OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Creating a presentation quickly from a directory of images in OpenOffice Impress

Once I installed this extension, it took me about six seconds to create a presentation based on a directory of graphics, one slide for each graphic.

http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/node/419

Download the extension, don't unzip it, then choose Tools > Extension Manager as always to add it.

Then choose Tools > Addons > Create Photo Album.(If that doesn't show up, restart OpenOffice.)

Point to the directory where your graphics are. That's it. You get a presentation.

Only thing is, the randomly chosen slide transitions are a little annoying, so click the Slide Transitions item, select No Transition (or something you like), then click Apply to All Slides. And you can use that pane also to change the amount of time on each slide, or to switch it to manually going from one slide to another.

 

Template for Jeopardy-Like Quiz in OpenOffice Impress

An important part of learning is the review, and the more fun, the better. I use a vaguely Jeopardy-like review game in class to go over whatever we've covered that day. I have a template and make up the questions during lunch or break to address the content for that day.

I use Interaction for the squares in the first slide that go to each slide that has the question and answer. (Right-click on an object and choose Interaction, then select Go to Page or Object,  and select the slide to go to).

Here's what it looks like.

So if you'd like to create your own quizzes, here's what to do.

Download the Template in Presentation or Presentation Template Format
If you want to be able to choose File > New > Presentation and have the jeopardy template show up as an option:
1. Download this file. Right-click on this link and choose to save the link target to your computer.
2. In OpenOffice.org, choose File > Open and open it.
3. Choose File > Templates > Save, select a category, name the template, and click OK.
4. Choose File > New > Presentation, select From Template, and select the category you saved the template in. Click Create.
5. Make your changes and save the presentation

If you just want to open the file, fiddle with it, and save a version as your own copy:
1. Download this file (presentation format) or this file (template format). Right-click on this link and choose to save the link target to your computer.
2. In OpenOffice.org, choose File > Open and open it.
3. Choose File > Save As, save the document as a .odp file.
4. Make your changes to it. Save the presentation.

Entering Your Content

Just type the category you want at the top of each column of numbers, and then the appropriate category,  question and answer in each slide.

Modifying the Appearance
1. Choosing View > Master > Slide Master.
2. Change the formatting.

• To change the background color, choose Format > Page, Background tab, and select a new color.

• To change the color of any of the text, just select it, and choose Format > Character to change any formatting. You can also use the dropdown font and font size lists on the toolbar, and the A-shaped font color icon.

• To change the bullets, select the bullets and choose Format > Bullets and Numbering. Select the format you want (Graphics tab is a good one) then click OK.

4. Get back out of the master view by choosing View > Normal.
5. Change effects.

• To change the slide transitions, click on the Slide Sorter tab. Then click the Slide Transitions item in the right-hand pane. Select the slide or slides to change the transition for, and from the list at the right, select a different transition. Click the Normal tab to go back to normal view.

• To change how the bullets come in, in normal view click the Custom Animation item at the right side of the window. Select the effects that appear in the white box in the lower right corner. Expand the top-level effect and select each one. Click Change then select a different effect.

6. Change the color of any of the objects in the first slide.

• To change the color of any of the objects that are in the background, select them BY DRAWING AROUND THEM WITH YOUR MOUSE. If you click on them, they will run the Interaction.  So draw around them with your mouse, then from the dropdown lists at the top, select Color, Gradient, Hatching, or Bitmap, then the fill of your choice.

7. If you want to change the text inside any of the squares. Just double-click in the text itself, not in the square, and retype.

8. If you want to change what any of the objects do -- when you click each they currently go to a particular slide with a question and answer. If you want them to go to a different slide, or perform a different action, follow these steps.

• Select the object by drawing around it with your mouse pointer, not by clicking on it.
• Right-click on it and choose Interaction.
• In the window that appears, either select a different slide for it to go to when clicked, or from the dropdown list select a different action and enter any additional necessary information. For instance, one of the options is to open a particular file. You would then enter the path to the file.

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Welcome back, user-defined motion paths in OpenOffice Impress 2.3

Back in the good old days of 1.x, you could draw a line, then draw an object, and make the object move along whatever line that was. It was great.

Then the lovely redesign of Impress came, and that user-defined motion path feature got lost along the way.  It was a sad time.

However, now in 2.3 it's back! It works slightly differently, but it's great. In addition, you can edit the existing motion paths like the stars, etc. Here's how it works.

Draw an object, then under Custom Animation’s Motion Paths tab, select any one of the first three effects.

Your cursor will change so that it will draw the kind of line you selected. Draw the path that you want the object to follow. Then run the presentation to see the effect.



To edit existing motion paths, just apply a standard motion path like Eight-Point Star or Diamond. The path will appear in the slide. Click on the path and expand it; you’ll get another path (there’ll be two diamonds, for instance). Delete the old path, and you’re good.

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Removing a white background, or switching any color to another color

This is a useful if well-hidden feature, in OpenOffice Draw and Impress.

Let's say you've got some lovely  graphics for your business, and you're going to put them on your web site.

So you add the logo, the first one, to your web page. But! Hey, what's up with that? There's a white background that didn't show up before. And you're not about to change the pink background.

So to get rid of the white background, here's what you do.

1. Create a new Draw document and insert the graphic.  (File > New > Drawing, then choose Insert > Picture > From File and find your graphic.

2. To see things better, put a colored object behind the graphic, or make the background colored. To change the background, choose Format > Page, Background tab, and instead of None, select Color from the list. Select any color and click OK.

3. Choose Tools > Eyedropper.

4. Click on the graphic. Then click in the first checkbox on the left.

White is the default source color. However, if there's a different background color, or just to practice, you can then move your mouse over the white part of the graphic and click on it to select the color you want to get rid of.

5. Select Transparent in the corresponding dropdown list on the right. Again, this is the default.

6. Click Replace. The white will be replaced by Transparent.

7. If you didn't get rid of enough white, increase the tolerance to 20% and try again. Keep going as necessary; sometimes you need to do 50% or more, up to 99%.

8. Select the graphic and choose File > Export. Select the format you want: PNG, JPG, etc. Click Export, and enter any additional options if prompted.

Now you can insert the new picture wherever you need it.

Now, what happens with other pictures, when you try to replace one color with another color? It all depends on the picture. Here's what happens when I replace a light lavendar with a darker lavendar in the cupcake graphic. The following illustration shows before and after. It works better if you have something very structured where there are no gradations of colors.

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Taking Your Microsoft Office Templates, and Making Them Available in OpenOffice.org or StarOffice

If you have a bunch of Microsoft Office templates that you love, you can just choose File > Open in OpenOffice.org to use them. However, if you want them to be available in the wizard when you create a new presentation, or available from File > New > Templates and Documents in OpenOffice.org, you need to do two things: convert them to OOo format, and put them where OOo expects to find them.

Converting Your Microsoft Office Templates to OpenOffice.org/StarOffice Format
You need to convert them to OpenOffice format. Choose File > Wizards > Document Converter. Follow the wizard through to create a converted set of copies of the templates.

Step 1.

Step 2, then just follow the wizard as prompted.

Pointing to Templates to Use: Approach 1
(Use Approach 2 if this doesn't work)
Now, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths. Select the Templates line.

Click Edit, then click Add, and add the path to the templates you want to point to. (Click this image to see a larger version if you like.)

Click OK, and OK, and OK  again.

Now you'll see the templates when you choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

Pointing to Templates to Use: Approach 2 (Usually Need to Do This for Impress)
1. Copy the directory of converted copies.
2. Paste it into this directory:
openoffice\share\template\en-us (or whatever your language is)
3. If they don't show up in the wizard, restart OpenOffice.org and your computer if necessary

If You Only See One of the PowerPoint Templates That You Converted, in the OpenOffice Wizard
See this entry.

For More Information on Templates
For more information on templates, see this post, which includes this information.

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Darkening the OpenOffice Impress or Draw Grid, and Changing the Increments

I was going to blog about this straight-up, but then I thought, hey, I've got this already in my book. So I've posted an excerpt from the book, a three-page PDF of the instructions for using the grid, plus darkening the grid and increasing the number of increments. 

