-18T12:59:41.343

Reputation: 11

1i am referring to the edit/find&replace feature. we are a school, and the students are cheating by using this feature to avoid reading the entire document. – dan eckstrom – 2011-01-18T13:26:49.457

1Even if you disable it on OpenOffice, they can copy the entire text to another text editing program (e.g. notepad, wordpad) and use CTRL+F as well. – Mehper C. Palavuzlar – 2011-01-18T13:38:50.823

4Learning search/scan skills is actually not a bad thing. Instead of doomed technological fixes, just quiz them on the content, which they'll only know if they've read the whole thing. – CarlF – 2011-01-18T13:55:07.900

@ Mehper: you can put down your comment as the answer @ dan eckstrom : please edit your question and put what you wrote in comments there , makes the question clearer

– Shekhar – 2011-01-18T14:06:04.207

@Shark: Please refer to How comment @replies work, your way of addressing doesn't result in @Mehper getting notified of your comment

– Sathyajith Bhat – 2011-01-18T16:12:58.627

As a teacher myself, let me strongly agree with CarlF's comment. The problem is with your lousy assignment, not with their perfectly rational method of finding the answer. – frabjous – 2011-01-19T19:00:57.027

Answers

See :

OpenOffice Customizing the User Interface
Customizing OpenOffice.org

harrymc

Posted 2011-01-18T12:59:41.343

Reputation: 306 093

Why under-vote, for bloody hell ? – harrymc – 2011-01-19T06:19:52.090

I'm guessing its because of this: http://meta.superuser.com/questions/500/is-downvoting-link-only-answers-acceptable (Or at least the principle behind the post on Meta)

– Joe Taylor – 2011-01-19T13:36:51.077

If I start copying entire articles into my answers, I'll surely get down-voted for the opposite reason. – harrymc – 2011-01-19T16:23:45.890

"This answer is not useful" is and more like a comment than actually helping. Plus, this answer is akin to "figure it out for yourself somewhere else" – random – 2011-01-19T20:40:56.740

@random: My answer is more like "the links contain a description of the process with screenshots, much better than anything I could do in a couple of sentences". – harrymc – 2011-01-19T20:47:45.063

_{I formerly posted this as a comment but now reposting as an answer.}

Even if you disable find & replace feature in OpenOffice, your students can copy the entire text to another text editing program (e.g. notepad, wordpad, etc.) and use CTRL+F as well. In short, you cannot prevent them from searching and replacing just by blocking this feature in OpenOffice.

Mehper C. Palavuzlar

Posted 2011-01-18T12:59:41.343

Reputation: 51 093

Save the file to .HTML, open that in a browser and set that browser in full-screen mode.
Remove the keyboard which restricts them to scrolling with the mouse.

Let them write their answers on a piece of paper instead...
Although that should be enough,
you can also disable right clicking by pasting a piece of code before </body>.

Tamara Wijsman

Posted 2011-01-18T12:59:41.343

Reputation: 54 163

This answer is a reductio ad absurdum of the question. – frabjous – 2011-01-19T19:00:15.340