OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

How to put a drawing into a Writer document, safely, and more quickly, in OpenOffice

When you create a drawing in Draw, you often want to then paste it into a Writer document.

However, if you just copy and paste, sometimes even though it comes in grouped together, pieces can shift.

And especially then if you resize a drawing that includes text, you're going to end up with some wackiness.

The best thing to do is to export that drawing to a PNG or other raster format file, then import it into Writer. (From Draw, File > Export, select a format, be sure to select Selection in the dialog box, and name the file. Then in Writer, choose Insert > Picture > From File and select the file.)

However, here's something that's quicker that prevents random shifting, and allows you to resize without getting weird results with text.

1. In Draw, make a copy of the drawing so you don't mess up the original. Simplest is to create a new slide (Insert > Slide), copy the drawing from the original slide to the new slide.

2. Select the whole drawing, right-click on a part of it and choose Convert > To Polygon.

3. Select the converted drawing, copy it, and paste it into Writer. With pasting, you see that the flip of the thought bubble didn't happen.

And when you resize, the text resizes.

DON'T UNGROUP THE DRAWING AFTER YOU'VE PASTED IT INTO WRITER. You can regroup it but you'll likely notice the elements separating from each other before you realize you need to regroup it.

So don't right-click on the drawing in Writer and choose Group > Ungroup. Keep it grouped, which it is by default when you paste it in.

Creating a template for postcards in OpenOffice so you don't need to redo the layout every time

This is a continuation of Monday's post on how to create postcards. See that post for how to do the exporting, positioning, etc.

So. You've created the postcards. But the positioning....while not overly onerous, is rework. And we don't like rework.

I'm not guaranteeing that this approach is a miracle but it might be nice for some people. Instead of redoing the inserting and positioning of the four graphics, you copy, then do an extra step, then export your new design over the old one.

Here's the basics. The rest of this blog provides more explanation.

All right. Here we go. Here's your succesfully created 4-up set of graphics that will print nicely onto postcards.

You need to set it up again, almost exactly the same way, but this time when you insert the picture, select Link as shown.

Then copy and paste that linked graphic three times, position as appropriate, etc.

Here's what the linking gives you. It means that the pictures aren't sitting there in the document; they're linked directly to the actual postcard.png file and when it changes, the four versions of it in your document change.

Choose Edit > Links to see this.

Here are those four links.

 

Close the window.

Here's what you do. You've got your postcardtemplate.odg file containing the four-up nicely positioned set of four PNGs for the postcards. When you're ready to make more postcards from a different design, do this. Copy that slide that has the four-up postcards in it. To do this, right-click on that thumbnail version of the slide at the left side of the document and choose Copy.

 

Then right-click in the blank area below that slide and click Paste.

You'll be asked Before or After the current slide; click After.

 

Now you've got two slides, four graphics in each, all the same.

Choose Edit > Links and you'll see eight links.

  

You want to keep the old setup with the old graphic (the barbecue chef) set up correctly in case you need to print it again and just because you want a history of what you've done. So you BREAK THE LINK to the old graphic, for that four-up slide. 

 This image shows the situation; click the image to see the text a bit bigger if you want.

 

Select the first four links and choose Break Link.

The four remaining links are still looking at the postcard.png file.

So if you overwrite that png file with, say, the contents of the birthday card design you just did, that slide that's still linked will change to show four birthday card postcards.

So go to your new design and select it, and choose File > Export. Select PNG. (Instead of actually overwriting postcard.png, you could rename it to something like design_06122009, or postcard_barbecue, or some other descriptive name.) You must name the new exported file postcard.png or at least exactly what the name is of the file that your postcardtemplate.odg file is linked to.

 

When you overwrite the postcard.png file, now the new image shows for the four-up slide that is still linked to it, and the unlinked one is unchanged. (The changes might take a bit to show up, you can close and reopen to force the change or in the Edit Links window click Update.)

 

Choose Edit > Links and you'll see it's linked to the same graphic, and there are still four links, but the graphic itself is different which forces the document to show the new design.

