« January 2006 | Main | March 2006 »
I've written an article for TechTarget.com about using the new mail merge wizard in OpenOffice.org 2.0. It's an extremely powerful tool; there's a fair amount of work to get it set up but then you've got a lot of very useful features.
I love this.
"UK anti-piracy officer assures Firefox she'll catch the pirates who copy it."
I'm very happy that she's doing her job so well....
I had my first article published in the fine Tux Magazine.
I've updated my steps for migrating a group to OpenOffice.org, with emphasis on the human factors. There are some fun new ideas as well as expanding on some of the old ones. If this is something you're considering, take a look.
Update April 15th: Read an interview with the project founder Jason Hudson by Marshall Kirkpatrick. Jason Hudson is the Technical Product Manager for the Shuttleworth Foundation and founder of the Freedom Toaster project.
Also note a reference in the interview to the Go-Open Source Portal. It has many resources, plus an actual phone line for support and comments.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is sooooooo cool! Move over, $100 laptop! And how did I miss this? Blogs started last year. According to the founder, "The Freedom Toaster is a free vending machine/kiosk that dispenses open source software burned to CD or DVD in locations throughout South Africa."
Information is posted at these locations among others:
http://www.gokis.net/self-service/archives/001203.html
http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/180
http://www.start.com.my/blog/freedom-toaster/
The main site is:
http://www.freedomtoaster.org/
Here's what it says:
"The Freedom Toaster project was started in 2004 by the Shuttleworth Foundation as a way to overcome these problems.
Freedom Toasters are conveniently located, self-contained, computer-based, 'Bring 'n Burn' facilities. Like vending machines, preloaded to dispense confectionery, Freedom Toasters are preloaded to dispense free digital products (e.g. Linux Operating Systems and the OpenOffice.org office suite Toaster Software)."
Here's where they are currently located.
For instance, the East London one is at:
Walter Sisulu University
Walter Sisulu University (Chiselhusrt Campus)
19 Manchester Road
Chiselhurst
East London
5214
Want one near you? Click here.
Now THIS is crossing the digital divide.
Tags
Here is an enormous list of free and open source programs for Windows.
Posted by among others, http://journals.aol.com/johnmscalzi/bytheway/entries/5543
The list is here:
http://www.listible.com/list/windows-opensource-and2For-freeware
Posted by justhamade at www.listible.com, it's got stuff I've never heard of. Notable in my opinion:
IrfanView 3.98 -- great for viewing and batch converting your digital photos and much more.
(Equal time for Linux--Ubuntu ships out FREE CDs of their Easy Breezy Badger Linux operating system. Free, as in no shipping charges. Order some today. )
Tags
For one of the exercises in my training materials, I put together an exercise using the random number function. It's a times table document that regenerates itself every time you open it.
Click this image to see a larger version. The first number in each multiplication is fixed, and the second is random.
Here's the file if you just want to download it.
I did it by entering 1 - 12 in three columns. I just typed 1 in the top cell, then dragged the small lower-right-corner of the cell down to create a series of 1-12. 
I did the same with the x for the multiplication sign.
And I put this formula in each cell where I wanted a random number between 1 and 12 to come up.
=RANDBETWEEN(1;12)
The document regenerates with different multiplication questions in different order each time you open it, so students can't remember which answers were where. Print the document to PDF if you want to preserve it in a particular way.
For other ideas, see Plugged In Home School for a tip on making a word find puzzle.
hr />
When I worked at Sun, there were a few
things people always asked, that were hard to figure out.
- How do you print the same rows or columns on every page of a spreadsheet? (See this post. )
- How do you print handouts for a presentation? (See this post.)
- How do you get a blank paragraph line above a table that's at the top of a document? (You now simply have to press Return in the upper left cell of the table.)
Another very common question was:
How in the world do you open a perfectly good .txt or .csv file (comma-separated values) in a spreadsheet? Basically, you've got data in rows and columns, but separated by tabs or commas rather than columns in a spreadsheet, and you want it in a spreadsheet. Comma-delimted files are a common way to get data out of a spreadsheet or database and into another.
The trouble is, in OpenOffice.org, if you just choose File > Open, the .txt or .csv file opens in Writer. Not what you want.
Here's how to open it in a Calc spreadsheet.