The instructions are for Draw but apply to Impress as well; when you choose Tools > Options as in the instructions, just choose either Draw, or Impress, whichever application you want to modify the grid for.

Download grid.pdf

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A Useful Hack for Storing Text or Editable Pictures You Need to Reuse, in OpenOffice Impress Presentations

My friend Ben Horst wrote to me with a question about how to store editable content in a presentation that you reuse periodically. Like a few buttons formatted a particular way, text boxes, anything that can't easily be drawn and formatted and has to look a certain way.

My answer was, well, kind of a hack, but I think it's useful enough to point out.

What Doesn't Work, But Is Useful For Other Things

In Writer, you've got Autotext, a very nice way to store text or graphics that you need to reuse. (Create the text or graphics you need, choose Edit > AutoText, hold down the button with the arrow and choose New. Also name it and create a shortcut. Then click OK. Type the shortcut followed by F3 to insert the text in any document on that computer.)

But not in Impress.

Throughout the application, you have the Gallery where you can store gifs, jpgs, etc. But this isn't any good for storing, for instance, text boxes.

The Hack I Came Up With
If you've got editable things you would like to conveniently access in a presentation, just store them in either the Handouts view or the Notes view.

Click the Handouts tab at the top of the work area, and just add whatever you need. This of course assumes you don't need to give handouts of this presentation. In this illustration there's a text box and a smiley face shape.

Or use the notes view. You can use plain text as shown or the same graphical elements as shown in Handouts view.

The items in those views don't show in the normal view.

So store your reusable stuff in one of those views, then copy and paste from there to wherever you need it. It's not a perfect solution but it works.

Note: If all you need is reusable attributes, remember styles.

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Google's Doing PowerPoint

Looks like Google is heading toward the Powerpoint/Impress area.

http://www.themoneytimes.com/articles/20070418/google_adds_presentation_to_its_apps_suit-id-103333.html

Creating Keyboard Shortcuts in OpenOffice, including Assigning Keyboard Shortcuts to Styles, a GREAT Feature

One of the complaints people have when switching from any software package to another is that the keyboard shortcuts that they're used to don't work anymore.

However, in OpenOffice.org you can set your keyboard shortcuts pretty much any way you want. You can even assign shortcut keys to styles. This means that:

• You can blow through formatting quickly without using the Styles and Formatting window
• You can set up styles, put them in the default template that your users use, then just give them all quick reference guides that might look like this:

         

        Text with hanging left indent   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F4
        Heading indented from left and right   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl F6
        Back to normal text   In WordPerfect was [whatever]  In OpenOffice Ctrl Q

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Task

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. Use the Category and Function lists at the bottom to select the feature you want to assign a shortcut to. You have to be willing to spend some time looking but you'll eventually get a sense of where things are.

5. Find the keyboard shortcut, in the Shortcut Keys list in the top half of the window, that you want to assign. If it's already assigned to something, that's fine. Select the keyboard shortcut you want.

6. Click Modify. The shortcut will be assigned to the item.

7. If you want to remove a shortcut key from an item, select it in the Keys list and click Delete.

8. Click OK.

Assigning a Keyboard Shortcut to a Style

You might find it easier to just use a keyboard shortcut for styles, than to double-click them in the Styles and Formatting window. (Format > Styles and Formatting.)

To use a keyboard shortcut for a style, you do pretty much the same thing.

1. Create or open a document in the program where you want to apply the shortcut. You'll be able to choose that program, such as Writer, or all of OpenOffice.org, as the context in which the shortcut will work.

2. Choose Tools > Customize, Keyboard tab.

3. Select the program, such as Writer, or OpenOffice.org, at the top.

4. In the Category list, scroll to the bottom and select Styles. Expand the + next to it and select the category of style: Paragraph, Page, etc. Then in the Function list select the specific style. Select the shortcut you want from the Shortcut Keys list and click Modify.

5. Click OK.

Remember, the style has to be in the document where you use the shortcut key, otherwise of course it won't work.

Giving the Configurations You've Made to All Users

Shortcut keys are stored here in XP:

openofficedirectory\soffice.cfg\modules\swriter (or another module) \accelerator\en-us\default.xml

If you want everyone to have the same shortcuts, you can modify that file, then copy it to other machines or user directories. This is the directory on XP; different for Vista. (Grrr.....my impression of Vista is, OK, it's pretty because it looks like Mac, but I am sure sick of the blue screen of death.)

In Vista, it's

\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\OpenOffice.org2\user\config\soffice.cfg\
modules\swriter (or other module)\accelerator\en-US\current.xml

If you're having trouble finding the location, just make a change, then search your system for files that were recently modified, or contains a word in the change you made.

Here's what it looks like.

xlink:href=".uno:StyleApply?Style:string=HangingIndent&
FamilyName:string=ParagraphStyles" accel:shift="true" accel:mod1="true"/>

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OpenOffice Impress Issue: Applying Formatting to the Wrong Master Page

I posted about the disappearing master page Wednesday. Today I'll talk about the wackiness surrounding creating two new master pages at once.

Now, this isn't that big an issue. Basically, the rule is, just create one new master page at a time. Create it, apply it, save the presentation, maybe go get a cup of coffee or eat lunch. Then if you need to, go ahead and create another new master page from scratch in that same presentation or template.

Why?

Because when you've got two or more new master pages being created at once, some of the formatting, especially the bullets, of the second one you create will be applied to the first one.

Yep.

Let's say you're here under View > Master > Slide Master happily editing away. You've created one and formatted it, then you immediately create another one.

There's the new blank master page

You choose Format > Page, Background tab and choose a nice background for the master page.

So far so good.

Now you get crazy and apply pretty new green bullets to the 2nd master page.

But -- hey, the new bullet formatting didn't take effect. Not on this slide, at least.

That's because the new bullets got applied to the first master page. Somehow Impress thinks you're still working on that one, likely because it hasn't been applied to any slides.

Dangit.

So: Whenever you create a master page, choose View > Normal, apply the new master page to at least one slide, and save. Then you can go back and create another new master page. This still doesn't work perfectly -- the bullet formatting, when I tried it, didn't show up in the second master page. However, it didn't get applied to the wrong master page, and it did show up when I applied the 2nd new master page to a slide.

Again, as mentioned in the previous post, save everything as a template.

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OpenOffice Impress Master Pages: The Disappearing Act

Impress is....well, it's not always as solid as the other OpenOffice.org applications. However, there are ways to deal with it.

I'm going to post about two particular Impress issues: the disappearing master page, today, and on Friday, the wackiness surrounding creating two new master pages at once.

Master pages are the backgrounds for your presentations. A template or presentation might have one or more master pages in it.

All right. So you want to create a new master page. Go ahead, but you need to care for it very very carefully. Here's the short version. Create a new master page under View > Master > Slide Master by right-clicking in the lefthand pane, creating a new master page, and designing it. Then choose View > Normal to go  back. Now, you MUST apply that new master page to at LEAST one slide, or your wonderful new master page will go Poof. (Not always, but enough for it to be a big issue.) Also, choose File > Templates > Save and save whatever document you created the master page in.  Then the master page(s) in that presentation will be available in all future presentations you create or edit.

Now, here's the detail.

Just Creating a Master Page From Scratch

You're dying to create your own master page from scratch, to format presentations exactly the way you want. Here's how.

1.  Open or create your presentation or template.

2. Choose View > Master > Slide Master.

3. Now you're in the master page view.

4. Right-click in the left hand pane and choose to rename the default  new master page. Not required but it's nice when you have a lot of them later.

5. Give it a name and click OK.

6. It's renamed.

7. All right. Format your master page, go nuts. Choose Format > Page, Background tab to change the background color. Add graphics, right-click on each and choose Arrange > Send to Back to put them in the background behind the text. Whatever you want.

8. Choose View > Normal to go back to normal view.

9. You see your master page.

The Disappearing Act

10.  Now, what if you now think, hey, I like this thing I designed, but for the first few slides that I have here, I'm going to apply this other master page. You might do this by right-clicking on another master page over there in the right-hand pane, like the nice green one, and choosing Apply to All Slides.

11. Guess what. Your beautiful master page that you worked so hard on is gone. Yes, even if you saved the presentation.

How Do You Prevent the Disappearing Act?

