OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

What I Learned While Training in Largo, Florida: Using the Paintbrush With Graphics Attributes

I normally pooh-pooh the Paintbrush icon.

I think it's better to use styles, or to multi-select nonconsecutive text (more on that in another blog).

But with graphics styles -- well, I don't like them much because the style imposes a specific size on graphics whether you want it to or not.

So let's say you've got 10 graphics in your document. You've formatted the first one so that it wraps and has .2 of an inch of space around the graphic, and you want the rest to be just like that.  Also, the graphics need to be different sizes.

You could reformat each one individually. Or....

1. Select the first graphic.

2. Double-click the paintbrush icon

3. Click on each additional graphic

4. Click the paintbrush icon when you're done

And all your graphics have that same formatting as the first one.

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Using Sections to Reduce Extra Work

I love efficiency.

I hate finding mistakes that I have to correct in a zillion dozen places.

How do I do more of the thing I love and less of what I hate?

Sections!

Sections are great for partitioning off existing text that you've typed and treating it differently: giving it a different background, protecting it from being modified, putting it in columns, etc. Here's a small section in columns.

Another great way to use sections is to use them to access content in a different file.

Let's say you've got boilerplate content that you use in 11 different documents. You could copy and paste it 11 times, but it often changes. And it would SUCK if the content were out of date or inaccurate or just misspelled, in those 11 different documents.

So you type the content once on one document, and insert 11 different sections in 11 other documents. So far it's the same amount of work as copying and pasting.

BUT when the content changes, you change it in the source doc and it updates in those other 11 documents. NOW you're being efficient and avoiding mistakes.

Step 1.  So write your content that you need to reuse, in your source document.

Big Red Chair Consulting is in no way responsible for any problems. Copyright all content September 2006.

Save your source document as legalboilerplate_source.odt, or whatever.

Step 2. Now go to one of the 11 documents where this content needs to show up.

Click where you want the content to appear, and choose Insert > Section. In the Section window, select the Link option. Click the browse button (...) and find the legalboilerplace_source.odt file.  Click Insert.

The content, all of it including blank lines, from the source doc, shows up in the doc where you insert the section.

If you want, in the Section window, you can unmark the Protect option, so that it can be changed, but that's not a good idea. It's best to leave Protect marked, and then also mark With Password. When you select Password, a window will pop up where you enter it twice. Then later if you try to change the content, you'll be prompted to enter that password.

Step 3: When you need to change the content in the source document, just change it.

Then the next time you open one of the 11 docs where you use it, you will be prompted to update links. Choose Yes.

Or if the document is already open, update by choosing Tools > Update > Links.

Either way, the new content will be displayed.

That's all there is to it. Sections are a very useful feature; I encourage using them whenever you can.

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Columns in OpenOffice Writer: Balancing Columns, and Inserting a Page or Pages With Columns Without Resorting to Page Styles, Updated March 2006

I've talked about page setup before.  Specifically,  how the heck do you have one page set up so that it's got a cover design with no page number, and then the second page and the rest have page numbers, nothing fancy, and start with the page number 1?

The answer for that is here.

But what if your question is this: How do you  insert one or more pages of columns in your document, then switch back to regular layout?

Well, one answer is the same as before. Use page styles, switch between them.

But there's a simpler answer.

Use a section.

A section is a very easy way to set off text to be treated differently. You can give the text a different background, or suck in the content from an entirely different file, and many other options. The section can be one word or a dozen or more pages.

Just click Insert > Section, and you see the options.

Click the Columns tab, select the number of columns, set up spacing, and a separator line if you want.

Click OK. Here's what the empty section will look like.

Type some content in the section. You'll see the content appear in the section.

You can keep on typing in that section for a long time. Make it as many pages as you want. The text can be a little twitchy when typing in a section which is why you might consider the next thing, below.

Turning existing content into columns  You can also simply select a bunch of text that you want in a column, choose Insert > Section, select the Column tab as you did before and apply options, and click OK. Then the selected text will be put into columns without your having to retype or copy and paste it.

