OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Quick Tips on Sections in OpenOffice Writer

Sections are great. They're a way to partition off part of the content of a text document and treat it differently.

Quick Overview of Sections
Select your text that you want treated differently, choose Insert > Section, and choose any of the options in this window and the tabs such as Columns, Background, etc.

When you insert a section, it just means the content you selected is now partitioned off and assigned the attributes you specified in the Insert Section window.

This section below is in two columns with a gray background, because I used the Columns and Background tabs to apply those settings.

For this next sample section, I didn't select any text -- I just choose Insert > Section, chose Link, and specified the legal.odt file.   Here are those settings in the section window.

And here are the results. The contents of the legal.odt file got sucked into my current document where I inserted the link. Now anytime somebody changes the contents of the legal.odt file, those changes show up in the my document, too, since I've linked to that file.

To edit the section, choose Format > Section and select the section to change options for or delete.

I could write a whole bunch about sections. However, the main point of this blog is to point out a few things about knowing which section you're in.

Managing Sections
Name your sections. When you have more than one section in a document, things can get confusing if you don't name them.

So when you choose Insert > Section to create the section, type something more clearly memorable for the name.

Or if you've already got sections, choose Format > Section and rename them.

The current section name is displayed in the lower right corner of your document.  If you're not sure what section you're in, click in it. Look in the lower right corner, as shown.

Also if you click in a section and choose Format > Section, the section name will be highlighted.

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The Motel 6 on the Moon (funny, but not really fictional)

Or is it an outpost on mankind's farthest frontier?

http://www.wired.com/science/space/magazine/15-06/ff_space_nasa

Gregg Easterbrook, the author of the article, was just interviewed on NPR and was hilariously and delightfully candid.

It's Wedding Season, and OpenOffice.org Is Here For You

Who wants to pay for someone else to make your wedding invitations? (Or programs, or whatever.)

Use OpenOffice for your wedding invitations.

This of course prompts the objection, "But there aren't any templates in OpenOffice."

Well, there are some. But that's not important. Because there are also Microsoft Word wedding invitation templates out there. Just open them in Writer and you're good.

There aren't a lot of free wedding invitation templates out there but if you can find one, just use it. Also, here's my vague attempt at one. Right-click on the link and choose to save to your computer.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openofficeblogtemplate.ott

Here are some tips for making your own.

- Unless you're doing fancy really graphically oriented stuff, use Writer.

- Set the size of the invitation here. Format > Page, Page tab, and specify the width and height. Then specify the margins and click OK. You'll want .5 if you want the border lines in a bit from the edge, and 0 inches if you want a background design to go all the way to the border.

- Set borders here. Format > Page, Borders tab. Be sure to specify where you want the borders, i.e. which sides, then the style, then the color.

- - Set a background color or graphic here. Format > Page, Background tab. You'll need to click the Browse button to go find the graphic.

- If you want to make your own background graphic, you could create it in Draw. File > New > Drawing. Then Format > Area, Bitmaps tab, and choose a foreground and a background color. Click to make a design, then click Add and save it. This is just one of the ways to make a design.

Then draw a big rectangle at least as big as the invitation, select Bitmap as the type of fill in the toolbar at the top of the work area, and your bitmap as the fill. Also make the border Invisible.

Then select the rectangle, choose File > Export, export it as PNG, and use that as your background graphic.

- If you've got a full background in your Writer document, you'll need a Frame to put the words in. Choose Insert > Frame, and set options like the width and height, and the background color which could be white or a complementary color to the background or borders.

- Another way you can put a graphic in the background is just to insert it, then put it in the background. Choose Insert > Picture > From File. Navigate to the graphic file and select it. Then right-click on it and choose Wrap > In Background.

To lighten it, click on it and the Picture toolbar will appear. Use the Transparency field to lighten it, or use some of the other icons on the toolbar.

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Dell Is Offering Ubuntu Linux Laptops

As of 5 pm (Eastern Time), you'll be able to order two new Dell desktop systems and one Dell laptop configuration with Ubuntu Linux 7.04 installed instead of Windows. Dell product manager Lionel Menchaca has the details in his post on Dell's corporate blog this morning. (A posting earlier in the week has more technical details about these new configurations.)