You MUST apply that new master page to at LEAST one slide, and keep it applied. Or your wonderful new master page will go Poof. (Not always, but enough for it to be a big issue.) So even if you don't intend to apply your new master page to the first slide, keep it applied there until you apply it to other slides.

Also, as soon as you've created your master page, choose File > Templates > Save and save whatever document you created the master page in. 

Then the master page(s) in that presentation will be available in all future presentations you create or edit.

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Doing Equations, Formulas, Pi, Etc. in OpenOffice Writer and Calc -- And Impress, Updated February 2007

Updated February 2007 for Impress -- see end of post.

Sooner or later, no matter who you are, you're going to have to talk about pi. Or you're going to need to talk about squaring lambda. (Mmm....squaring lambda.....) Or you'll need to have a+b+c divided by 2.

How do you do that in OpenOffice?

The first step is to just go to the old reliable Insert menu. Anything out of the realm of plain text, just go to the Insert menu.

Just Using the Special Characters Window

Now, if you just want a Special Character, pi or lambda or something, you can choose Insert > Special Character.

Find the one you want. If you select several you'll see them all displayed at the right side of the window and they'll all be inserted.

Then just click Insert. The character will show up.

It's a pain to scroll through all that again and again so make an AutoText entry for it. See

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/03/automatic_text_.html

Using the Formulas Features

If you need something more complex, then instead, choose Insert > Object > Formula.

You get an editing window at the bottom, a box for the equation in the document, and a little shortcut window floating off to the side.

Now,  you can use the little shorcut window. Click an item above the line, then click an item below the line and that inserts some placeholder stuff for you in the editing window.

   

But frankly I find it not that helpful since just writing the formulas is reasonably easy once you memorize a few tips.

• Use the Formula Reference Tables online help list to see how to enter formulas. Basically, do it how you think it would work. Use the OpenOffice.org Math Examples online  help list to see examples. These are really good. Just press F1 while you're in the editing window; you can type the titles of these topics into the Find or Index window.

• Use ^ for exponents, as in 3^2  which would be three, squared.
• Use sqrt for square root
• Use % in front of the written version of a symbol, as in %pi

So here are a few formulas. They're pretty easy to figure out. Click each image to see a slightly larger version, if you like.

a + b / $pi

a + b over $pi

(a + b) over $pi

If You Don't Know How to Write Out a Character Like %pi or %rho

Click the Sigma icon at the top to add a special character.

You can just scroll  through and select something from the list, and insert it.

Or you can add something yourself if you don't see what you need.

Optional: Add your own symbol   

To add something you don't see, click Edit.

Find what you want, by scrolling and manipulating all the dropdowns. Then name it, and click Add, not Edit.

The new symbol will show up in the symbol list.

Click in the document to stop editing the formula.

If you want to get back into the formula to change it, double-click the box the formula is in.

Formatting the Formula

All right. You've got a great formula. But it's really small. Or you'd like a different font. You change these by selecting the formula in the editing window and click on the Format menu.

Choosing Fonts gives you this window. You get to choose the font by the type: variables, etc. Click and hold down on the Modify button to change any font.

Select the font in this window, then click OK all the way back out of the windows.

That's About It

Insert > Object > Formula. Type what you want and use the online help and the brief tips I gave you.

Click in the document when you're done, and double-click the equation box to start editing again.

To format, select the text in the editing box and find the Format menu.

To add a symbol you don't know, click the Epsilon icon at the top of the window and select one--or click Edit to create your own.

Doing All This in Impress

I'm using 2.1 in February 2007 and it works just fine.

Click in a bulleted item and choose Insert > Object > Formula.

You can also paste the formula object from Writer to Impress. Don't paste it into a bullet in this case; just paste it into a layout with no bullets.

Double-click to edit, as usual.

Double-click the formula object to get into edit mode. Use the Format menu or make other changes.

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Template for Jeopardy-Like Quiz in OpenOffice Impress

An important part of learning is the review, and the more fun, the better. I use a vaguely Jeopardy-like review game in class to go over whatever we've covered that day. I have a template and make up the questions during lunch or break to address the content for that day.

I use Interaction for the squares in the first slide that go to each slide that has the question and answer. (Right-click on an object and choose Interaction, then select Go to Page or Object,  and select the slide to go to).

Here's what it looks like.

So if you'd like to create your own quizzes, here's what to do.

Download the Template in Presentation or Presentation Template Format
If you want to be able to choose File > New > Presentation and have the jeopardy template show up as an option:
1. Download this file. Right-click on this link and choose to save the link target to your computer.
2. In OpenOffice.org, choose File > Open and open it.
3. Choose File > Templates > Save, select a category, name the template, and click OK.
4. Choose File > New > Presentation, select From Template, and select the category you saved the template in. Click Create.
5. Make your changes and save the presentation

If you just want to open the file, fiddle with it, and save a version as your own copy:
1. Download this file (presentation format) or this file (template format). Right-click on this link and choose to save the link target to your computer.
2. In OpenOffice.org, choose File > Open and open it.
3. Choose File > Save As, save the document as a .odp file.
4. Make your changes to it. Save the presentation.

Entering Your Content

Just type the category you want at the top of each column of numbers, and then the appropriate category,  question and answer in each slide.

Modifying the Appearance
1. Choosing View > Master > Slide Master.
2. Change the formatting.

• To change the background color, choose Format > Page, Background tab, and select a new color.

• To change the color of any of the text, just select it, and choose Format > Character to change any formatting. You can also use the dropdown font and font size lists on the toolbar, and the A-shaped font color icon.

• To change the bullets, select the bullets and choose Format > Bullets and Numbering. Select the format you want (Graphics tab is a good one) then click OK.

4. Get back out of the master view by choosing View > Normal.
5. Change effects.

• To change the slide transitions, click on the Slide Sorter tab. Then click the Slide Transitions item in the right-hand pane. Select the slide or slides to change the transition for, and from the list at the right, select a different transition. Click the Normal tab to go back to normal view.

• To change how the bullets come in, in normal view click the Custom Animation item at the right side of the window. Select the effects that appear in the white box in the lower right corner. Expand the top-level effect and select each one. Click Change then select a different effect.

6. Change the color of any of the objects in the first slide.

• To change the color of any of the objects that are in the background, select them BY DRAWING AROUND THEM WITH YOUR MOUSE. If you click on them, they will run the Interaction.  So draw around them with your mouse, then from the dropdown lists at the top, select Color, Gradient, Hatching, or Bitmap, then the fill of your choice.

7. If you want to change the text inside any of the squares. Just double-click in the text itself, not in the square, and retype.

8. If you want to change what any of the objects do -- when you click each they currently go to a particular slide with a question and answer. If you want them to go to a different slide, or perform a different action, follow these steps.

• Select the object by drawing around it with your mouse pointer, not by clicking on it.
• Right-click on it and choose Interaction.
• In the window that appears, either select a different slide for it to go to when clicked, or from the dropdown list select a different action and enter any additional necessary information. For instance, one of the options is to open a particular file. You would then enter the path to the file.

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OpenOffice Templates: Making Them, and Making New Documents Based on Them (Writer, Calc and Impress): Reposted January 2007

This is embarrassing. I have a huge blogapalooza on styles but left out templates.

I shall remedy that immediately.

All right. Let's say you have the following:

• A bunch of styles you need to have when you create a document.
• Some canned text, like your signature or a graphic logo, that you use in a lot of documents
• Or you're just darned picky about how you want your documents ;>

You are an excellent candidate for using templates. Templates are documents that store styles, text, graphics, general formatting—whatever you want. You create a document, save it as a template in the Template Place, then point to that template when you want to create a new document using what it's got. (“Styles and canned text...that's what it's got....remember that.”)

And it really couldn't be easier.

Making a Template

Open a new document.

Put in it what you want in the template. Styles, graphics, text of every kind and variety. Whatever.

Then choose File > Templates > Save.

Specify My Templates unless you have another idea for a category.

(To create a new category, click the Organizer button, select a category in the button that appears, right-click on it and choose New. An untitled category will appear. IMMEDIATELY start typing the name of your new category. Click somewhere else in the category list when you're done typing. Click Close.)

