OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

What I'm Learning This Week in OpenOffice Training in Largo, Florida

I always learn something when I teach a StarOffice or OpenOffice class. In Green River, Wyoming two weeks ago, I learned how to redock the slide pane in Impress/Draw (for some versions of the software). Click here to see the post.

I also learned that cleaning the dash on a Subaru can knock your hazards on, and they don't flash so it looks like they're your regular lights. I also learned that Green River Imports is a very fine car-fixing establishment that doesn't laugh at you when you bring in your car for something like that.

This week I'm in Largo, Florida at the City of Largo. The weather is gorgeous. I'll post pictures when I get back. I'm teaching an all-Linux set of classes this week--notable, the City of Largo completely skipped Microsoft Office. Never had it or Windows running for the city. Fabulous.

A few of the things I learned from student questions, or things that students discovered and told me about,  include:

- You can just click somewhere in a table, then choose Table > AutoFormat, to apply an autoformat--you don't need to select the whole table.

- When you're putting spacing between columns under Format > Page, Columns, or for a section too, it won't accept a space between the columns if you type the measurement. You have to use the arrows to put in the spacing.

- I should have seen this earlier but in mail merge documents, you need to specify the printer before you print. In labels or envelopes just click the Options tab and specify the printer. Or in any created document, choose File > Print Properties and select the printer. Then choose File> Print, click Yes to print a form letter, be sure the Printer radio button is selected, and click OK. Used to be, you got a chance after that window to specify the printer. Not anymore.

- The mail merge wizard in 2.0.1 now does let you do manual editing when you set up the contents and layout of the address block, so it's now less annoying.

 

- To sort a data source for mail merges, so that for instance everything prints in order by zip code, here's what you do. Choose File > Open to open the data source, the .odb file. Double-click the table you're basing the mail merge on. In the editing window, click the column you want to sort by, and click one of the sort icons, Sort Ascending or Sort Descending. Then do your mail merge. If you need to then change the sort for another mail merge, just repeat these steps.

- I've been reminded that it's not a bad idea to just export your Impress slides to PDF and run your presentation in Adobe Acrobat. (In OOo, File > Export as PDF.) For anyone looking for an OpenOffice.org Impress viewer application, PDF might be all you need. Granted, it won't run your cool effects but unless you're presenting on something where you need to demonstrate motion, you don't technically need custom animation or slide transitions.

You can of course also export to HTML and to Flash; I haven't played enough with Flash to know how the transitions come over, if at all.

- Hyperlinks transfer over to PDF!!! This did not happen in 1.x. However, in 2.0 OpenOffice.org, any hyperlink in a document such as a hyperlinked table of contents or any link period, transfers to the PDF when you choose File > Export as PDF. This is GREAT.  To create a plain old hyperlink, select some text to link and click the Hyperlink icon on the top toolbar.

- In labels, to go from one frame to another on the keyboard (or to go from one label to another, period), press Esc  Tab  Enter. Intuitive, huh? You can also choose Tools > Customize, click Keyboard, and set up a control key for it.

- Cuban food is yummy. I had a pork with black beans and rice thing the other day for lunch. However, when you carry the bag of Cuban food the wrong way, the black beans leak out of the container, out of the paper bag, and splash all over your light beige suit, when you don't have time to drive back to the hotel to change.  However,  my polyester suit from the fine folks at Target was easy to dab down and get clean with just soap and water. So that was a relief. (I mostly love Target, but will take this opportunity to plead with them to carry tall sizes in pants and jeans.)

 

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Tags: OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, Open Office, StarOffice, StarOffice training, openoffice.org training, openoffice training, education, open source, city government, Largo

OpenOffice.org runs on Intel Macs

You've seen the commercials--Intel chips now get to have some fun in Macintosh computers! And for anyone interested in OpenOffice.org, there's more fun, since OpenOffice.org runs on the new chips in Macs. Read more from Simon Phipps here.

So why is OOo ready and Microsoft Office not? Might be the speedy open source development cycle? Or....I'm really not sure why. Thoughts?