But what if your question is this: How do you  balance content in a normal document, that's just got columns all the way through?  How do you balance column content using the Page Format window?

There is, in fact a solution. I got it from Phil's comment. Thanks, Phil!

Hi. I'm just trying to learn Writer and have been experimenting with columns. If you want the 'Distribute evenly..' checkbox to appear before you do any real typing try typing the first word you want that will be in your first column - highlight it (select it) - then go to Format-Columns and the checkbox will be there. Pretty bizarre to me too but someone must have thought it was a good idea at the time :-)

If you just have a blank page, or you have some text with no text selected, and you choose Format > Columns or Format > Page > Columns, there's no option to balance columns.

BUT if you type then select even a small bit of text, then choose Format > Columns or Format > Page > Columns, there IS an option to balance columns.

Make your column selections, such as selecting the number of columns, and the checkbox will become enabled. Click OK and there you go.

The answer is, I don't think you can. Or rather, yet again, ya gotta use sections. Look at this page setup window.

There's no option to balance the columns.

How is it that there's an option to balance content in sections that have columns, but not in pages?
I don't know. I think it's kind of silly.

How do you choose whether to balance or not balance content in sections that have columns?

If you want to use sections to create columns, the balancing option is available there too. Choose Insert > Section, Columns tab. Evenly Distribute Contents to All Columns .

If you don't want balance, unmark it. Then your columnated sections will look like this -- content all the way to the bottom of the page, then restarting in the next column.

How do you  change a section once it's inserted?

Select some of the content in the section, then choose Format > Section. Click the Options button and you'll see everything you need.

 

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Starting Page Numbering on Page 2, and Other Ways to Mix Page Styles in a Document

Note: See also this blog on just using the offset feature.

Note: This is a repost from December that didn't get published correctly. Also see my post that will be coming Wednesday, on an easier approach if you just want to insert some columns in a document.

All right. It's the elephant in the room, and it's time to address it.

How do you have no page number on the first page, then have the second page start with the page number 1 in the footer? Or with page number 42, or 623?

(Or how do you have a landscape page in a portrait document?)

Good question. It's a common one. It's actually not more complex than the tax code, but there's some setup you need to do that's a little more complicated than the task at hand. I would like to see a checkbox/field combination somewhere  that would let you specify "For this document, start the page footer on page __ and make the first page number be ___". However, for now, we do it this way.

There are two things to control in this situation:
- Whether there is a page number in the footer--i.e. whether there is any number at all in there, regardless of what it is.
- If there is a page number in the footer, what that page number is.

You control the first with page styles: you set up the page style, say "yes, there's a footer and a page number in it" or "no, no stinkin' page numbers here" and then apply that page style.

You control the second a few different ways. I'm going to show you the most straightforward which is just to create a page break, switch to a different page style, and specify what the page number for that page is.: 1, 42,  623, or anything else.

Let's look at part 1 first.  Page styles are actually a really nice, useful feature.

Part 1: Setting Up Page Styles

Bring up the document you're working with.  Remove any page breaks you've put in between the first and second pages. This sample  document I'm using has some text that clearly goes on a cover page, and then it runs immediately into the content text that should start on page 2.

For any of these images, just click on any of them that are too small for you to read. (They mostly all are, but you might not need to get more detail on all of them.)

Here's my sample document. I want no page number on the first page and page number 1 on the 2nd page.

Choose Format > Styles and Formatting. In that window, click the Page Styles icon at the top.

Right-click in the blank part and choose New. You're going to make the page styles you need.

In the Organizer tab of the page styles window, just name the style  something like Cover Page. This is the one with no footer and no page number.

You actually don't need to do anything else. But just to make sure it's clear when we're applying the styles in this procedure, I'm going to suggest that you  click the Background tab and give it the  light gray background.

Click OK.

Now, right-click in a blank part of the Styles and Formatting window again, and choose New. This time you're creating the other page style, the one for the main body where you're going to have a page number and start it at 1. Call it Main Body or something, in the Organizer tab.

Then click the Footer tab and turn it on by marking the checkbox.