Type the name of your template like Meeting Minutes.

Click OK.

Now you've got a template.

Using a Template

You need to create a new document using that template.

Choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

Select the Template icon on the left.

Open the category you chose like My Templates. You'll see your template.

Click Open and you'll have a new untitled document based on that template.

The Coolest Part—Making That Template Come Up When You Create Any New Document

Choosing File > New > Templates and Documents is fine but what if that's your template you use all the time? You can make it come up when you just choose File > New > [type of document] by setting it as the default template.

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]

Pointing to an Existing Directory of Templates

If you have a bunch of templates, Microsoft or OpenOffice.org, set up OpenOffice.org to know where they are. Then you can get to them as above by choosing File > New > Templates and Documents.

Converting, If You Want to Point to Microsoft Format Templates
First, if they're in Microsoft format, you need to convert them to OpenOffice format. Choose File > Wizards > Document Converter. Follow the wizard through to create a converted set of copies of the templates.

Step 1.

Step 2, then just follow the wizard as prompted.

Pointing to Templates to Use
Now, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths. Select the Templates line.

Click Edit, then click Add, and add the path to the templates you want to point to. (Click this image to see a larger version if you like.)

Click OK, and OK, and OK  again.

Now you'll see the templates when you choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

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Redocking the Slide Pane in OpenOffice Impress

Note: This is a repost, for two reasons: A) it's still not searchable through Technorati and B) it's been a year, so I figure it's now at "classic" status. ;>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 [email protected] 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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Share Your OpenOffice Impress Slides: Sharepoint, O3Spaces

OpenOffice.org Calc and Writer have the usual editing features that let you send files out for edit and get redlined comments back from anyone who reviewed it.

However, not so much for Impress presentations. Not within OpenOffice, anyway.  Fortunately, there are a few ways around this, including SlideShare. They support OpenOffice.org Impress files as well as PowerPoint. You can share, tag, and get comments back.

http://slideshare.net/

You can also take a look at this extension for OpenOffice Impress. O3Spaces works by providing users a single web-based team environment, with built-in search capabilities and an optional Java-based Desktop Assistant.

Their web site says "O3Spaces technology enhances OpenOffice.org and StarOffice with an integrated solution for Collaboration, Document Management and Document Retention within teams and small businesses. O3Spaces provides the OpenOffice 2.0 and StarOffice user community with a professional out-of-the-box extension for team and project collaboration, O3Spaces means an affordable and integrated alternative for MS Office Sharepoint."

Read more.

http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/11/23/openoffice-extension-rivals-sharepoint/

http://o3spaces.org/

 

 

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Using OpenOffice Impress for Storyboarding

I met Martin Hardee at a friend's party this past weekend, and, since it was a group of Sun employees and Sun escapees, the conversation naturally turned to work. (After a rolicking discussion of wines, gossip, Camaros, and other fun-loving topics, of course.)

Martin mentioned that he likes Impress for doing storyboarding. He has some interesting blogs on it on his Sun blog; check'em out.

Design Comics: An 0.9 Version You Can Use

"Here's how we're progressing on our project to create Comic-based storyboard templates for web designs. I've put together an example comic book storyboard using StarOffice slides and telling the story of buying ballet tickets from an imaginary web site (actually a real site but I changed the name to protect the guilty).  If you don't already have it, you can download StarOffice or OpenOffice to view and edit the slides."

Read more on this blog

Other blogs:

Examples of Comics in Designing Customer Experiences

How Customers Can Help You Develop Concepts via Comics

 

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Making OpenOffice.org Work the Way You Want It (Repost)

 

(Originally posted in October 2005.)

Note: Here's a related article I wrote for TechTarget.com.

What's better, software that does what it thinks you want, or software that does what you tell it to?

If it's rocket-launching software, and I don't know much about rocket-launching, I guess I would let the software do what it wants. However, I know what I darn well want my office suite software to do. I know how I want it to behave. I know what features I want and I know, for instance, that I do not want it suggesting to me what word I am typing and offering to help me finish the arduous task of typing it.

OpenOffice.org has its default behavior and default settings just like any other software but is very cooperative in letting you customize those behavior and settings the way you want them. Which is refreshing. You just have to tell it how to behave.

So I've put together a list of the top  customizations I think are the most helpful and/or powerful. I make sure that everyone in my classes learns these by lunchtime, and review them afterwards. When the software behaves the way you want, that makes everything better.

(By the way, this is a little bit off topic, but I wanted to mention that the scroll graphic at the top of this blog is a drawing shape in OOo 2.0.  I'm a bit of a giggly schoolgirl when it comes to the OOo drawing tools, especially the new 2.0 features.)

1. Turn off the word completion.

I hate word completion, and it’s really easy to turn off. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Word Completion tab. Make sure the Enable Word Completion option is unmarked, and click OK.

2. Turn off any automatic formatting that you don’t want.

Would you let people live in your house who you didn’t know? Then you don’t want automatic formatting going on that you don’t understand. Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Options tab. Unmark everything except the top option, Use Replacement Table. Then go back through and see if you really want anything.

(You can unmark the Use Replacement Table option too....but that table is handy, as you'll see in the next item.)

3. Use the automatic formatting to create handy shortcuts.

The same tab where you turned off word completion has a really great feature for creating shortcuts. Let’s say you type the word supercalfragilisticexpealidocious a zillion times a day, or your name and title, or anything kinda long. You can set up a shortcut for it. It's a much more reliable approach than word completion.

To do this: Choose Tools > AutoCorrect and click on the Replace tab.

A. In the left-hand field type your shortcut like sig and in the right-hand field, type the word you’re tired of typing all the time.

B. Click New, then click OK.

C. Click the Options tab and be sure that both checkboxes for the top item, Use Replacement Table, are marked. That just means "use the stuff in the Replace tab."

D.  In your document, type the shortcut, followed by a space, and your word will appear.

Note: You can also delete anything in the Replace tab that you don't want.

4. Display the icons that you want.

There are a zillion icons in OOo as with any software and you probably don’t use all of them. There’s also that dandy little result of having to click on the black arrow to get to the icons you want, while the ones you do want sit there taking up space and, quite frankly, smiling a bit smugly. So take off the ones you don’t want, leave room for the ones you do want, and add some other ones.

First step is to take off the ones you don’t want. Click on the dropdown arrow and choose Visible Buttons. Find the icons you don’t want, like double spacing, and select them. That’ll remove the checkbox by them, and that removes them from the toolbar.

Now add the icons you want. The first thing to try is to click the dropdown arrow again and choose Visible Buttons. If the icon you want is there, select it and it’ll appear.

If the icon you want isn’t there, click on the dropdown arrow again and instead of Visible Buttons, select Customize Toolbar. Find the toolbar you want to add icons to. Click Add, and in the window that appears just keep looking through the categories on the left til you find the feature you want in the list on the right. Select it and click Add.

 

Back in the customization window, you can leave the icon as is and just click OK, or change the icon by clicking and holding down on the Modify button and choosing Icon.

5. Get to know the choices under Tools > Options.

Choose Tools > Options, and you’ll see the big fat configuration window. Just as the items under Tools > Autocorrect were about default behavior, Tools > Options is about default settings, default values. Anything about the program, from icon size to language settings to where the program looks when you choose File > Open, is set here.

I suggest that you open the OpenOffice.org (or StarOffice as in this illutration) item at the top, then select Paths, and change the values for any paths you use a lot. Change the My Documents item, for instance, to change the default for where OOo tries to save documents. You’ll save a lot of time scrolling around in your Save windows.

To change the path, select it in the window, click Edit, and just point to the new location.

You might also want to expand the StarOffice Write item, select Default Fonts, and choose the ones you prefer.

When you’re done, just click OK.

You can turn off the Save for Autorecovery feature if you want--or increase the save interval
I find this feature entirely un-annoying, but you can turn it off easily if you want. Autorecovery means if OpenOffice.org crashes or you have to coldboot your machine, at least you'll have something recent to return to. If you're hypervigilant, increase the interval to every minute or 5; if you don't care about it, set it to every hour or just turn it off.