At any rate, Mac users, be happy--if you're going to have one of the Intel chip computers, OpenOffice is ready and waiting for you.

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Is Open Source Product of the Year

Check it out! OpenOffice and Firefox are the open source products of the year.

http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/3578451

I got the tip from Linux Desktop News.

Spending Your Money on Something Important

Office suite software isn't really all that important.

What's important is pretty much anything else. What your organization is doing: research, services, saving lives, preserving order, education. Preserving the rain forest. Rebuilding New Orleans. Job retraining. Heck, you could argue that a good pumpkin pie is essentially more important than software.

OK, the office suite software helps you do all those things I listed and a million more. But I want to point out that our goal in our eight hours a day is not to use software. It's everything else.

All right. So now think about this.

OpenOffice.org is free.

Other office suites are not.

You switch to OpenOffice.org, and you or your organization is suddenly not spending $500, or $50,000, or $5 million on your office suite licenses.

Add up all the other people or organizations who are no longer spending that money on an office suite, and suddenly we're into some serious cash.

Think about how much your city police force spends on office suite software, and about how that money could probably do some good if it were spent on, say, salaries for additional police.

Think about what that research facility down the road spends on software. Compared to the money they spend for their equipment, maybe not much, but it's money probably better spent on upping the salaries for a few poor post-docs than on office suite software.

Think about how much money the federal government spends on office suite software. Now fantasize about how you would redirect that money if you were in charge.

(Almost makes $4,000 toilet seats pale in comparison, doesn't it? OK, toilet seats are already white, but you know what I mean.)

Amazon saved $17 million when they switched to Linux. Same principle--pay less for something that's not part of your core business.

Think about how much your state spends on office suite software for schools, and how many more teachers and books that money could buy.

A lot.

Education is one of the most important places to think about OpenOffice.org. Education is, to put it mildly, important. Plus, third graders aren't likely to complain that they're used to how Word does styles and they don't want to switch. They're open to anything new. And education isn't exactly overfunded. I live in Colorado which is either 49th or 47th in the nation in funding for education.

For educators, here's an interesting article on trends this year, including OpenOffice.org. 

For anyone thinking about upgrading to Vista, here's an important blog. Dave Rosenberg states that Vista gives you an opportunity to really compare the actual cost and the actual benefits, and he quotes Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group.

So just think about the value. Think about how much money you're spending on your office suite, and what you could do with that money that would be more important.

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On Vacation

Hi all,

I've got a few things going on in the next few weeks that require my attention, so I won't be posting as often or at all until those are taken care of. I'm hoping to have some time to post short items, if I come across interesting items when training next week, but wanted to give everyone a heads up.

The oooforums.org and openoffice.org mailing lists are both excellent sources of information if you're looking for specific solutions.

See also the sites of the fine folks listed on the side of this blog's main page.

What I Learned in OpenOffice Training in Green River, Wyoming: Docking the Slide Pane in Impress

I just found a very byzantine solution to an annoying problem.

I'm doing training this week and was finishing up my slides for an Impress class and accidentally undocked the Slides Pane. It was floating all over the place and I couldn't dock it again.

I understand that in some versions you can just drag the Slides Pane back to the edge and it'll redock. Sometimes you can hold down Ctrl and drag it back, and it'll redock.

But not with the December 2.0 update of OpenOffice.org.

I finally found the solution in one of the users@openoffice.org mailing list archives.

You have to hold down Ctrl, then double-click the gray area next to the word slides in the slides pane. Not the top title bar Slides but the second time Slides appears.

See this screen shot. I'll do a better one when I'm done with the training class but you'll see what to do when you click on this thumbnail and look at the big screen shot. You have to hold down Ctrl, then double-click the circled area. This will dock your pane again.

Phew.

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Tags

OpenOffice.org  open office  OpenOffice.org training  open office training  open source  open source training  Office 12  Linux  Ubuntu  education  Microsoft Office  migration 

OpenOffice Training

I worked at Sun Educational Services for a few years, and one ongoing debate was what the training books should be like. Should they offer extensive information, or a set of exercises and a skeleton for the instructor to work with? And furthermore, what type of business were we in? Education (say it to yourself with a pompous tenured sort of voice) or Training (use kind of a sarcastic tinny voice).