Read more:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2007/05/dell_does_linux.html

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Much easier, much simpler ways to print the contents of a database in OpenOffice.org Base

I've been so caught up in the complicated tools and cool hacks that I've forgotten about the really simple ways to get data from a database into a Writer document.

I'm so embarrassed.

Here's a simple way to bring in data, whether it's still in fields, or just plain text. You probably want to use this instead of the Reports feature, and instead of the Next Record field under Insert > Fields > Other, Database tab.

Here are some screen shots. I'll do more on this later but I just wanted to slap these options out there so you know about them.

Click any of the screen shots to see them bigger and in more detail.

1. Create a new text document and choose F4.

2. Click the + by your database, click the + by the word Table (or Query) and click the table or query you want to print.

3. Click the blank gray square shown, to the left of the first fieldname.

4. Click and hold down on that gray square and drag into the document.

5. Now you have various options.

Pick the option you want, insert the fields you want, apply any relevant formatting, and click OK.

Table

Fields

Text

Then print. If you bring in the data in fields, when you choose Print, click Yes when prompted and DON'T click the checkbox.)

Again, if you're printing in fields, you cna print to files or a printer. To select specific records, select the first record, hold down Ctrl, select another record, and so on.

 

 

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The books are in; you can order from me again

Hi,

I'm picking up a bunch of newly printed OpenOffice Guidebooks today, so you can now order from me again if you'd like: through the "used" link on Amazon, where you get a new book of course, and through the standard PayPal option, send money to [email protected].

Thanks for waiting,

Solveig

Inserting Page Breaks, and Dragging the Page Breaks to Where You Want Them, in OpenOffice Calc

See also this post and this post on printing spreadsheets.

In Word, I believe, and possibly other applications, you can drag the default page breaks to where you want them, in print preview.

In OpenOffice.org Calc, there is no feature to do this in the page preview window.

But there sure as heck is one in the Page Break Preview window. You can insert page breaks, and drag default or inserted page breaks to where you want them.

Turning on Page Break Preview
Choose View > Page Break Preview. To turn it off, choose View > Normal.

Here's what it looks like.

Inserting a Manual Page Break
You can do this anytime, regardless of whether Page Break Preview is on. However, this illustration shows it on. Click on a row or column, and choose Insert > Manual Break. The appropriate selection will be available.

Dragging Page Breaks
Move your mouse over the page break and watch for the mouse pointer to turn into a two-ended arrow.

Then drag it right or left, up or down. The page break will change position accordingly.

If you drag an end or side page break into the document, then the column(s) or row(s) will appear as shown and they won't print. This is one way to control what prints, along with page ranges (select cells and choose Format > Print Ranges > Define for the first one in a document; Format > Print Ranges > Add for subsequent ones).

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Printing Only the Sheets and Pages You Want, in OpenOffice.org Calc

this post and this post on printing spreadsheets.

You're going along, minding your own business, doing your spreadsheet. You print. Ten minutes later the irate printer guy comes along, saying "Would you mind not printing 200 pages at once????"

You're irritated since you just....well, you just MEANT to print the current sheet which has three pages.

But when you click Print or choose File > Print and don't modify this in any way, you print the WHOLE spreadsheet. Possibly including blank pages.

There are several ways to change this.

To print only the current sheet by default and prevent any blank pages from printing:

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org Calc > Print.

Select both options shown. Click OK. Now only the current sheet will print, and no blank pages will be printed.

To do this on the fly for each time you print.
Choose File > Print, click Options, then set the options in the options window that appears. This will make the change only for the current print job.

To select more than one sheet to print:
Click on the first sheet you want to print. Then hold down Ctrl and select any other sheet(s).

Or for contiguous sheets, click on the first sheet you want to print. Then hold down Shift and select the last sheet you want to print.

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What would you like to learn about in online training sessions?

I've just discovered (belatedly) GoToMeeting.com and other applications like it, and I'm pretty excited. GoToMeeting.com allows you to see my screen and call in so you can hear me. From what I can tell, it also lets me give up screen control to students and lets me see what's on your screen.

It looks like a great, simple, convenient way for me to do online instructor-led training.