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Load/Save > General. You're looking for the Save AutoRecovery Information Every  option. Unmark it, or change the interval.

Click the thumbnail below to see a bigger image of the window.

Now OOo is more like a well-behaved pet and less likely to jump up at you, licking and biting inappropriately.

Those are not all the configuration steps you can do, by a long shot. But I like them, and students seem to like them. And they're an important set of steps in the general process of showing that OpenOffice.org does what you tell it to do.

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Top Ten Reasons to Start a Healthy New Relationship With OpenOffice.org (Repost)

(Originally posted in October 2005.)

I'm not a raving crazy open source OpenOffice fanatic. Not quite, anyway.

I do like it quite a bit, though.  I've used it for six years, about the same amount of time I've used Word and Framemaker. I've trained people on it for the last three years and have written about it for five years.

So I know about the limitations, the cool stuff, the weird stuff, and the normal stuff.

And I think it's a far better choice then Microsoft Word.

(It's not always a better choice than Framemaker, but it was never meant to be. It's far more similar to Word. See my blog on whether OpenOffice.org is a good tool for techwriters and other book publishing professionals.)

I want anyone who's frustrated with Microsoft Office, who doesn't have the money for Microsoft Office, or who just wants the features of OpenOffice.org, to understand everything the program has to offer. With Sun in charge of marketing the program, the great aspects of the program are far less well known than they should be, and so many people are out there cursing the random bulleting in Word when they could be writing documents with a program that does exactly what they ask it to. (Always refreshing.)

So here are ten reasons for anyone out there to use OpenOffice.org. They're not presented in any particular order.

Price, Price, Price

You can read all the reports from Microsoft that you want but that doesn't change the fact that OpenOffice.org is absolutely free. All updates are free. Always will be. If you personally on your own computer decide to download OpenOffice.org for free instead of buying each new version of Microsoft Office, you're spending absolutely no money. If your department switches to OpenOffice.org at work, you're spending absolutely no money.

Add Linux to the mix and you're spending maybe $100, depending on your distro.

Microsoft Office costs more. Windows costs more.

If you purchase books and training, you're spending a flat one-time amount, and it's not going to be $500 a person unless you're buying some serious one-on-one tutoring. I trained 300 people for a client in Houston over three weeks, with each person attending two day-long classes, for a total cost to my client of $15,000. That's $50 a person. That's a good price.

Document conversion can take time and money too, but that's a one-time fee, too. And with the enhancements in OpenOffice.org to the compatibility with Microsoft Office ( http://www.openoffice.org/dev_docs/features/2.0/index.html), converting your Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice.org is even easier.

And frankly, there's a bunch of learning that users need to do with each new version of Microsoft Office. That takes training money, or else users never get the training and might not learn the new version very well.

There Are More Important Things to Spend Money on the Office Suite Software

Think about the most important things in life.

Health. Love. Family. A roof over your head. Education. World peace.

The right or privileg of using office suite software you're familiar with, or even just having everyone using the same software, is not on the list. I challenge anyone out there to rank using Microsoft Office as one of the most important things in life.

Which leads one naturally to think about schools. Police stations. Libraries. City government. State government. Federal government. What do they spend money on? Some fairly important stuff. Much of the stuff from our earlier list. They pay teachers' salaries, police salaries, allocate money for healthcare, and a zillion other things. And of course, most of them use Microsoft Office. Not for free. Take all the money they spend on Microsoft Office, replace it with OpenOffice.org, and that frees up a lot of money for important things. I'm not sure how much but I don't think I'm out of line in saying hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac, OS/2 and Other Operating Systems

You're not stuck with Windows when you use OpenOffice.org. If you're happy with Windows, then you can stay with Windows. If you're all about Linux, or Mac, or OS/2, or Solaris, then OpenOffice.org works the same way on those operating systems, too. Which makes sense, since your operating system shouldn't have so much control over what software you use.

Learning a New Program Isn't as Difficult as You Might Think

Think about writing a text document.

What do you do?

You type. You make things bold. You print.

There are only so many things you can do in a text document, and there aren't that many different ways to do them. The same applies to numbers in spreadsheets. You add, you subtract, you calculate the internal rate of return.

The point is, the differences between office suites aren't all that huge. Take a look at the main text toolbar for Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org.

Something else I've observed in training is that a lot of people never received training on Microsoft Office in the first place. They aren't working as efficiently or powerfully as they could with the office suite they currently use. So when you switch people to a new office suite like OpenOffice.org and give them a day or two of training, they're going to be working more efficiently with the new office suite than the old one.

OpenOffice.org Is Free, Runs on All Operating Systems, So Everyone Can Use It. No More Digital Divide

With many functions of jobhunting, schools, government, and other essential functions done using the computer, it's very important that everyone be able to complete these functions. When a government agency sends out information or requires submission of information using a Word document, that's unfair and an undue burden on someone who just needs a job or needs to pay taxes. Imagine that FEMA required that all applications for assistance had to be done in Word.

Anything that we are required to do or need to do must be doable without paying $500 for the tool. Especially when something as useful and powerful as OpenOffice.org is freely available now.

OpenOffice.org means equal opportunity. You can read Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files, and create them, as well.

Small File Sizes

This seems kind of trivial, after talking about universal access to required functions. But it's something to think about. OpenOffice.org file sizes are roughly 1/10th the size of their Microsoft Office counterparts. This isn't so much an issue for your own personal computer, but think about network servers, and about email files around. Having smaller file sizes is a tremendous advantage.

Great Drawing Tools

Anyone using Illustrator, or perhaps Photoshop should take a look at OpenOffice.org Draw (File > New > Draw), especially the new 2.0 version. The prefab shapes are amazing, there are precise controls for curve points, you can export to EPS, JPG and more, you can convert any item to a curve, polygon, bitmap, or 3D, there's curved text formatting like in Photoshop...the list goes on and on. I can spend an entire weekend just fiddling happily with Draw.

Take a look at this OpenOffice.org 1.x file; it's all done from scratch within the program. Here's a thumbnail of what's in it.(And by the way, speaking of small file sizes in the previous item, the file size is 14k.)

Download bowloffruit.sxd

Solid Styles for Formatting Text and Page Layout

Styles are how you make your document do what you want it to. Styles are things like the paragraph style Heading1 which is 18 points big, Helvetica, with 12 points of space below it. Or the bulleted list style DiamondBullet that has a black diamond for the bullet character, and has three tenths of an inch from the bullet to the text. Or a page style with a footer centered at the bottom of the document half an inch from the edge, a header at the right side of the top of the document, and a left margin of an inch and a half.

Create or modify the styles you need, apply them to the text as you need, and life will be good.

OpenOffice.org doesn't randomly create new bullet or other styles and apply them to your text, it doesn't take every style you've ever created and infiltrate them into your other documents, and it doesn't get all twitchy with the formatting the way Microsoft Word does. Microsoft Word drives me up the wall. I think it's a sign of the apocalypse that something this uncontrollable is used so widely.

If you've always used Microsoft Word, take a look at OpenOffice.org. Use the styles. (Format > Styles and Formatting.) See how free of cursing and hair-pulling-out life can be.

In OpenOffice.org 2.0, a Nice Presentation Tool

The 1.x version, I must admit, was serviceable but not sexy. The 2.0 version looks a lot like Microsoft Powerpoint, has a zillion effects, and makes everything a lot easier. Check it out if you've used 1.x and been disappointed.

OpenOffice.org Doesn't Randomly Decide to Do Stuff to Your Document

You can see my blog on how to easily configure OpenOffice.org to do what you want it to do, not the default stuff by default.You control it through Tools > Autocorrect.

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When You Present Your OpenOffice Impress Presentation, Think PDF (Repost)

Note: This blog has two related posts, on PDF and links and on PDF in general. Originally published January 2006.

Do you give presentations?

On the computer where you give presentations, is the right software always loaded? Do you go through life with absolutely no problems showing your slides?

Most people don't.

You can save your OpenOffice.org presentation in Microsoft Powerpoint format, sure. That definitely works. Or use the portable OpenOffice.org. But sometimes you might need to present where neither OpenOffice.org nor Powerpoint is installed, you might not have access to a USB drive, and so on. There isn't, technically, an OpenOffice Impress Reader program. Not exactly....