There was endless debate about what the difference was and which was more effective for learning software until someone, I forget who, made it all very clear. Probably a project manager who had spent a few painful years unemployed after obtaining a very lovely liberal arts education.

He or she said "Think about your sex education class."

Everyone did. It had been a long meeting and we were happy for any distraction.

We discussed what it had been like. Confusing, obscure diagrams, no one really getting to the point, and wandering out of the classroom with very little idea of what sex was, per se, much less how to do it with any degree of success.

"All right," said the savvy project manager. "Now think about this phrase. Sex training."

And everybody did. And started laughing. Because that made everything a lot different. Training is typically very very distinctly different than Education. At least in many people's experiences and in the word associations we have with it.

That might be an unusual way to start talking about OpenOffice.org training, but I love that story and I think it makes it clear how important it is to have hands-on time in a lab with an expert. Training. If it's important that people do something right, then training is important. You can throw books on desks, and that does work for some people, and of course it's a handy reference. But I believe that memories of doing things are a whole lot stronger than memories of reading things. (How many of you tell long, amusing, detailed stories about when you read something?)

It's partly about attention, the difference between education/information and training. Send out a memo about how to do a better mail merge and it gets lost in the inbox. Nobody forgets entirely about a day or a week spent doing a better mail merge.

Another aspect of training, specifically for open source products like open office, is that it shows commitment. Open office training is important for giving new users not only the skills they need but to instill confidence that the organization is committed to the switch, and that the software will work. You know it'll work, but the people being transferred, who were comfortable with their old tools, don't. Open Office training makes the transition go better.

One aspect of training versus reading a book is that training has to be limited in time. Generally, people spend a day learning an office suite, maybe a couple more days learning advanced features. So the classes have to focus on the most important features, the 80/20. The 20% of features that people spend 80% of their time using. So training, at least good training, is going to be more focused.

Here's another  thing. Most people never had much education or training on the office suite they use now. Much knowledge is handed down from one user to another, from Becky to Dolores to Sam, and can get changed a lot in the process. And if Becky never had an opportunity to sit down and learn the software, hands on, she might not have been able to pass on effective, productive information.

Another thing. The difference between struggling to do something the hard way, and doing something quickly and easily the smart, quick way, is big. The difference in productivity for one task might be a minute or a week. Multiply that over years and over all the people using the software, and you're looking at serious time, effort, and resources. Lots of money.

And another. People feel good when they do a good job. When they can take a tool and use it to do what they need to. Frustration makes people feel bad. As the counselor on South Park might say, “Frustration is baaaad.” Give users the gift of expertise. One of the things I love about doing training is seeing the light go on. The previously discouraged student in the third row starts saying things like "Oh my god--I could use this for our monthly Qentori documents and just do it all automatically!" I have even had students (Canadian students!) say "I'm so excited my head's going to blow off!" Just the other day, a student in my Writer class actually did a chair dance, with lots of arm-waving, when she got the send-document-as-PDF-attachment feature to work and realized how much time and effort it was going to save her. Sitting and working in class, asking questions, going through the exercises and seeing how to do things quickly and efficiently, means your users are going to be able to get that power, and the confidence that comes with it.

When users understand and control their tools, and feel like they are powerful, knowledgeable users, they like their jobs better. They do their jobs better. I might even go so far as to assert that people are more likely to make another pot of coffee when they take the last cup, they're so happy. Feeling like you're in control of your tools, and not the other way around, is a Good Thing.

So that's my plug for training. Give your software users the gift of being able to stand up at their desks in the middle of the day, throw a fist in the air, and shout “I RULE!”

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Postscript: My friend Kathy Sierra (also at Sun during the anecdote related at the top of this post) writes a blog on passionate users. Her learning theory post is a great guide to how to create learning, not just talking about facts in the same room as students. I can't  always do all of the things she lists in training classes, but here's what I make a point of doing.