It only runs on Windows, but I hope that Linux users will compromise and be able to use a Windows computer for training. 

Soon,  I plan to use GoToMeeting.com to give  online training, as well as occasional free seminars.  I'll need to do some thinking and see how initial classes go, but it looks like I could do any of the  following:

- periodic free seminars
- training at a reasonable price for any individuals who want to sign up, with a minimum number of students for a class to run
- training for an organization: just like my normal onsite training, but without travel expenses
- Short one-on-one tutoring or document trouble-shooting sessions.

The training would probably be no more than 2 hours at a time, though I could chain several together over a period of days or weeks to teach larger topics.

But the key question is: what topics do you want? Basics, specific tricks, configuration, styles and templates, databases, calc printing, creating org charts, converting problem documents -- ?? I'll take lots and lots of suggestions! 

Also, when would you want training? During work hours, evenings, weekends?

Let me know!

Thanks,
Solveig

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Best export graphics for OpenOffice Draw

I've done some testing with the quality of export from Draw. I'm not absolutely wildly impressed with any but PNG and JPG seem to be best. Oddly, EPS gets bitmappier and so does GIF.

Note: The graphic was already shrunk once and reduced in quality; I'm just looking for comparisons between the four types and they all kinda seem to be the same.

Here's a file where you can look at the different files exported and inserted in Writer. I mainly looked at the edges of the thought bubbles.

HOWEVER.

Check out what PDF export looks like. Couple sizes, regular and with the graphic preshrunk in Draw.

The quality for those is fabulous. Extremely smooth lines on the thought bubble.

Unfortunately, you can't insert PDFs in a Writer doc.

But keep in mind that PDF export of lines is fabulous. If you have a Draw doc that you need printed as is, export to PDF if you need to send the file to others, don't export to the graphics formats.  Just be sure to export with no graphics reduction if graphics quality is your main goal. Lossless Compression is the option you want.

 

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Support OpenOffice.org: Add it to your resume!

Ben Horst writes:

For a long time I’ve been listing OpenOffice.org as a software application among those on my resume. I figure those who don’t know it will ignore it, while those who are aware of open source will be excited and consider it a standout feature (not necessarily that I know how to use it, since it’s pretty easy, but that I’m proud and brave enough to call attention to it).

[Remember to include the keyword StarOffice, as well, since Sun is quietly hiring again.]

Read more:

http://www.solidoffice.com/archives/527

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An Always-Reliable Way of Docking the Styles and Formatting Window in OpenOffice Writer, Impress, and Calc, and the Slide Pane in Impress

You can dock the toolbars and floating windows in OpenOffice.org.

Here's the Styles and Formatting window, docked.

Here's the Styles and Formatting window,  undocked.

Usually you can take any window, drag it toward the side of your work area (or any of the four sides, technically) and when the gray dotted outline appears, release your mouse. (Then to undock, click and hold down on the blank gray area between the icons at the top, and drag back toward the middle.)

However, this doesn't always work. The docking process, that is. The gray line doesn't always show up.

Here's a key combination to dock the Styles and Formatting window that always (to my knowledge) works.

Click on the title bar of the undocked window so that it's selected. Then press Ctrl  Shift  F10

Press that key combo and the Styles and Formatting window docks immediately. Then as described above, drag the gray area between the icons back toward the middle of the work area to undock.

And -- here's the beautiful thing -- IT WORKS WITH THE SLIDE PANE IN OPENOFFICE.ORG IMPRESS, TOO!!! And that thing is really tricky to dock.

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Sale of "Used" Books on Amazon and Direct Sale of Books Through PayPal Unavailable Until June 26th

Please order through Cafepress.com for a lower price than Amazon. (Cafepress.com is the printer I use for the Amazon books.)

Updating the Preview in Your Mail Merge Docs so You See Different Data in Every Field

This is a very specific but annoying problem for which I've found a workaround (thanks to the smart folks in the training department at MASCO! ;> ).

A Little Background: Synchronize
So, you've got a mail merge doc. It's labels. You've set it up to Synchronize, so that when you make a change to the upper left address and click Synchronize, all other addresses take on the same updates. I.e. if you make the text blue, or insert a graphic, or whatever, you just make the change in one place and it updates all the others. This is a very nice feature.