What do you do?

Well, cleverly, you have already created a PDF of your presentation, which you can simply run using the Adobe Reader application available on every computer in the universe, except maybe a couple.

You won't have your animation effects or slide transitions, but as a riveting speaker with important things to say, you don't need that.

To make a PDF of your presentation, just click the PDF icon on your Standard toolbar (the top one). Name it in the window that appears. That's all.

Here's a snapshot of what it looks like in the Adobe Reader. Click on it to see it full size.

Here's a short presentation in OpenOffice.org, and the PDF copy I made using exactly these steps.

To show the presentation in Adobe Reader, you can use the Pages tab to show thumbnails and go from slide to slide, or just use your Page Up and Page Down keys on your keybard. View at 100% or whatever works.

You might not always need to do this, but it certainly does seem like having a PDF backup at all times could be a good idea.

Note: You can also export to HTML, and to Flash! Just choose File > Export, select HTML or Macromedia as the format, and follow the wizard.

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Two More OpenOffice 2.0 Book Chapters: Calculations and Master Pages

Hi all,

I've had a little more time due to publisher-related stuff, so I'm still refining the book chapters. Here are two, one from Calc and one from Impress. Feel free to read them, use them, or comment on them. As always, when you download  the chapters you agree to not republish it under your own name, not to reuse the content in another context, to credit the book/site if you link to it, not to use the pages in a bizarre sculpture for your MFA final project, etc. ;>

• The Calc calculations chapter
• The Impress master pages chapter

Notes:

The book itself will be out "soon", I promise, from Amazon and other fine booksellers.
I started slow and easy with the calculations chapter, based on what I've seen in some classes. Anyone who already knows how to write a calculation can skip that section.

I'm also looking for a few additional cool formulas to teach in the chapter.  I've got some ideas from www.openofficetips.com but would like input, as well.

Regarding master pages, they're being kind of twitchy in the current release. I have found them to be more reliable in the 2.0 version and am hoping for a return to reliability in 2.0.3.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for other topics, please feel free to post.

Thanks!

Two More OpenOffice 2.0 Book Chapters: Creating Good Spreadsheets and Good Presentations

Hi all,

I've had a little more time due to publisher-related stuff, so I'm still refining the book chapters. I've posted a couple today that I'd like additional input on: how to do good spreadsheets, and good presentations.

• Good spreadsheets
• Good presentations

These aren't really OpenOffice.org-specific of course, but I think it's a good idea. Their cohort, the Good Text Document chapter, definitely brings out some things that make text document creation much easier.

So if you have time this week or into the next, let me know if you have additional tips for how to make good spreadsheets and good presentations. I'd like to lean toward the technical side, things specifically related to what you do in the software, but if it's important, let me know regardless.

As always, when you read  the chapters you agree to not republish it under your own name, not to reuse the content in another presentation, to credit the book/site if you distribute it, not to use the pages in your MFA final project, etc. ;>

Thanks!

A Few OpenOffice Impress Presentation Templates

I had an artistic urge over the weekend and thought I'd try to come up with some interesting presentation templates. You can judge whether I did or not, but not being an artist, I had to jumpstart myself by looking at some Powerpoint templates for ideas. The themes seem to be A) cool pictures in the background and B) interesting Mondrian-type graphical shapes. If you're looking for ideas, I'd suggest doing the same thing--just vary your own, of course, so that you don't get a nasty visit in the middle of the night from the Microsoft copyright lawyers. ;>

I verified while doing this that if you create new colors, they'll transfer over in the document to someone else's computer correctly.  That is, they won't show up in the other person's color list, but they will be retained in the document as they were used.

Also, master pages seem to be really troublesome sometimes. I'll apply changes in master page view and they won't show up; or they'll show up in master view but not normal view. Let's cross our fingers and hope that 2.0.3 corrects this. I don't remember having this much trouble in 2.0.

Here are my templates; they range from Cloyingly Sweet to Sophisticated Grays. ;> If you don't have the same fonts I used, you might want to pep up the templates with something of your own choosing.

See these posts to learn more about templates, creating Impress presentations and master pages, and importing Impress master pages.

Right-click on each one that you want and choose to save the link target to your computer. Unzip the downloaded .zip file once you get it and follow these instructions to use the template in OpenOffice.org.

Flower template (not sure what kind of flower it is, just a picture I took in my front yard--the flower.jpg file is included with this zip file))

Rose Template (this would be the  Sweet one)

Gray template (the presentation uses a gradient; the screen shot doesn't show it perfectly)

OpenOffice Impress Presentation Templates: They're Just a Bit Tricky

First, I'm back from a non-vacation trip, and will be able to blog regularly again.

Secondly, Kent wrote to me recently to ask about Impress templates. As he states, you can make a template, put it in the correct directory, and even restart OpenOffice.org--and the template still won't show up in the wizard when you choose File > New > Presentation.  That approach works fine with spreadsheets and text documents; what's up with presentation templates?

They're just a bit cranky, and/or the logic for getting them to show up in the wizard is less inclusive and aware of its surroundings than we'd like. At any rate, here's how to make Impress templates (or backgrounds, whatever you like to call them) show up when you're creating a new presentation.

Here's how to create templates.  For creating just one template at a time, make the presentation the way you want it, then choose File > Templates > Save.  Select a category and name the template, and click OK. That's all you need to do to create the template, and to make it show up in the new presentation wizard. When you do it this way, you don't pull your hair out and you don't have to force the program to recognize the new template.

(To create a new category, see that blog.)

Now, how about if you've got a directory of templates that you've copied to the templates directory of OpenOffice.org? You don't want to have to open every single one following the instructions above. There's a quicker way.  See that same blog for info on how to point to a directory.

However, when you do it that way, that's when the wizard gets cranky and won't usually recognize the new templates. Here's how to force OpenOffice.org to recognize the templates. Choose File > Templates > Organize,  click and hold down on the Commands button, and choose Update. More info in the referenced blog.

This line of thinking might lead you to ask "OK, how do I import a template into a presentation I've already created?" And that's a very good question, which I'll answer in tomorrow or Wednesday's blog.

Sexy Presentation Templates for OpenOffice Impress

Want something more for your templates than a nice gradient background? Check out The Linux Box.

http://thelinuxbox.org/?p=24

It inspires me to break out PhotoShop (not good at Gimp yet) , break my imagination out of the box, and spend this rainy Saturday morning trying something fancy, myself.

Doing Equations, Formulas, Pi, Etc. in OpenOffice Writer and Calc -- And Impress, Updated February 2007

Sooner or later, no matter who you are, you're going to have to talk about pi. Or you're going to need to talk about squaring lambda. (Mmm....squaring lambda.....) Or you'll need to have a+b+c divided by 2.

How do you do that in OpenOffice?

The first step is to just go to the old reliable Insert menu. Anything out of the realm of plain text, just go to the Insert menu.

Just Using the Special Characters Window

Now, if you just want a Special Character, pi or lambda or something, you can choose Insert > Special Character.

Find the one you want. If you select several you'll see them all displayed at the right side of the window and they'll all be inserted.

Then just click Insert. The character will show up.

It's a pain to scroll through all that again and again so make an AutoText entry for it. See

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/03/automatic_text_.html

Using the Formulas Features

If you need something more complex, then instead, choose Insert > Object > Formula.

You get an editing window at the bottom, a box for the equation in the document, and a little shortcut window floating off to the side.

Now,  you can use the little shorcut window. Click an item above the line, then click an item below the line and that inserts some placeholder stuff for you in the editing window.

   

But frankly I find it not that helpful since just writing the formulas is reasonably easy once you memorize a few tips.

• Use the Formula Reference Tables online help list to see how to enter formulas. Basically, do it how you think it would work. Use the OpenOffice.org Math Examples online  help list to see examples. These are really good. Just press F1 while you're in the editing window; you can type the titles of these topics into the Find or Index window.