That's all you really need to do, so click OK.

Part 2: Applying a Page Style, Then Switching to Another

Click in the first page of the document, where you want the Cover Page page style. In the Styles and Formatting window, double-click the Cover Page style you created. The style will be applied, as you can tell from the gray background.

The style is applied not only to that page, but to the entire document. That's what's supposed to happen at this point.

Now you're ready to switch. So click to the left of the first word where you want to switch, the first word of the next page usually. Or click to the right of the last word on the current page. Whatever works. Here I've clicked to the left of "Why".

Choose Insert > Manual Break. In the window that appears, just tell it that now you want to switch to the Main Body page style by selecting it in the list.

That second page is also really the first content page of the document, so you'd like it to be page 1. So select the page numbering checkbox and specify 1. (Or any number you want.)

Click OK.

A page break will be inserted where your cursor was, and the new page style you specified, Main Page, will be applied from that page on in the document.

Now, there's one more step. You've already created the footer for that Main Page style, but it's time to put content in it.  I.e., the page number. This is easy. Just scroll to the bottom of the first content page (the second page), type the word page and a space if you want, then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number. The page number will appear. And  you already specified that on this page where the page style switches to MainPage, the page numbering should restart at 1.  So it restarts at 1. (If you had specified page number 42 earlier, this number would be 42.)

That's All There Is To It

Just create the styles you want, apply the first style, then just switch page styles the way we did in this example.

Tips for Landscape and Portrait in the Same Document

To have a landscape page in a portrait document, just create a page style and select the Landscape option of the Page tab. So in this example, you could create a third page style, call it Landscape or Horizontal. Switch to it the way we did here with the manual break, but just don't change the page number.

Tips for Automatic Switching From One Page Style to Another

If you want to automatically switch from one page style to another, you have two options.

In the page style definition window, click the Organizer tab and find the Next Style list. You'll still need to insert manual page breaks sometimes but you won't have to switch styles as we did earlier.

In the paragraph style definition window, click the Text Flow tab and find the section in the middle dealing with creating a page break with a particular page style on the next page.

Or try using all three approaches together.

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Book Update, and Question About What Other Open Source Products to Write About

Hi all,

Well, the pieces are all on the board, kind of -- just not together yet.

The good news is, my book is in line to be proofed. (argh.) And we're going to do a new title and cover but who knows what.  I still love the road theme stuff we all came up with but not sure what will happen. I will know more in October.

The more interesting news is that my editor at Prentice Hall is eager to have me write mini-books for their Shortcuts program. They're roughly 30-50 page short PDF books on particular topics. I'm not a programmer so won't be covering Ajax or Ruby anytime soon, or ever, for that matter. But I can definitely elucidate how to use open source end user programs: Moodle, perhaps, and other K-12 oriented programs, or whatever else.

So that's my question to you:

- What end-user open source product would you like to see a Shortcut written on?

- What  end-user open source product do you think there's the most demand for?

- Any other thoughts on topics to write about?

Thanks,

Solveig

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OOoCon 2006 Links

Hi all,

If you missed OOoCon 2006, the OpenOffice.org conference in Lyon, France, here are some links.

Schedule:
http://marketing.openoffice.org/ooocon2006/schedule.html

Video :
http://ooocon-koon.kiberpipa.org/media/

Thanks to Karim for reminding me to post!

 

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Making It Easy for Your Organization to Work With Microsoft Office Users

One of the issues you face when you switch your organization to OpenOffice.org is: how do the users work with MS Office users?

If Angie down at the courthouse needs a document that your clerk Rob created, how does Rob send Angie what she needs? Especially if Rob isn't very experienced with file formats, attaching documents to emails, and so on?

You do this.
1. Set up everyone's computers to save by default in MS Office format. Then they don't need to even worry about sending Angie the file in the right format.

2. You set up everyone's default email program.

3. You train everyone to send out documents using one of the options under File > Send. You might even create a new toolbar with those options more clearly expressed.

See this blog for info on modifying toolbars/menus in general and this blog, from Monday, on how to add the two new items.