 

Once you've got the template set up properly linked, here's all you do each time you have a new design that you want to make postcards of.

Copy and paste a linked slide in postcardtemplate.png.

Break the links for the old design but leave four links.

Export the new design to the same file name, like postcard.png.

That's all.

Creating postcards in OpenOffice Draw

All right. Here is the big post.

We join this process in progress. You have created a new Draw drawing, using whatever techniques you wanted. Maybe you made it 8x11 for a little poster, or 11 x 17 on Tabloid paper for a bigger poster. At any rate, the design is done, it's whatever size it is, and you're ready to get some postcards out of the design.

Here it is. It's a design for the annual singing barbecue event in your town.

1. First thing. Is this design going to be the right proportions for a postcard? Postcards are 3.5 x 5 inches. You could try to do the math but it's easiest to just do this.

Select the whole drawing. Then right-click somewhere on the drawing and choose Position and Size.

Now in the Position and Size window, look at the size. It's not 5 x 3.5.

 

You're not going to change the size -- you're just going to see what the proportions are. Be sure that Keep Ratio is marked as shown and then type 5 in the height (or whatever the bigger measurement is of your drawing). See what the width (or the other measurement) is. If it's close to 3.5, then you're good. If it's not close to 3.5 then you should go back and change dimensions in your drawing to make it fit better proportionately into 5 x 3.5.

Click Cancel. This was for information only.

2.  Assuming that your design is right proportionately for a postcard, the next step is to export the drawing to a PNG or other graphics format.

Why do you need to do this?  You need to do this if you need to resize it at all. I.e. if you did it big first for a poster and now need it in a smaller format for postcards, or if you didn't think about postcards in the first place and now need to resize. Because things can get a little unpredictable if you have a bunch of different objects, including text boxes, and then you try to scale them all down to a smaller size.  If you don't need to resize then you can skip this step.

So again, select all the items in your design. You must select all the items in the design or you will get an 8x11 graphic not one the size of the design.

Then choose File > Export.

Now navigate to the directory where you want the graphic and select PNG (or if you really want JPG or another format, select that). Also be sure that Selection is selected as shown. Name the graphic and click Save.

 

If you are prompted to specify compression, just leave it at 0. If prompted for quality as with JPGs, specify 100%.

3. Step 3, you insert the exported PNG and make it the right size. (If your design is already a perfect 3.5 x 5 and you didn't need to export to PNG for resizing, then you can skip this step as well.)

In a new Draw document, or in a new slide in the old Draw document, choose Insert > Picture > From File. Find the PNG you exported. Click Open.

And here it is.

 

It's still not the right size. This time, you're going to right-click on the graphic and choose Position and Size, and change the size.

 

Select the Keep Ratio checkbox and change the longer of the measurements to 5. See how close you are to 3.5 for the other measurement.

Once you see that you're quite close, you can unmark the Keep Ratio checkbox and just set the other measurement to 3.5 If you change the proportions a bit, it's typically not going to be that big a deal.

Click OK.

Now it's the right size, if not the right position.

4. In this step we create a total of four of the designs, positioned correctly.

If your design is already 3.5 x 5, just be sure that everything in the design is GROUPED. Select all the items in the design and right-click on it, and choose Group. Then copy the design to a new slide in that same drawing, or choose File > New > Drawing and paste the design into that new drawing.

Set the margins to 0 so that when you position the items it'll be from the edge of the document, not the edge of the margin. Choose Format > Page, click the Page tab, and apply the settings as shown. Click OK.

 

Now, let's say that you need to position the upper left corner of that first graphic .5 inch from the top and .5 inch from the left. If you just click on the graphic and drag, you'll see a light line coming out of the graphic going up onto the top ruler (the X axis is a way to think about that) and onto the side ruler (the Y axis). The lines are circled below. Just move the object until it's positioned on the .5 of each ruler.

If you prefer more precision, you can go back to the Position and Size window. Right-click on the object, choose Position and Size.