• Use ^ for exponents, as in 3^2  which would be three, squared.
• Use sqrt for square root
• Use % in front of the written version of a symbol, as in %pi

So here are a few formulas. They're pretty easy to figure out. Click each image to see a slightly larger version, if you like.

a + b / $pi

a + b over $pi

(a + b) over $pi

If You Don't Know How to Write Out a Character Like %pi or %rho

Click the Sigma icon at the top to add a special character.

You can just scroll  through and select something from the list, and insert it.

Or you can add something yourself if you don't see what you need.

Optional: Add your own symbol   

To add something you don't see, click Edit.

Find what you want, by scrolling and manipulating all the dropdowns. Then name it, and click Add, not Edit.

The new symbol will show up in the symbol list.

Click in the document to stop editing the formula.

If you want to get back into the formula to change it, double-click the box the formula is in.

Formatting the Formula

All right. You've got a great formula. But it's really small. Or you'd like a different font. You change these by selecting the formula in the editing window and click on the Format menu.

Choosing Fonts gives you this window. You get to choose the font by the type: variables, etc. Click and hold down on the Modify button to change any font.

Select the font in this window, then click OK all the way back out of the windows.

That's About It

Insert > Object > Formula. Type what you want and use the online help and the brief tips I gave you.

Click in the document when you're done, and double-click the equation box to start editing again.

To format, select the text in the editing box and find the Format menu.

To add a symbol you don't know, click the Epsilon icon at the top of the window and select one--or click Edit to create your own.

Doing All This in Impress

I'm using 2.1 in February 2007 and it works just fine.

Click in a bulleted item and choose Insert > Object > Formula.

You can also paste the formula object from Writer to Impress. Don't paste it into a bullet in this case; just paste it into a layout with no bullets.

Double-click to edit, as usual.

Double-click the formula object to get into edit mode. Use the Format menu or make other changes.

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OpenOffice Pan-Galactic Post: Posts on Charts, PDF, Spreadsheets, Templates, Drawings, OpenOffice Training, Toolbars, and Much More

I've been having a problem that some of you might sympathize with--getting posts to show up in Technorati. So as a cheater, I've created this post that links to a bunch of posts that I don't think have been showing up. Not all of them like links to current discussions or issues, just the ones I think are  important that have been missed.

So I'm sorry this isn't new content, but perhaps somewhere in the last six months there's something useful that Technorati didn't let you see the first time around.

Templates, Writer, general setup and toolbars

• Creating and using OpenOffice templates, including converting Microsoft Word templates for use in OpenOffice
• Doing calculations in tables
• The styles posts on what they are, how to get styles from one document to another, how to create and update them, etc.
• The much-discussed topic of centering text vertically in a Writer document
• Starting page numbering on page 2 and related topics (relates to page styles)
• Tables of contents
• Searching and replacing for carriage returns (paragraph breaks), tabs, and other items, using regular expressions (regex)
• Creating your own toolbar
• Setting up OpenOffice under Tools > Options and Tools > Autocorrect. This is how to turn off word completion, stop automatic formatting, set defaults, increase icon size, and much more.

Calc spreadsheets and charts

• Calc spreadsheet data entry shortcuts
• Dragging a cell in a spreadsheet (see the end of the post)
• Charts in Calc and Writer; how to click in just the right spot and modify exactly what you want.
• Opening a CSV text file in Calc so that it opens as a spreadsheet. Useful if you export files from databases of other formats and want to create them as spreadsheets or databases in OpenOffice.
• Controlling what people can put into spreadsheets with error messages, online help for the cell, ranges of permitted data, etc.

Draw, Diagrams, Impress presentations

• Using the 3D shapes in Draw (I love this stuff)
• Using OpenOffice FontWork, which is kind of like WordArt
• Creating your own arrows and other line ends for UML diagrams and other purposes
• Using the OpenOffice Gallery to store graphics; this too is useful for UML diagrams
• Printing Impress presentation handouts

Web publishing and PDF

• What I did with the web tools, creating colors, image maps, etc. to redo my getopenoffice.org StarOffice and OpenOffice Training page
• PDF, with linked articles on PDF presentations, and using hyperlinked PDFs. That post is particularly interesting since you can generate PDFs from linked OpenOffice.org documents, and the links carry over to the PDF.
• Using the wonderful Web Wizard (that's the techtarget article, here's the blog link) for creating web sites from existing OpenOffice, Microsoft, and graphics documents. You can also use it for  PDF batch convert.

Mail merge, labels, envelopes, and databases

• The very very powerful Mail Merge Wizard.
• The less powerful but far easier Secret Mail Merge that you need to add to your toolbar.
• Creating OpenOffice.org databases from spreadsheets, text files, and your address book. Even Access databases are easy.
• A bunch of articles for TechTarget.com on creating databases from scratch in Base,  creating forms, doing reports, views and joins between tables , and all the fun new stuff in the Openoffice Base database module.
• How to do labels the regular way, and manually.

Openoffice training, change management, and general discussions

• My thoughts on training and its benefits.
• My suggestions for transitioning to OpenOffice.org, including the change management aspects.
• Why OpenDocument Format is important (parental advisory, contains references to tube tops).
• Switching to OpenOffice.org, or any open source product, means you can spend the budget leftover on something important. Education, firefighters--anything that's more important than using Microsoft Office.
• Office 2007 could be a big retraining job. Think about whether you'd rather spend money and time upgrading to Office 2007, or just time on switching to OpenOffice.

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OpenOffice Styles: What, Why, and How to Use Them

March 2006: I've had some trouble getting some of my posts to show up, so I'm reposting a couple of the ones I think are most important.

Styles are like wearing your seatbelt, eating your broccoli, and apologizing to your honey even when you think you're right. They might be a bit of a pain to make yourself do, but they will so save your butt in the long run.

This is just the lead-in to  a big multi-blog post, grouped into a few different ones.

• What are styles?
• Why should everyone absolutely use styles?
• How do you create and modify styles?

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OpenOffice Templates: Making Them, and Making New Documents Based on Them (Writer, Calc and Impress): Updated March 2006

March 2006: I've added info at the end about how to point to a directory of templates.

This is embarrassing. I have a huge blogapalooza on styles but left out templates. (Updated it yesterday a bit but still, no real thorough coverage.)

I shall remedy that immediately.

All right. Let's say you have the following:

• A bunch of styles you need to have when you create a document.
• Some canned text, like your signature or a graphic logo, that you use in a lot of documents
• Or you're just darned picky about how you want your documents ;>

You are an excellent candidate for using templates. Templates are documents that store styles, text, graphics, general formatting—whatever you want. You create a document, save it as a template in the Template Place, then point to that template when you want to create a new document using what it's got. (“Styles and canned text...that's what it's got....remember that.”)

And it really couldn't be easier.

Making a Template

Open a new document.

Put in it what you want in the template. Styles, graphics, text of every kind and variety. Whatever.

Then choose File > Templates > Save.

Specify My Templates unless you have another idea for a category.

(To create a new category, click the Organizer button, select a category in the button that appears, right-click on it and choose New. An untitled category will appear. IMMEDIATELY start typing the name of your new category. Click somewhere else in the category list when you're done typing. Click Close.)

Type the name of your template like Meeting Minutes.

Click OK.

Now you've got a template.

Using a Template

You need to create a new document using that template.

Choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

Select the Template icon on the left.

Open the category you chose like My Templates. You'll see your template.

Click Open and you'll have a new untitled document based on that template.

The Coolest Part—Making That Template Come Up When You Create Any New Document

Choosing File > New > Templates and Documents is fine but what if that's your template you use all the time? You can make it come up when you just choose File > New > [type of document] by setting it as the default template.

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]

Pointing to an Existing Directory of Templates

If you have a bunch of templates, Microsoft or OpenOffice.org, set up OpenOffice.org to know where they are. Then you can get to them as above by choosing File > New > Templates and Documents.

Converting, If You Want to Point to Microsoft Format Templates
First, if they're in Microsoft format, you need to convert them to OpenOffice format. Choose File > Wizards > Document Converter. Follow the wizard through to create a converted set of copies of the templates.

Step 1.

Step 2, then just follow the wizard as prompted.

Pointing to Templates to Use
Now, choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths. Select the Templates line.

Click Edit, then click Add, and add the path to the templates you want to point to. (Click this image to see a larger version if you like.)

