Lesson 10 How to get the Best from Open Office!
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Chances are that you have used Microsoft's omnipresent office productivity suite, MS Office, if not at home, certainly in the office It's hard to miss it. Students use MS Word to type up their essays and reports, accountants use Excel to track records and crunch numbers, and almost every person has used PowerPoint to visually express a subject to an audience. These powerful, widely-used applications, plus a few more, comprise the MS Office suite. MS Office has come a long way from its genesis, but it's not without a hefty price tag; not every person can afford the latest and greatest version of Microsoft Office. Enter OpenOffice, a no fee alternative to Microsoft's productivity suite. OpenOffice is described as a office suite that rivals Microsoft's offering. One of the major pluses of OpenOffice is its compatibility with other major office suites, so making the transition from your current suite to OpenOffice won't break your current documents. Most of the time OpenOffice will open up documents created with different office applications without a problem. A lot of programmers are excited about the potential of OpenOffice, as it's advertised as being an open-source project. This means that that source code the human readable software codethat powers OpenOffice can be altered and improved by any programmer willing to take on the task. This is in sharp contrast to Microsoft's closed-sourced policy; only Microsoft programmers can make changes to MS Office. With OpenOffice's open-source nature, more improvements and fixes can be implemented, as more people will have access to OpenOffice's internals. The latest version of OpenOffice for Windows can be downloaded here: http://download.openoffice.org/2.0.3/index.html. There are also versions for Linux, Mac OS X and other operating systems, as well as various language versions. Since you're downloading a fully-fledged office suite, the installation program weighs about 92.3 megabytes, a large piece of software, so if you don't have a broadband connection, start the download and go grab a cup of java. Once you've got the installation package, run it and go through each installation dialog. It is best just to accept all the default settings when going through the install process. When everything is finished installing you can give OpenOffice a test run. The most popular component to OpenOffice is its MS Word clone, Writer. Let's fire it up and give it a try. Go to your start menu and go to Program Files. Look for your OpenOffice folder and tap on Writer. Writer looks surprising familiar to MS Word; all the familiar toolbar buttons are visible:
If you're an avid MS Word user, you should have no problem getting adjusted to OpenOffice Writer. Type up a sentence or two, purposely misspelling a few words and you'll notice that the familiar squiggly line that represents a misspelling underlines the culprit. Right tap on the misspelled word for a menu of suggested replacements. You get most of the same easy-to-use functionality in OpenOffice as you do in MS Office.
OpenOffice's answer to MS Excel is aptly titled Calc. Run Calc and you'll be astonished at how similar it is to Microsoft Excel. You'll see the familiar grid with rows numbered and columns lettered. If you're used to MS Excel, you'll feel right at home with OpenOffice Calc. If you've not used spreadsheet programs before, you might be wondering what they are good for. Spreadsheets are a great way to organize information, often financial data like payroll and other financial records. They take a little getting used to, but once you've mastered a few spreadsheet commands, your productivity will greatly improve.
The OpenOffice Suite Writer and Calc are two of the most popular applications that OpenOffice provides its users, but that's not all it has under the hood. OpenOffice Impress is a database management application that will be familiar to MS Access users, and those of you that must use the presentation application, PowerPoint, OpenOffice Impress will be familiar territory. If you get stuck, or if you don't know how to implement a certain function, OpenOffice provides an extensive, easy-to-use help system. Inside any OpenOffice application, simply navigate to the Help menu and select OpenOffice.org Help. You'll be presented with a help system that's organized by useful topics. If you can't find what you're looking for there, Google will probably provide your answer. The OpenOffice productivity suite is a wonderful alternative to MS Office, and the price is great as well! If you're tired with paying an arm and a leg for each MS Office upgrade, giving OpenOffice a test drive may provide much needed relief. |
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