- Showing, not just blathering on about how to do something
- Engaging students emotionally as much as possible; I inject a bit of humor into the learning materials, and I have a whole song and dance about the Evil Plain Indent Icon and the Wonderful Indent Icons on the Bullets and Numbering toolbar
- Demonstrating potential mistakes when I show how the software works, as well as how to avoid or recover from mistakes
- Using stories; the training materials are based on the premise that that student is an intern at a fictional bookstore, and the motivation for the exercises is based on the demands of a crazy marketing person; an unreasonable boss; a new advertising campaign; etc.
- Fun ; for reviews, I sometimes have a Jeopardy-like game and divide the students into two teams, with chocolate for everyone at the end. Or I bring a nerf ball and have the students throw the ball around. When you catch the ball, you have to say something you learned that day, and how to do it.
- Helping students feel confident; when parts of the software are weird, badly implemented, or just complicated, I make sure they know that it is. It's a lot easier, and people feel much better learning, a complicated procedure when they know it's tough and that any progress is good.  I also try to show students how much they already know by showing the toolbar for Word and for Writer side by side, for instance. Students immediately see the similarities and I reinforce that they already know much of what they do in Word since the tools on the toolbar are so similar.

Since writing this post, I've checked on whether Sun offers Staroffice training and from what I can tell, they don't. They have little free things they'll give out but you can't go to Sun (at least according to their web site) for StarOffice training. I find this odd, but I find many things about Sun odd. At any rate, any training you find on OpenOffice.org training will work fine for StarOffice training, and vice versa.

See also part 1 and part 2 of an article about creating databases in the new database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the article on  views in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

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Tags: OpenOffice, open office, open office, open source, training, openoffice training, openoffice.org training, linux, education, instructional design, training, Kathy Sierra

TechTarget.com Article: Creating Forms in Base 2.0

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

This is an article on creating forms in the new OpenOffice.org 2.0 database tool: part 1 and part 2.

See also part 1 and part 2 of an article about creating databases in the new database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the article on  views in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

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TechTarget.com Article: Creating Views in Base 2.0

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

This is an article on creating views in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

See also part 1 and part 2 of an article about creating databases in the new database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the forms article, part 1 and part 2.

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TechTarget.com Article: Creating Databases in Base 2.0

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

Here's part 1 and part 2 of an article about creating databases in the new database tool in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

See also articles on views  and the forms article, part 1 and part 2.

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TechTarget.com Article: The new toolbar system in OpenOffice.org 2.0

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

I wrote an article for TechTarget.com on the new toolbars in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

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TechTarget.com Article: Creating Impress Presentations in OpenOffice.org 2.0

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

This article walks through how to create an OpenOffice.org 2.0 Impress presentation.

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TechTarget.com Article: Gifts for Geeks

I'm cleaning up my blog's sidebar areas, and categorizing posts. This post is one of the results--linking directly to an article on TechTarget.com.

I wrote an article for TechTarget.com on what to get the geek on your list for the holidays. The holidays are over, but if a birthday or Valentine's Day is coming up, I hope you'll find this article useful.

Portable OpenOffice.org Has Been Released!

I'll bet Jack Kerouac never thought he'd be quoted in support of portable open source software. But come to think of it, it's kind of about Freedom and Finding Your Own Way, so he might approve.

Here's the deal. While we're waiting for Google and Sun to make OpenOffice.org available on the web, we can use it as a portable app.

What's a portable app?

Cribbing from the portableapps.com site, a portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB thumbdrive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug, none of your personal data is left behind.

Does anyone out there travel? Does anyone out there like the idea of no personal data left behind?

This is cool, folks. Click here for more on portable apps. Go from computer to computer without installing. Use OpenOffice.org on your computer at work without pissing off the Microsoft-Happy IT people. Show people OpenOffice.org and how cool it is without downloading and installing it. Open .doc and other Microsoft files on someone's computer without installing OOo. Travel around the world training people on OpenOffice.org without having to bring your laptop! : ) 

Now it's time to get the software. Click here to learn more about the software and to download.