Click OK, and OK, and OK  again.

Now you'll see the templates when you choose File > New > Templates and Documents.

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http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

Tux Article on Impress

I had my first article published in the fine Tux Magazine.

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

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 [email protected] 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 

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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What Are Styles? An Overview of Paragraph, Page, Character, and List Styles

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Styles are recipes, or definitions, or paragraphs, of individual characters, of pages, and of lists. (Frames too but I find them less useful.)

Here are some illustrations.

 

Here are some pictures of the definition window. They look a lot like the formatting windows, but you choose Format > Styles and Formatting, then create styles from the Styles and Formatting window.

Everything starts by choosing Format > Styles and Formatting. You get the Styles and Formatting window.  Click the icon at the top for the kind of style you want: paragraph, character, etc.  Right-click in that window and choose New or Modify to get the editing window you want.

Click each thumbnail if you want a bigger view.

Paragraph style definition window:

Character style definition window:

Page style definition window:

List style definition window:

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Why Should You Use Styles?

Note: This is part of a three-part post on styles. See this post for the intro and links to the other posts.

Why should you use styles?

Lots and lots of reasons.

Styles Mean You Do the Formatting Once, Then Apply It Quickly Each Additional Time

Styles aren't so necessary for your short scathing memo to your intern, but anything longer and more complex will be a lot easier to format with styles.

Let's say you've got a 100-page white paper on how your company's flotsam server works. You've got these types of things in the document:

• Four levels of headings in various sizes and the same font (Arial)
• Regular body text in 12 point type and Times New Roman font
• Notes in bold, 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Warnings bold and italic 10-point Arial, indented a half inch from the left
• Numbered lists with 1 at the top level, A at the 2nd level, and a special purple bullet at the third level

A cover page with no footer, introductory text that should be numbered in roman numerals, main body text with arabic numbers in the footer and the document title in the header, and two pages with big diagrams that need to be landscape (horizontal)

Do you really want to painfully do the formatting of every heading, every bulleted list, ever note and warning, every page, manually each time you have a new one?

You really don't.

With styles, you just do the formatting for each heading and each other formatted element of the document once, and then you just select the text and select the style each time you want to apply the formatting. Instead of selecting the text, clicking the Bold icon, clicking the Italic icon, selecting the font size, selecting the font, indenting the text....and so on for every freakin' individual chunk of differently formatted text.

Styles Mean You Can Update a Long Document's Formatting Easily

Let's say you wrote that 100-page white paper and formatted it manually. There's a layoff and you have a new manager who tells you that your paper needs to conform to the corporate marketing formatting standards. Which are completely different.

If you formatted it manually, you have days of work ahead of you.

If you formatted it with styles, you just need to either import a template from the corporate marketing group and be done with it. That's the best case scenario. If your marketing group isn't that organized, then you just need to update about 15 styles. That's all. When you update the styles, all the text says to itself “Oh, I'm Heading3, and Heading3 has changed. I'd better change too.”

Styles Are Required for a Lot of Essential Features in OpenOffice.org.

Do you want to create a table of contents? Do some fancy formatting in a table of contents or list? Do running headers? Do conditional formatting in a spreadsheet? You're going to need styles.

 

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Printing Handouts in OpenOffice.org Impress

Note: See also a related article I wrote for TechTarget.com on creating presentations in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

Visitor Steve Ford had a question recently.

hello,
my instructor at school uses powerpoint slide presentations. i can't figure out how to print 4 to 6 slides on to 1 page.  my screen shows what i want to print, but when i print the screen all i get is 1 slide on the paper. 

Steve's question is in regard to one of the most unnecessarily complicated tasks in OpenOffice.org. The quick answer to his specific question is this:  with a presentation open,  choose File > Print, then click the Options button. In the upper-left Contents quadrant of the Printer Options window, make sure only the Handouts option is marked. Then click OK and print from the Print window.

Here's the full answer, however, to how to print handouts from soup to nuts in 1.x and 2.0 versions of the software.

 

Printing Handouts, 2 to 6 to a page, in OpenOffice.org 1.x and StarOffice 7 and before
First, create your presentation and get it how you want it.

Specifying the Number of Slides Per Page

Choose View > Master > Handout or click the Handout View icon on the right side of the work area.

You'll see the layout window where you can see how many slides you'll have on  a page.

Choose Format > Modify Layout. You'll see the Modify Slide window where you can change the number of slides on a page. Select a different number if you want and click OK.

Setting Up and Formatting Handouts

The default page layout is Landscape. If you want Portrait (vertical), choose Format > Page and select Portrait, then click OK.

 

Back in the main layout window, drag the slide placeholders to different locations if you want to change where they are.

If you want horizontal lines for people to take notes on, you'll need to use the line tool to draw a set of 3-4 lines by the first slide yourself. To make them even after you've drawn them, select them all and choose Alignment > Right (or Left, or Center).  Click the image to see a bigger version if you want.

To distribute them evenly after you've drawn them, select them all and choose Distribution. Choose Vertical and Center. Then copy that group of lines when they're how you want them (might want to group them first), and copy the lines to the other slides on the page.

When you're done, it should look something like this.

If you want a page number at the bottom of each piece of paper (not every slide), use the Text tool to draw a text box at the bottom of the page, and type the word page if you want. Then choose Insert > Fields > Page Number to add an automatically incrementing page number.

Printing Handouts

Now that you've done the setup, you're ready to print.

Choose File > Print.

Click the Options button.

In the Contents section of the Printer Options window, make sure that only the Handouts option is selected.

The default is for Drawing to be selected and that's all. That means you get one big slide per page. You absolutely must select Handouts here to print handouts. If you leave Drawing selected, your printer will also spit out a printout of your presentation with one slide on every page.

Click OK in the Printer Options window to save the changes and close the window.

If you want to print just a subset of the pages, in the Print window, select the Pages option and type 1, 1-6, etc. The page count refers to slides, not pieces of paper. Also, if you want to print slides 1-6 and 13-18, you need to type a semicolon between the ranges, as in 1-6;13-18

That's all! That last part is the secret. Getting to the layout window was too complicated, and setting up the note-taking lines was a bit of a pain to do manually, though at least those lines will stay there now that you've done them. But the last part, marking Handouts, is the main tricky thing that is really hard to find.

Printing Handouts, 2 to 6 to a page, in OpenOffice.org 2.0 and StarOffice 8
It's a lot like printing handouts in 1.x. Read through that section if you haven't already. I'm going to go over the few differences here.

Specifying the Number of Slides Per Page

This is simpler and different than 1.x. In your open presentation, just click the Handouts tab above the slide view.

In the slide layout view that appears, you want to look to the right and find the Layouts tab.

Now choose the number of slides you want per page.

Setting Up and Formatting Handouts

This is the same as 1.x. See the 1.x setup and formatting section.

Printing Handouts

This is the same as 1.x. See the 1.x printing section. As before, be sure to select just the Handouts option in the Printer Options window.

 

Fun With Fontwork in Draw

 

Fontwork is a feature that lets you create curved, angled, wavy, and other kinds of text. Use it for CD labels, for festive banners, for anything where text needs to look interesting and follow a particular angle or line.

Fontwork previously was.....interesting. Doable, but interesting and just a little twitchy. And not a lot of labels in the window, so it was kind of hard to figure out.

But it's a whole new, simpler, slicker, more wizardy approach this time in OpenOffice.org 2.0.

1. Click the Fontwork icon on the Drawing toolbar.

2. In the window that appears, double-click the style you want.

3. A piece of text with that style will appear in your slide.

4. Double-click the Fontwork text, select the black plain text that appears, and type the text you want.

5. Change the font if you like as usual, with the font dropdown list at the top left of the work area, or with the Character window.

6. Change the font size by holding down the shift key and dragging a corner handle, as you would a graphic.

7. Format the text color and line width, not with the normal text controls, but with the line and area fills.

8. In the Fontwork toolbar that appears, use the controls to change the entire style of the text, change letter height, text justification, and other options. If you don't see this toolbar, choose View > Toolbars > Fontwork.

9. Use the yellow handle to change the angle of the text.

If you didn't use the old 1.x Fontwork, trust me...this is soooo much better.