How to change the Long Description and Log Default font sizes for all apps in IBM Maximo:
If you’re like me, you might not have the greatest eyesight in the world. Logs and long descriptions in IBM Maximo are a very useful way to let your co-workers know:
- What’s going on with a particular Work Order
- Asset, Purchase Order, Item or any of the various applications that would need more description, or a log information put onto it.
IBM Maximo defaults the size for the Long Descriptions and Logs to xx-small type. It’s great for fitting a lot more on a little page. However, it’s very hard to read and for the majority of the world’s population, we need glasses to do so. This begs the question, “Can I customize my Maximo user interface to improve these issues?” The Short
How do we go about making the font size larger?
Open the Long Description or Log. From the middle drop-down column (size) you can choose your font size.
The catch…
You must go into system properties and make a change to the global property (webcient.richtext.blocknode.)
If you do not take the step above, each carriage return (geek speak for hitting enter) makes the font size small again. Every subsequent Log or Description that you edit will also need to be changed when you open it to edit.
Is there a way to just have the font size bigger than xx-small in when you open any new or old log or long description in IBM Maximo?
The answer is yes, but you’ll have to roll your sleeves up and do a little bit of work to make it so.
Font sizes in IBM Maximo’s Long Descriptions and Logs revolve around the rich text editor. The rich text editor does not allow for sizing fonts easily. With some determination, you can get those fonts changed into something you won’t have to strain your eyes to read. If you want to make those Long Descriptions and Logs readable then you’re going to have to edit some CSS (cascading style sheets) files. CSS allows for bulk “styles” to re-occur across the website that they are applied to. IBM Maximo is a web application, so this is where we start.
Here’s how…
Buried in the IBM Maximo directories are files that make Maximo work. The ear file will be our focus, but there are others that also assist in Maximo’s functionality. On the application server (the machine that hosts IBM Maximo), you will have a directory that gets installed that contains the CSS information to display Maximo. Navigate to [maximo-folder]\applications\maximo\maximouiweb\webmodule\webclient\css and search for the ‘extended.css’ file. Open it and add the following lines of code to the end of the page.
#dijitEditorBody {
Font-size: 20px
}
The second location of an extended.css file that needs to be edited is in the following path, [maximo-folder]\applications\maximo\maximouiweb\webmodule\webclient\skins\iot18\css.
For the latest versions of IBM Maximo (7.6+), the iot18 folder is significant. The reason for this is, other articles mention to add the edited extended.css file to a folder called tivoli09. To save time, understand that the Tivoli directories were made for older versions of Maximo like 7.5 and prior. If you are using a newer version of Maximo look for the iot18 directory. You will edit this extended.css file in the same manner as the last one by adding the lines below to the end of the css file:
#dijitEditorBody {
Font-size: 20px
}
Next, you will need to rebuild the ear file for IBM Maximo and re-deploy it to your Maximo user interface. The 20px setting will default the text to medium in the logs and Long Descriptions.
Originally there were some hesitations on using CSS to fix this problem. It was thought that the change could affect the reports and the way they looked when generated. We have not seen that happen after making these changes.
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info@a3jgroup.com
Stay tuned for more helpful articles that will #MaximizeYourMaximo experience and the capabilities of your user interface! 