Here's where you set synchronize. File > New > Labels, and in the Options tab select Synchronize contents.

Here's what a new sheet of labels looks like with the Synchronize floating button:

Here's what it looks like when you change the formatting for the upper left address:

Here's what it looks like when you then click Synchronize:

A Little Background: Preview
As you can see above, you see the field names, not the field contents, in mail merge documents. To see the contents, press F4 to view your data sources. Expand the data source you're using, select the table you're using, click the blank gray box that's circled to select all the rows, and click the also-circled icon called Data to Fields.

Here's what it all looks like.

But! What Happens When You Preview, Then Synchronize???????
Let's say you've previewed so you can see the data .Then you think, "Hey, the font needs to be different, and I want it to be green." So you make that change to the upper left frame like normal, you click Synchronize....and you get this. All the content is the same.

Don't Worry: It's Easy to Fix
You just click that same Data to Fields icon. Select all the data just like before, click the Data to Fields icon again, and this refreshes the display and gives you back the normal content.

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Suppressing Blank Address2 Fields in OpenOffice.org Labels, Envelopes, or Other Documents, for Mail Merges

Note: Everything is case sensitive. Also when you type the two "" quotes, don't put a space between them. If you have spaces in your database, this won't work. Either change the database field names, or create a query based on the table, and change the field names in the query. Then base the labels on the query.

Here it is -- suppressing a blank Address2 field in your mail merges. It's not extremely simple, but it's reasonably straightforward and it works.

Here's the situation we're addressing. Sometimes your addresses have two lines for the address part, sometimes they don't.

Bob Jones
101 Main
Suite 55
Boulder, CO 80022

Marion Silverman
888 105th Ave
Broomfield, CO 82211

But you have to put in the <Address2> field for everybody, since it's a mail merge. The setup has to be the same.

<Firstname> <Lastname>
<Address1>
<Address2>
<City>, <State>, <Zip>

But with this approach, your addresses look like this.

Bob Jones
101 Main
Suite 55
Boulder, CO 80022

Marion Silverman
888 105th Ave

Broomfield, CO 82211

Ick. How do you suppress that second Address2 line and the corresponding carriage return if there's no content for a particular record, for that Addres2 field?

Select the Address2 field in your mail merge document, choose Insert > Section, and create a conditionally hidden section with this formula.

databasename.tablename.fieldname EQ ""

Here are the details, using an example of labels.

1. Create the labels for mail merge as usual. File > New > Labels, select your database and tables, insert the fields, etc.

2. Choose the Synchronize Contents checkbox.

3. Click New Document.

4. Here are the labels.

5. Turn on nonprinting characters if they're not on already.

6. Select the first soft return, shown selected.

7. Press Return or Enter to replace it with a hard return.

8. Repeat, to make them all hard returns.

9. Click Synchronize to update the other labels to be the same.

10. Select the Address2 field.

11. Choose Insert > Section.

12. Name the section Suppress. Select the Hide checkbox and type the following condition. The screen shot shows the syntax.

Syntax
databasename.tablename.fieldname EQ "" � �(the last part is two double quotes together)

Example
databasewithtwoaddresslines.Table1.Address2 EQ ""

NOTE: if you are using the Thunderbird address book as a data source, you need to use square brackets if the field name includes a space (i. e.: [Address 2]=="") to hide the second line of the address if it the Address 2 field is blank.)� I would suggest in general avoiding field, table, or database names with spaces.

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=43528&highlight=

Click the screen shot to see it bigger. It shows the syntax, not an actual example.

13. Click Insert.

14. Click Synchronize.

15. Now preview the data or print the data and you'll see that it prints correctly.

15. If you need to change the section, select it in the first address and choose Format > Section. Select the one named Suppress for the master label and make changes, then click OK. Click Synchronize again in the labels.

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Huge, detailed list of links for using macros in OpenOffice.org

This huge and excellent list was put together by the helpful and brainy folks at www.oooforum.org, including SergeM.

http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.phtml?t=50952

I don't write macros myself, but if there's something you're doing with macros that you can't find help with on that page, I imagine you're doing something with macros that's either very advanced, like gene research, or something that just isn't possible.

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