Now in the X and Y axis fields, type .5 in each. That's where the upper left corner of the "Northwest" postcard should appear. (Adjust this if the paper you're using needs the postcards to be in a different location.) Click OK.

The object is positioned correctly.

Now copy and paste the graphic to get the next one. We'll use the Position and Size window again, so right-click on it and choose Position and Size.

Set the horizontal (X axis) to .5 inch plus the width of the card -- if the card is vertical then it's 3.5, otherwise it's 5.5. The Y axis is still .5 because you still want this item to be .5 inches from the top of the paper.

Click OK.

Now, copy either the PNG or the drawing and paste two more times. It will paste on top of the original so, each time, just drag the pasted one off the top of the original and put it roughly where it's supposed to be.

The bottom left item should be in a half inch from the left (X axis) and in this scenario, should be 5.5 inches down from the top (Y axis). It's .5 plus the length of the card above it.

In the following illustration (click to see the bigger version) you can see that, because it's selected, faint gray lines show on the rulers to indicate where the top and bottom and left and right are.

The following graphic makes it a bit more obvious; I've added red lines and highlighting to show that the light marks are even with the top of the object. Plus you can see, if you look at the bottom highlighting on this graphic, that the position in x and y coordinates for any selected object is shown on the bottom status bar of your Draw window.

 

This graphic shows the same thing, the lines I've added showing the bottom two.

 

When you've got four precisely lined up and positioned graphics, you're ready to print!

 

This might seem like a lot of work. It's much easier once you've done it a couple times. Plus, in the next blog I will outline a way that lets you just set this up once, then make a copy and have your export to PNG automatically get sucked into the 4-up postcard layout. So you'll never have to insert and resize and position the graphics again, just make the design, and export to PNG. It's fabulous. Stay tuned.

Using regular expressions in OpenOffice Calc filters -- phrases like "contains" rather than equals, less than, etc.

Life just isn't cut and dried. Sometimes when you're filtering you don't want to just say "give me all the people whose last name is Hanson." You want Hanson, Hansen, and Hansengaaardennn (those Dutch really go for the jawbreaker names).

You'd like to filter out everyone except those whose names contain "Hans".

Here's how to do that. Select the item in the Comparison Field from the dropdown list in the standard filter, then type what you want in the other field. Click More, and select Regular Expressions, then click OK.

Example of what you want	What to enter in the Condition field	Syntax for what to enter in the Value field	Example of what to enter in the Value field
Begins with Hans	=	^x.*	^Hans.* (you can also skip the ^, I've found)
Does not begin with Hans	<>	^x.*	^Hans.*
Ends with Hans	=	.*x$	.*Hans$
Contains Hans	=	.*x.*	.*Hans.*
Does not contain Hans	<>	.*x.*	.*Hans.*

Here are some examples. Let's say you want all names that start with Hans, but not all names that simply contain Hans.

Here's the data.

Select all  the data, or just click in the headings, and choose Data > Filter > Standard Filter. Make the window look like this.

Click OK and you get this; Bob Montrahans is not included. (It's not because of the case.)

Here's a different example. I want names that DON'T CONTAIN the series of letters Hans.

Data

The window with the restrictions:

And the results.

Here's some information from the OOo wiki about regular expressions.

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Settings everyone should consider applying

This is a repost, but an important one. It really helps.

Note: Here's a related article I wrote for TechTarget.com.

What's better, software that does what it thinks you want, or software that does what you tell it to?

If it's rocket-launching software, and I don't know much about rocket-launching, I guess I would let the software do what it wants. However, I know what I darn well want my office suite software to do. I know how I want it to behave. I know what features I want and I know, for instance, that I do not want it suggesting to me what word I am typing and offering to help me finish the arduous task of typing it.

OpenOffice.org has its default behavior and default settings just like any other software but is very cooperative in letting you customize those behavior and settings the way you want them. Which is refreshing. You just have to tell it how to behave.

So I've put together a list of the top  customizations I think are the most helpful and/or powerful. I make sure that everyone in my classes learns these by lunchtime, and review them afterwards. When the software behaves the way you want, that makes everything better.