1. Setting Your Default Email Program

I've mentioned it before, but have forgotten about it since blogging ;>  so it bears mentioning again. When you choose File > Send > Document as Email or File > Send > Document as PDF Attachment, the default email program starts. How do you specify it? It's usually not right, for one thing, since Yahoo starts by default on my desktop and (oorgh) Outlook starts on my laptop.

The online help for OpenOffice says to look for the External Programs setting. However, there is no such thing. You set your default program by setting it in your operating system. For me, it's under Internet options in my control panel.

2. Set Up Everyone to Save in MS Office Format

If you work with people who aren't familiar with saving files in different formats, or if you just think it would be easier for you, set up everyone's computers like this.

Tools > Options > Load/Save > General.

In the area toward the bottom, select Text Document, then in the corresponding dropdown list, select the Microsoft Word format. Click the image to see a larger version.

Repeat for each file format in the Document Type list, then click OK to close the window and save changes.

3. Use the File > Send Features As Much As You Can
I love these features. They make working with non-OpenOffice users so much easier. Plus there's a new one this release in 2.0.3 -- too bad they didn't put it on the menu.  ;>  However it's easy to do yourself.  Click the image to see a larger version of the menu options as they are by default.

Document as Email starts your default email program, and attaches a copy of the current document to that email. All the user needs to do is address the email and enter content like "Angie, here's the document you wanted." If you're set up to save in MS formats, then the doc of course is in the appropriate MS format.

Email as PDF does the same thing, but makes a PDF version of the current document, and attaches that to the email.  This is great if Angie down at the courthouse doesn't need to edit the document, or if you realllllly don't want her to.

There are two other new ones, Email as Microsoft Word and Email as OpenDocument Text. See the related blog for how to add those to the menu, or to a menu that you create yourself. You can also of course rename those options to make them clearer for users.

There you go -- those are three steps that will make interacting with MS Office users much simpler. Less training, fewer complications, and less confusion about where various files went.

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Nancy Drew Rides Again: Adding Two New and Wonderful Email Options to the OpenOffice Menu

First they take the simple but elegant mail merge option off the Tools menu, and now this.

There are two wonderful, extremely useful, much-requested features in OpenOffice 2.0.3.

• Email as Microsoft Word
• Email as OpenDocument Text

These are in addition to the existing ones:

• Send Document as PDF Attachment
• Send Document as Email

If you're working in some text document, the Email as Microsoft Word  option will take your current doc, make a MS Word version of it, start your default email program, and attach the MS Word copy to a new email document. 

The Email as OpenDocument Text option does the same thing, but the attachment is in OpenOffice text format regardless of the format of the current document.

Send Document as Email -- This one does pretty much the same thing, but it just uses the format of the document you're working in. If you're working in MS Doc format, the attachment is .doc and if you're working in OpenOffice,  the attachment is  OpenOffice.

Send Document as PDF Attachment -- This one does the same thing but creates a PDF copy of your document .

Can you see how incredibly useful these are? They're great for working with MS Office users within or outside your organization. Combine them with File > Send > Document as PDF Attachment and you're golden. (See this blog on setting up openoffice for easier use for inexperienced users for more info on that.)

But how do you get them on the menu? They're there -- you just can't see them.

Here's how. I'll show you how to add them to File > Send, and I'll also show you how to create a whole separate menu to add them to. If you're working with inexperienced users in your organization, the latter might be more helpful for them.

Adding the Two New Items to the File > Send Menu to Join the Other Similar Options
Choose Tools > Customize.

Click the Menus tab.

Select the File | Send menu.

Click Add.

In the window that appears, find Document on the left and the indicated menu item on the right. Click Add.

Select the other option, Email as OpenDocument Text, and click Add.

Close the window.

In the original window you'll see the two newly added items.

Click OK.

Choose File > Send and you'll see all the items.

 

Adding the Two New Items to the File > Send Menu to Join the Other Similar Options

Here's how to make a special menu to put these items on. It might be simpler for your users if there were a specific menu for these items.

Choose Tools > Customize.

