OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Making changes to an OpenOffice.org chart in Draw

Thanks to Brian from Howard County Library for pointing this out to me.

Let's say you've got a chart, and it's fine, but you're just not that jazzed about how it looks. You'd like a more Graphic Designer look to it. Here's how to break it down and do whatever you want to it.

You've got this data; great new data on the number of users that use open source computers at the library branches.

And you make a basic bar chart, or whatever kind of chart.

And you can do some things. Double-click the chart, click on the element you want to delete, and press Delete.

You can also right-click on things like the background, choose Object Properties, and choose Invisible instead of a line and click OK. 

Then the lines don't show. (You could also re-create the chart without the lines.)

Another option, for adding text boxes, is choose View > Toolbars > Drawing. Click the T text box tool and draw a text box near the chart and type immediately. Then drag the text box over the chart.

But here's the thing you can do in Draw. Copy the chart; just click on it once and copy it. Then choose File > New > Drawing and paste it into the main slide work area.

Right-click on the chart and choose Break.

And now you can click on any particular part and just delete it or reformat it.

 

You could get to something like this.

Making a Specific Template Come Up When You Create Any New Document, in OpenOffice.org Writer, Calc, Impress, or Draw (repost)

This is a very useful feature, I think, so I'm reposting it.

Anytime you can help people do something without actually have them do anything is great for them and great for you.

Templates are a great way to save time. Set up templates with the styles, graphics, etc. that people need, and they don't need to re-create them. (Or create them in the first place.)

However, getting users to use the templates is another step. For them, choosing File > New > Templates and Documents might not be something some will want to do or remember to do every time.

What if one of the templates you've created is one that many or all users use all the time as the basis for new documents?   You can make it come up when users just choose File > New > [type of document] by setting it as the default template. I.e. the user uses the template but doesn't even need to select it.

First, create a new document and make it how you want it: create styles, apply styles, include canned text, whatever.

Choose File > Templates > Save. Select a category and name the template. Click OK.

Choose File > Templates > Organize.

Open the category your template is in, in the left side.

Right-click on the template and choose Set as Default Template.

Click Close. You're done! Choose File > New > [type of document] and you'll see the effect.

To switch back to the normal original boring blank document, repeat the steps but this time choose Reset Default Template > [type of document]

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Normal dragging-based graphic cropping in OpenOffice.org 3.0 Draw

Here's how cropping has been up to 2.4 and in Writer 3.0. It works, but it's a little bleagh. You crop by specifying in your favorite unit of measure how far in from the top bottom left and right to crop an image.

So in 3.0, in Draw but not in Writer, you can crop just like you always wanted to, and can in other applications. You start out the same way as always -- insert the picture, click on the picture, then click on the Crop Picture icon on the picture toolbar.

(This is my good friend Max, but let's say that I was mad at him and wanted to crop him out of the picture.)

When you click on the Crop icon, you get these lovely crop handles.

Just drag'em where you want'em.

And there you go. No more Max.

I click off the graphic and it looks the same, of course.

But! Note that it just crops the display of the graphic. If I cool down and decide not to be mad at him anymore, I can decrop, just by clicking on the crop icon again and dragging the crop handles to include where he used to be.

Note: There's a Crop extension too but there's no Undo associated with it.

Updated the 10th: An Impress PDF presentation on OpenOffice.org 3.0 features

I created this presentation  for a client, about the 3.0 features in OpenOffice.org. I'm going to do a more detailed article but I thought I would post this since I've done it. Here's the solver.ods spreadsheet you can use to fiddle with.

I got pretty excited about some of them, especially the 3-up layout with lines already in there, and the far easier Impress handout printing.

And for those who like a good cross-reference, you don't need to create them first; you can just point to a heading in a list and select it, to make the cross-reference.

Also very exciting is the PDF editing, which does some very Adobe Acrobat type things. It's in an extension you can get here.

In the words of Douglas Adams, share and enjoy!

How to apply multiple colors or other fills to a shape you draw in Openoffice.org Draw

There are a lot of very nice prefab shapes in Draw. (And available in Writer and Calc too; just choose View > Toolbars > Drawing.)

You can apply one color or other fill to each of them. If you draw a smiley face you either make it blue, or red, or with a rose fill, or whatever. (Let's leave out for now the issue of line color.)

But let's say you want to make each point of the sun a different color, or the eyes in the smiley face a dfiferent color. You can't. Well, not by default.

Here's what you do. Right-click on the shape and choose Convert > To Curve.

After that, right-click on the object again and choose  Ungroup.

You'll get something like this, depending on what the shape is.

And then you can select different parts of the shape and apply different formatting, plus drag parts of it out.

Once you're done formatting it, you should probably re-group. Select all the components, right-click, and choose Group.

The easiest way to select a bunch of small items is to "draw" around them with the arrow tool, the normal default selection tool. In this illustration, all the items for the split-apart octagon would be selected, but nothing from the smiley or star because you have to go ALL the way around an object to select it.

Creating a nice color effect for a picture in OpenOffice

Here's what you can create. The original picture is first, and the effect (in one of many possible colors, i.e. infinite colors) is second. Thanks to Kristin from Howard County Library for pointing this out.

In any part of OpenOffice.org (well, except Base) you can choose insert a picture. Insert > Picture > From File or drag in a picture from the Gallery (Tools > Gallery).

Click on it, and you get the shown toolbar.

From where it says Default, select Grayscale.

Click the Color icon in the middle and you'll get the options for coloring the now-grayscale picture. If you type anything from 0 to 100 in the Red, Green, or Blue fields, you'll get dualtone color.

 

Combine values for two or more colors and you can get nearly any color combination. If you know or can check the RGB for the color you want, just pop it into the fields.

 

You can also apply effects of Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma for other effects.

Making changes to an OpenOffice.org chart in Draw

Thanks to Brian from Howard County Library for pointing this out to me.

Let's say you've got a chart, and it's fine, but you're just not that jazzed about how it looks. You'd like a more Graphic Designer look to it. Here's how to break it down and do whatever you want to it.

You've got this data; great new data on the number of users that use open source computers at the library branches.

And you make a basic bar chart, or whatever kind of chart.

And you can do some things. Double-click the chart, click on the element you want to delete, and press Delete.

You can also right-click on things like the background, choose Object Properties, and choose Invisible instead of a line and click OK. 

Then the lines don't show. (You could also re-create the chart without the lines.)

Another option, for adding text boxes, is choose View > Toolbars > Drawing. Click the T text box tool and draw a text box near the chart and type immediately. Then drag the text box over the chart.

But here's the thing you can do in Draw. Copy the chart; just click on it once and copy it. Then choose File > New > Drawing and paste it into the main slide work area.

Right-click on the chart and choose Break.

And now you can click on any particular part and just delete it or reformat it.

 

You could get to something like this.

Extension for cropping in OpenOffice Draw, and more

You can crop pictures by selecting them, then clicking the Crop icon.

You then get this window where you must type how much off the top, bottom, and sides you want.

If you'd rather draw where the crop goes, you can use this extension.

Note, before you begin, that there is no undo.

1. Install the extension. To do this, download it from the link above, then choose Tools > Extension Manager. Click Add and select the extension file. Then restart OpenOffice.org.

2. Create a new drawing file and insert a picture, or go to a Draw file with a picture in it.

3. Select the picture and choose Tools > Addons > CropOOo. 

4. You'll see a dashed line with handles appear around the picture.

5. Use the handles to resize the dashed line to the area you want to crop.

6. Press Enter (or Return) and the picture will be cropped.

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