Opening a .txt or .csv File in a Calc Spreadsheet
1. Start OpenOffice.org. You can be in Writer, Draw, Calc—it doesn't matter.
2. Choose File > Open. (Click the picture to see a larger version of it, if you want.)
3. In the File Type list, select Text CSV. It's about a third of the way down the list of types, or you can click in the file type list and press T four times.
4. The window should now look like this, so just click Open.
5. You'll get a window where you specify how the file was created: what separates the data into columns, etc. (Click the picture to see a larger version, if you want.)
6. Also in the same window, if you have date-format data or other formats you want to specify, you can do that column by column.
7. When you're done, just click OK. You'll see the data in a spreadsheet.
8. You'll want to save it as a spreadsheet at some point. Choose File > Save As and select the standard OpenSpreadsheet .ods format.
9. Click Save.
Saving a Calc Spreadsheets as a .txt or .csv File
1. Let's say it's the other way around—you've got a spreadsheet and you want it to be in a nice neutral .txt or .csv file. Be sure the file is open.
2. Choose File >
Save As and select the same Text CSV format in the file format list.
This time you can click T just once.
3. Click Save.
4. You'll probably see this message. Click Yes.
5. In the next
window, specify the type of character you want to separate columns,
commas or tabs or another character.
6. Click OK; you're done.
Tags
Note: If you're not familiar with PDF, read this post. If you do a lot of online publishing of your PDFs, see this post to take advantage of links.
Psst! Do you like PDF?
Do you like easy, free ways to convert to PDF?
Do you have a bunch of PDF files you need to convert at once? I'm talking PDF batch convert.
Do you need to convert web pages to PDF?
And are you the type who doesn't mind just a bit of a hack to get cool results?
Then you are going to love this feature.
You might not have noticed a PDF Batch Convert feature in OpenOffice.org 2.0. That's because it's a Web page wizard, under File > Wizards > Web Page. This is OK—the Web wizard has some really cool features for web publishing but I'm all about PDF so that's what I'm concentrating on.
All right. Here we go. We're going to start the Web wizard, select the OpenOffice.org files you want to convert to PDF, specify where the output goes, ignore the extraneous HTML files in the output directory, and have ourselves a really dandy PDF batch convert process.
1. Choose File > Wizards > Web Page. You'll get this window. (Click it to see a larger image if you want.)
2. Just click Next.
3. Now you'll see the window where you put the files to convert to PDF. (Click it to see a larger image if you want.) Just click Add and find the files—Writer files, whatever you want. You can select all the files in the directory at once; just hold down Ctrl and select.
4. Now you say, convert these to PDF for me, please. For each file, select it and in the dropdown list, select the format to convert to. Select PDF for press for higher quality.
5. When you've specified PDF for each, click Next a few times to get to the last window.
6. Specify the
directory where you want the PDF files created.
7. Then just click Finish.
8. The PDFs will be created in the directory you specified—but inside a Content directory, along with an index.html file and other stuff.
9. Just open the content directory, and you'll see your PDFs.
Isn't it slick? I think it's great, and wanted to make sure you know about it since I just stumbled upon it on my own.
Now, there's a teeny issue. On my Windows desktop, but not my laptop, this doesn't work.It works the first time but not the second time. A message pops up saying the files aren't there, and to run repair. Running Repair doesn't work. The bug has been filed but not a lot of people get it. So if this doesn't work for you, just wait for the next rev, or try it on another machine.
Tags
I received this question from Chris in relation to the blog on labels.
“Is there a way to tell OpenOffice to save the document in such a way as that it essentially "exports" it to another OpenOffice document that isn't attached to the data source, so that you can hand-edit the labels? The only way I found to do it was to save it as a Word document and then re-save _that_ as a standard OOo text document. Is there a more direct way?
Thanks,
Chris”
Good question. There are a few different things you can do.
Change the Label Display So You Can See the Data, Then Edit
I don't know of a way to separate the label data from the data source in a sensible way. However, you can just change the content.
Create the labels, connected to the data source, like you normally do. Don't click the Synchronize option in the third tab.
Choose View > Data Sources.
Click
the Data to Fields icon in the toolbar above the data sources.
You'll
see content in the labels instead of field placeholders.
Now just edit each field normally. Change Bob to Gretchen, Fargo to Kalispell, etc, just by typing.