1. Turn off the word completion.

I hate word completion, and it’s really easy to turn off. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Word Completion tab. Make sure the Enable Word Completion option is unmarked, and click OK.

2. Turn off any automatic formatting that you don’t want.

Would you let people live in your house who you didn’t know? Then you don’t want automatic formatting going on that you don’t understand. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Options tab. Unmark everything except the top option, Use Replacement Table. Then go back through and see if you really want anything.

(You can unmark the Use Replacement Table option too....but that table is handy, as you'll see in the next item.)

3. Use the automatic formatting to create handy shortcuts.

The same tab where you turned off word completion has a really great feature for creating shortcuts. Let’s say you type the word supercalfragilisticexpealidocious a zillion times a day, or your name and title, or anything kinda long. You can set up a shortcut for it. It's a much more reliable approach than word completion.

To do this: Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Replace tab.

A. In the left-hand field type your shortcut like sig and in the right-hand field, type the word you’re tired of typing all the time.

B. Click New, then click OK.

C. Click the Options tab and be sure that both checkboxes for the top item, Use Replacement Table, are marked. That just means "use the stuff in the Replace tab."

D.  In your document, type the shortcut, followed by a space, and your word will appear.

Note: You can also delete anything in the Replace tab that you don't want.

4. Display the icons that you want.

There are a zillion icons in OOo as with any software and you probably don’t use all of them. There’s also that dandy little result of having to click on the black arrow to get to the icons you want, while the ones you do want sit there taking up space and, quite frankly, smiling a bit smugly. So take off the ones you don’t want, leave room for the ones you do want, and add some other ones.

First step is to take off the ones you don’t want. Click on the dropdown arrow and choose Visible Buttons. Find the icons you don’t want, like double spacing, and select them. That’ll remove the checkbox by them, and that removes them from the toolbar.

Now add the icons you want. The first thing to try is to click the dropdown arrow again and choose Visible Buttons. If the icon you want is there, select it and it’ll appear.

If the icon you want isn’t there, click on the dropdown arrow again and instead of Visible Buttons, select Customize Toolbar. Find the toolbar you want to add icons to. Click Add, and in the window that appears just keep looking through the categories on the left til you find the feature you want in the list on the right. Select it and click Add.

 

Back in the customization window, you can leave the icon as is and just click OK, or change the icon by clicking and holding down on the Modify button and choosing Icon.

5. Get to know the choices under Tools > Options.

Choose Tools > Options, and you’ll see the big fat configuration window. Just as the items under Tools > Autocorrect were about default behavior, Tools > Options is about default settings, default values. Anything about the program, from icon size to language settings to where the program looks when you choose File > Open, is set here.

I suggest that you open the OpenOffice.org (or StarOffice as in this illutration) item at the top, then select Paths, and change the values for any paths you use a lot. Change the My Documents item, for instance, to change the default for where OOo tries to save documents. You’ll save a lot of time scrolling around in your Save windows.

To change the path, select it in the window, click Edit, and just point to the new location.

You might also want to expand the StarOffice Write item, select Default Fonts, and choose the ones you prefer.

When you’re done, just click OK.

You can turn off the Save for Autorecovery feature if you want--or increase the save interval
I find this feature entirely un-annoying, but you can turn it off easily if you want. Autorecovery means if OpenOffice.org crashes or you have to coldboot your machine, at least you'll have something recent to return to. If you're hypervigilant, increase the interval to every minute or 5; if you don't care about it, set it to every hour or just turn it off.

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Load/Save > General. You're looking for the Save AutoRecovery Information Every  option. Unmark it, or change the interval.

Click the thumbnail below to see a bigger image of the window.

Those are not all the configuration steps you can do, by a long shot. But I like them, and students seem to like them. And they're an important set of steps in the general process of showing that OpenOffice.org does what you tell it to do.

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OpenOffice.org 3.1 outline level feature

Let's look at this document. It's a nicely organized multiheading document about Colorado tourism with five levels of headings, starting with ChapterTitle, then Heading2, and so on down. The Navigator window is shown here (if you haven't used it, press F5 to show it; it's great).