Click the Menus tab.

Click New.

Type the name for the menu like Sending Out Documents.

Click OK. You'll see the new menu with no items.

Click Add.

In the window that appears, select Document on the left, and the four indicated items on the right. Select each of the four items in turn and Click Add.

Close the window. You'll see the items you added.

You might want to rename some of the items to make them clearer or comply with internal processes. Select the item, click and hold down on Modify, and choose Rename.

In the window, type a name you prefer, then click OK.

 

Rename any additional items.

Click OK to save changes and close the window.

Click on the menu you added. You'll see the items.

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Question: Why Aren't More Schools Switching to Linux and OpenOffice.org?

Note: Steve Hargadon has an interesting post on this same topic.

I was teaching on Bainbridge Island, Washington a couple weeks ago. Their school district, one of the best in the state or possibly the best in the state, is in the process of  switching to Linux thin clients and OpenOffice.org. You should see the performance of OpenOffice on their setup -- it takes a couple seconds to start the program. Yes, to start it.

The school district is saving several hundred thousand dollars just by switching to OpenOffice.org. I'm not sure how much additional money is being saved by switching to Linux.

The teachers who I trained had the usual reaction -- "Hey, this is really similar to Microsoft Office. What was the big deal about switching?"

Which leads me to ask any and all of you who are reading this blog.

Why haven't more schools switched to OpenOffice.org?

It's the perfect fit. Free. Lets you spend money on something really important, education. Schools are perpetually short of money and teachers are underpaid.  It's hard to find something in the real world that would do more good for a school than to switch to OpenOffice.org. (Or another open source software product that would save as much money.)

There's the Microsoft campaign of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), of course. There's inertia.

But is there something else?

Are there teachers reading who'd like to know more, or share frustrations with open source?

Let's talk about this. It frustrates me that such a good thing isn't being done. There could be schools across the country, across the world, with smaller class sizes, better teacher salaries, and better facilities and supplies, by saving money on software. Let's make it happen!

 

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Technical Writing, Writing, and Having More Fun as a Techwriter

My friend Kathy has posted recently about techwriting.

Not to suck up or anything but she's dead on. She was posting for folks who aren't professional techwriters, though, and I wanted to ramble on a bit, as a professional techwriter, and for those who are or who might be interested anyway.

I've been in and out of techwriting for 15 years and I learned long ago that manuals sometimes suck because they're software bandaids. In fact, I made a design on my www.cafepress.com/techright store a while ago with the Techwriter's Crest, which included a bandaid across a picture of a CD. When a manual is complicated, it's sometimes because it's full of things like "Don't ever hit the OK button, it will corrupt all your data if you've entered a new record before running the Mogonshloggin rebuild function" and worse. Manuals can't be very good when the software is terrible. There's still some wiggle room, of course.

Manuals are also complicated because, as Kathy says, the software requires that the users put in stuff they don't know. The fields in the windows you're working in should ask for what you know. Ask for whether the user already has their addresses or whether they need to add new addresses, not whether they want to import ASCII or add comma-delimited records on the fly. Or ask the user for a number they have and then do the computation for them; don't ask them to do the computation first. (That's why the machines are called....computers.)

So that's what we're stuck with. But there's also some control. And the more you get to be in control and use your brain and think of cool ways to make the docs better, the less you hate your job and wonder why you didn't take that opportunity to be a property manager in the Andes when you had your chance.

What do we do to like our jobs and do good work?

Think about what's important. And if you're working on something important, and using your brain, it all flows from that.

What's really important?

I'm not saying throw your English major out the window, but spending cycles on the stuff that doesn't help and that nobody will notice robs you of time you could spend learning the product.

There are editors and  techwriters out there who care more about parallel structure and "onto" versus "into" and serial commas than well-organized getting started manuals. There are techwriters out there who just copy and paste the spec, and never verify it, never take donuts down the hall to the developers, and never take initiative to figure out if things could be done better. And that makes for unhappy techwriters and unhappier users. So as tough as it is sometimes, get out of the corporate torpor and you'll make better products by focusing on the things your users need.