When you print, you'll get a conglomeration of the database data and what you typed.
Change the Data Source, Not the Labels
If you want to edit the labels, edit where the information comes from, if that's an option. If your data source is a spreadsheet, just edit the contents of the spreadsheet. Be sure that the .odb database file, and any label documents accessing the database, are all closed when you edit the data itself.
Just Make Labels That You Type the Content Into
This approach is entirely manual, but you can copy and paste into the labels. If you want control over what' s in there, just make blank labels and type.
Choose File > New > Labels. Do everything pretty much the same way, i.e. pick the right label type. But don't put any data or fields in the big empty data box in the first tab, and in the third tab don't click Synchronize. Click New Document. (Click this image to see a bigger version if you want.)
Then just type whatever you want in any of the frames.
Quickly Go From One Label to Another
The labels are in frames, which is a bit of a pain. To quickly go from one to another using the keyboard, press Esc Tab Enter. (Intuitive, huh?) You can also choose Tools > Customize, click Keyboard, and set up a control key for going between frames.
Tags
The fine folks at Linux-Watch.com have posted an article on this survey. See also the E-Week article on the survey.
"After years of putting up with Microsoft's anti-Linux half-truths in its Get-the-FUD campaign, Linux supporters are finally striking back.
But if that's all this report was, I'd barely bother with it.
What's different about this report from Microsoft's endless series of anti-Linux reports is that it focuses on the hard evidence of uptime, management and software costs, and system administrator costs per server and user. ...
The survey of over 200 responses, from mostly SMBs (small-to-medium businesses) with from less than 20 servers to over a 1000 servers, found that 'Over half of the respondents can provision a new Linux server in less than 1 hour, and 20% can do so in less than 20 minutes. For sites with sophisticated tools, over 75% spent less than 1 hour to provision a new Linux system and one third could provision the OS in less then 20 minutes. None took longer than 5 hours.' "
Show it to your boss. Show it to your reports. Show it to your friends, take it to the LUG. (Not that it's news to anyone who uses Linux.) This is great.
Tags
This post is similar to the big post here
on how to do version 1.1 labels, etc. It works pretty much the same
way. However, this is a nice little standalone HTML post on how to do
labels in 2.0 so you might prefer this.
First, create a database. You can do this by choosing File > New > Database. I've written an article on how to do this if you just want to connect to a spreadsheet, text file, or address book as your data source. I recommend spreadsheets.
Once you've got the database set up in OpenOffice.org, you're ready to go.
1. Choose File > New > Labels. (To
do Envelopes, open an OpenOffice.org Writer document, and choose
Insert > Envelope.)
2. In the Labels tab of the Labels window,
select the data source you created and want to use from the Database
dropdown list. (Click the picture to see a larger image.)
3. Select a table, Sheet1 if you're working with a spreadsheet, from the Table
list.
4. Select the first field you want to use
from the Database Field list. 
5. Click the arrow next to it to
insert it in the text field. Type a space after the field and you can add the next field, such as LastName.
6. Use the Database Field list to insert
any other fields you need. If you want fields on the second line,
click after the last character of the last field you inserted, in the
big text box, and just press Enter. If you need to change the
arrangement later in the created label document, you can.
7. In the Brand dropdown list, select
Avery Letter Size.
8. In the Type dropdown list, scroll
through the billions of labels. Select the type of label you're
using, 8160 Inkjet Address. The label type is on the label sheet or
box of labels.
9. Click the Options tab.
10. Select the Synchronize Contents option.
11.Click the Setup button next to the
printer display.
12. Select the printer you want to print
to.
13. In the printer options (this will vary
according to your operating system) specify the appropriate paper
feed or tray. For now, select Manual Feed.
14. Click the New Document button at the
bottom of the window. The labels will appear.
If you need to make changes, like
adding spaces, rearranging fields, or changing formatting, do so in
the upper left label, then click Synchronize to apply those changes
to all labels.
Choose File > Print.
A message will ask if you want to print
a form letter. Click Yes.
15. If you want to print labels for only
certain records, you can select them in the scrolling list of
records. Select one, press Ctrl, select the next, and so on. Or you
can select a range of records like 1-20.
16. If you want to just print all the
labels, choose All.
