# How to set options in Option Inspector in notebooks by running commands?

It involves an order of magnitude more mouse clicks and visually searching text to set some option in the Option Inspector (which is a UX nightmare) than doing that in a notebook by running some command, or doing it in some menu or palette. In general, how to do that by running commands? Is there some palette for choosing and discovering configurable options?

• I can confirm that the Option Inspector is indeed a total nightmare, and I'd say the same thing about Mathematica's notebook options management in general. – kjo Jun 7 '15 at 18:21

## 1 Answer

All options of an any element XXX are available from your program by Options[XXX] or AbsoluteOptions[XXX].

To change any options you can use SetOptions[XXX, OptionName->OptionValue]

Unfortunately not all options has clear explanation in Mathematica help system..

• That's not what I meant. I mean the configurations one is asked to set in the Options Inspector. – qazwsx Mar 24 '15 at 22:04
• @qazwsx this answer is correct but incomplete (question likely to be a duplicate I would think). For global front end options replace XXX with $FrontEnd or $FrontEndSession, for notebook options use EvaluationNotebook[]. You can enter as many options as you want, not just one at a time. All the options set in the options inspector can be set in this way. Additionally please read docs on CurrentValue – Mike Honeychurch Mar 24 '15 at 22:17
• @MikeHoneychurch, Hm, current values of an options will be obtained by Options/AbsoluteOptions isn't it? So, I guess, these data will take in account the values rewritten by FrontEnd. Or I'm wrong with this? – Rom38 Mar 25 '15 at 9:16
• just for future reference, some examples of such usage can be found here and here – glS Mar 9 '18 at 21:49