Outline Numbering is set up to match the intended use of each heading style. Chapter Title is the top level style, and so on. Without Outline Numbering being set up under Tools > Outline Numbering, we wouldn't have the Navigator looking the way it does. Or the table of contents (next) looking like that.

Here's the document's table of contents, feeding off those levels, and showing all five because I didn't restrict it to fewer.

But let's say you want some more power and flexibility. You want something in the TOC that's not in the headings.

For instance, here's a paragraph in the middle that's kind of important. Maybe you just want this one (the heading, not the corresponding bulleted list) in the TOC as well but you don't want to make it a big level 2 or 3 heading.

To do that, just select that paragraph, then choose Format > Paragraph. In Outline and Numbering, select the level you want that paragraph to appear at, in the table of contents. Then click OK.

Then update the table of contents, and you see that paragraph.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 anti-aliasing in graphics for smoother lines

For someone who loves Draw like I do, this is very nice. All the shapes you draw are now smoother in 3.1 with anti-aliasing.

I know that the reduction in the blogging software will throw this off a bit, but I think it'll be helpful. Here's the basic drawing.

And here's what it looks like at 1000% magnification, in Draw. Very smooth.

Now, keep in mind that if you're exporting to Photoshop, Gimp, or other raster programs, that you still need to be careful. The left shows the same drawing exported as PNG, the right a JPG. So far so good, or at least not terrible.

Here's what they look like at 400% magnification in Photoshop. PNG (first) and JPG (second) both look kind of icky.

If you are exporting a Draw drawing, your best best is to EPS, or even PDF.

Here's an EPS drawing exported to Photoshop, rasterized, then magnified to 400% like the others.

 

And here's an exported PDF which is openable in Photoshop as a raster file. For my money, it looks better than the EPS, at least at that magnification. It doesn't matter much if you're just using it at the size it came in at for the EPS. I do all my book covers in Draw, then export to Photoshop to rasterize and turn into JPGs for the printer.

Updating the OpenOffice.org Guidebook, and workbooks, to 3.0

Hi all,

I apologize for the delay in getting the Guidebook updated. I absolutely will and especially, though not exclusively, because it's such a great set of updates in 3.0 and 3.1. I hesitate to give a date but definitely this summer.

I have updated the workbooks to 3.0 and some 3.1 features. Not all features are included such as all the details about how to cross the Y axis at a certain point, but the procedures are included.

More Chart Options for OpenOffice.org 3.1: Placing the axes

You can now control where the axes intersect each other. Let's say you've got this data. Inserting a normal bar chart you get the data below.

 

You can modify where the axes intersect and where the labels are. Double-click the chart, then click on an axis, I'm showing the Y axis first. Be sure the axis is selected, then right-click on the axis and choose Object Properties.

Now you have various settings in the Positioning tab. You can have the axis cross at the start, the end, or a particular category. Here's what it looks like (in the next screen shot) with End selected.

The Y axis crosses the X at the far right, aka at the end.

Here's another setting and the result. You can place labels at the outside start, and other options in that list. This can be useful especially for the X axis since the bars overrun the X axis.

 

Here's what that setting looks like--outside start , or left, is the default.

 

If you want to modify the X axis, click on that and choose Object Properties.

 

Heres's what another setting looks like. You can have the X intersect the Y at a value other than 0.

 

And here's the result.

 

And another setting. You can position the labels at the outside end.

And the result, the labels are on the top instead of overrun by the bars.

OpenOffice.org 3.1 Chart Feature: What to do with zero values

If you're missing data, you have three options now: skip the data, assume zero, or compute a logical continuation.

Let's say you've got this data, with this line chart. The default is to leave the missing data out completely.

If you don't want that, though, you can double-click the chart, then click on one of the data lines, and choose Object Properties.

Select another option, such as the one setting all missing values to 0.

That might or might not be what you want.

The Continue Line option gives the best-looking, if maybe not the most accurate, results.