17. When you're ready, just click OK.
If you have any problems printing, check your printer setup using your operating system setup tools.
Note: You can save the label document and just go back to it again when you need to use it again.
Note: Feel free to use the formatting features. Make the text an interesting font, or make it the size you need. You can also right-click on the border of the upper right label, choose Frame, go to the Border tab, and give it a background color. 
Tags
You could have knocked me over with a dot. Sun is marketing OpenOffice.org, in a cool way! Check this out. (Click on the links to get the pictures.)
To buy the tshirts, click here.
Or just look at these. These are great. Click the squished-looking ones to see a bigger image.
Stop giving a bully your lunch money.
Compatible with expensive, closed, memory loving software.
By the people, for the people.
All tshirts, on bus ad in Redmond.
Side of the bus ad: we do Windows too.
Side of the bus ad: Pick a vendor, any vendor.
My own tshirts are here, including "Great free software: No Bills to pay." (I can't claim credit for the slogan but I love it.)
Great office software. No Bills to pay.
OpenOffice.org: Free and Easy.
OpenOffice.org: Proud Sponsor of the Steve Ballmer Frequent Flyer Program.
(Ben Horst came up with this slogan.)
My daddy contributes to OpenOffice.org.
Tags
Here's a correction.
------
Here's the story, and a fun blog on the same topic.
Louis Suarez-Potts is essentially play Moses to Sun's Egyptian Pharoah and saying "Let my program go!" All right, maybe Louis isn't in flowing robes outside McNealy's office door, and I sure hope that there won't be a rain of frogs.
Here's the deal. After six years of having StarOffice and OpenOffice.org, the person on the street has never heard of the programs. Though the cool new tshirt campaign is certainly a step in the right direction.
Doing calculations in tables is a nice feature of OpenOffice.org Writer. You can essentially treat a table like a spreadsheet. With this example, for instance, I can just use spreadsheet-like calculations in the table to get the totals and differences.
The process is a bit different in 2.0 so I'm blogging it here; plus anyone who hasn't used the feature before can see if they like it.
Note: I personally prefer to use spreadsheets, so I would do the calculations in a spreadsheet and then just copy and paste. But for those who like tables, here's how you do it.
This process focuses on summing, with some other options.
First, of course, create the table the way you want it.
Then click in the empty cell where you want a calculation. Choose Table > Formula or press F2 and you'll get the spreadsheet-like toolbar with the formula entry field.
If you know what you want and just want to go right ahead and do it, just type what you want using <> around each cell reference. <F5>, <A1>, etc.
If you want some help from the system, do it this way. Select the cells you want to calculate; you'll get an addition formula by default. This will sum the contents of the selected cell range.
If it's what you want, press Enter or click the green arrow by the formula field. The total will appear.
If it isn't what you want, just retype the formula in the formula field. Be sure to preserve the syntax with the <> around each cell reference. Cell references are the same as Calc, with A1 being the upper left cell of a table and counting across to B and down to 2, and so on. A correct subtraction formula for instance is =<b2>-<c2>
In the following example, I of course want to find the difference, not the sum, of the expenses and income, so I changed the formula.
If you want something more complicated than addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, click on the formula dropdown list.
To format the cells automatically with dollar signs, etc.. select the cells, right click, and choose Number Format. In the window that appears, select the format you want. Click the following image to see a larger image of the window, if you want.
Overall, the table formulas work but they're just a bit twitchy. If you've got something beyond simple math, I suggest doing it in a spreadsheet, then copying and pasting the spreadsheet into Writer.
Is Google working with Dell to become the new king of the desktops?
Here's a blog on what CNBC is reporting.
Verrrrry interesting.
Google has a desktop, Goobuntu based on Ubuntu, and an office suite, OpenOffice.org. They have gmail. And now they might have hardware distribution. I smell world domination.
Tags: OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, Open Office, StarOffice, google, openoffice.org training, open office training, education, open source, Goobuntu
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 an OpenOffice.org datasource that''s actually just a spreadsheet, text file, or address book.
See also the articles on 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.
Tags: OpenOffice,
open office,
open office,
open source,
training,
openoffice training,
openoffice.org training,
linux,
education,
databases
It's the hottest new open source news--today, anyway. ;> Click here to read one of many posts.
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org, Open Office, StarOffice, education, open source, Linux