Here's a link to the grammar stuff that I think is important; one of my previous writing blogs.

Sometimes it's hard to get anywhere, because of a culture of treating the techwriters as second class citizens (and QA doesn't get treated much better), sometimes it's the individual writers' faults, sometimes it's both. But techwriting is not about the words or the style or the bullets, and it certainly can't be looked at in a vacuum. It's the guidance for how to use the product.

And if you don't need that much guidance to use the product, then you need less documentation. And the documentation that there is, is easier to follow.

Which leads me to another soapbox topic. A fundamental flaw in bad documentation is when you try to document the features, the product, the software, rather than talking about how the user should do what she needs to do. Documenting a zillion windows, just because they're there, in a 200-page appendix, is not as good a use of your time as talking to users, doing a little task analysis if you like to use that jargon, figuring out what the things are that people will be doing, and documenting how to do those things.

It's harder for writers to document tasks than features, but you just do that once. And there are, you hope, a lot of users who will be frustrated each time they read the manuals.

1 x a lot of work  < 10,000 x a lot of work

(Now, sometimes the product is hard. If you're documenting how to use a ten zillion feature storage device, say a McDATA I10k Director that stores a zillion and a half gigs of very important information, things might get a little complicated and the manuals reflect that. But still -- the same guidelines apply, it's just harder.)

When I was at Great Plains Software, now part of the Microsoft empire, we had a huge manual called the Field Descriptions Manual. 600 or so pages, 6-point type, and just a huge bunch of info about all the fields and files in the software, for our developers.

Now, that's a horrible thing to write, to edit, and to use.

What we switched to, when I was there, was online field descriptions. The code in the product knows how long all the fields are, and what the type is, and what the name of the files are. The code couldn't run if it didn't, eh? So some clever lad wrote a program that sucked out that data and displayed it in a nice tidy little program. Very easy to use. The manual was maybe 10 pages. And guess what -- the online field descriptions were always up to date and accurate.

So here's what can make life more fun and the docs better. Not "First prize in the STC" better, but truly better, better for our  users.

Goals for Techwriters

• Think about what's important. Throw out everything, take a couple hours off with the team early on a Friday afternoon, and figure out what's important. Work on that.
• If you have any design input, try to make the product give the information, or figure out the information, not the person. Maybe rename some menus, try to get things organized logically.
• Make the documentation task-oriented, not feature-oriented.
• Talk to a user. Talk to a lot of them. It'll change your life and how you approach documentation. Go to a training class with real customers. When I taught my first class with my first workbooks, I....well, let's just say the workbooks have changed a lot since then.
• Try to get to those product meetings.
• Get to know the developers. It's not fair that they have all the info and you don't, but if you get to know them they'll tell you stuff. Just basic human interaction. It's a lot more effective than rules and processes and meetings.
• Dare to skip stuff. If people can easily see that the Badger dialog box displays the name and ID of the current badger, why spend time documenting it?
• Remember good techwriting is harder but more fun.  Otherwise you're just filling out TPS reports and thinking, as you sit in the bathroom killing time til you get back to your desk, that you only have to do this for 20 more years.
• Keep a quoteboard. It doesn't help with your techwriting but it's fun.

Am I curently a techwriter? Off and on. I prefer training because -- well, I'm charge, I don't have to coax the developers to give me information, and the training is the product. Plus I get to see the light bulb go on. But I do periodic techwriting projects still, I'm still connected. I know it's tough and there's always something annoying going on. But if it were easy or fun all the time, then it would be harder to get into and lower-paid, right?

I'll sign off with my favorite quotes about writing.

"When I am a rich man with my own bicycle and can have beer for breakfast I shall give up writing altogether and just be absolutely disgusting." Dylan Thomas

"Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek, your hand will be soft...You are the one who sits grandly in your house; your servants answer speedily; beer is poured copiously; all who see you rejoice in good cheer. Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day." Ptahotep, 4500 B.C.

"Documentation is like sex. When it's good, it's very, very good. And when it's bad, it's still better than nothing!"