OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Microsoft Owns Your Tube Top (Repost)

(Originally posted March 2006)

Remember that commercial for Compass bank, that shows the woman at an ATM in her closet? The ATM told her, "I'm sorry, there will be $2 fee to access your tube top."

(Honest, there is a commercial like that. I'm not just using blatant sexy illustrations for shock value to draw attention to the benefits of ODF.)

That's what the Open Document Format, or ODF, is all about. Lots of people and organizations want all documents to be in .odf rather than .doc or .xls format.

Most software you use creates documents  in a propriety format. That means that the way the software creates the files is exclusive to the people who wrote that software. You can't use another program to open your own files, or at least your choices are very narrow.  That means you need to buy software to continue to open files with those formats--if you want to be able to continue to access your own documents.  Your thoughts, your meeting minutes, your personal budget spreadsheets, etc.--all need to be rented from the people who wrote the software.

Doesn't it seem kind of odd to have to keep paying for the right to get at documents you created?. It's like paying to rent a house you own. It's like having to pay a fee to get into your own closet for your own tube top.

OpenOffice.org, Sun, and other folks think everyone, including Microsoft, should write programs that output documents in  Open Document Format. The instructions for creating programs that make ODF documents are available for anybody to use. That way, when all programs create documents in the same format, then you don't have to pay to open your documents. You can pick the application you want to use, there will be zillions of them, and some of them are free. You aren't dependent on one software program to get at your documents. OpenOffice.org uses ODF format.

Here's an article on what's going on with a group that was formed to promote ODF, and Microsoft.
http://www.hunterstrat.com/news/2006/03/07/eu-watchdogs-have-their-eye-on-microsoft-office/

Here's the web site of the fine folks of the Open Document Format.
http://www.odfalliance.org/

And here's the web site of Scott Johnson who just sums things up quite nicely regarding open source, and open document format. See the item at the end of his list.
http://fuzzyblog.com/archives/2006/03/08/the-trip-home-open-source-in-minnesota/

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Pasting OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheets Into Writer, as Tables

Alexander Kjerulf (http://www.positivesharing.com ) wrote to me with an excellent question.

How do you get a spreadsheet into a Writer document?

The question is interesting, since it's not really that it's hard—there are just so many ways and many possible results. It's kind of like asking “How do you make a really great vinaigrette?” or “What is the best episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer?” There is no one right answer

Here are some answers, then. My birthday is coming up, so let's say that I'm planning my ideal birthday weekend and I did it in a spreadsheet first.

However, let's say that I've had the brilliant thought that I should leave it lying around where my boyfriend is sure to see it, so that he can help facilitate some of these items. In this case, I would like it to be in a regular document, with a nice heading across the top.

In short, I want to take some content from a spreadsheet, and turn it into a table.  I'm going to paste.  But which of the many pasting approaches is best?

Just Pasting the Spreadsheet Normally

Copy the cells from the spreadsheet that you want, switch to a Writer document, and paste.

You get a thingamajig that is kind of a table. Note the table icons in the toolbar. However, you can't really use them except to do things like wrap text around the table or apply other properties to the table object.

Pasting normally gives you kind of a table object with a table look

Double-click in any of the cells so that you can select the text and the cells and basically do normal things to it. But when you do this, iit magiliciously turns into a spreadsheet, with spreadsheet icons. You don't have the table icons anymore.

Double-clicking a pasted spreadsheet gives you spreadsheet tools and a temporary spreadsheet look

This could be quite useful if the spreadsheet were chock full of numbers. However, since it's just full of Wonderful Birthday Ideas, I don't really need it to act like a spreadsheet.

The quest for the perfect way to paste this into a Writer document continues.

Exploring the Paste Special Options

When you choose Edit > Paste Special, or click and hold down on the Paste icon in the main toolbar, you get extra pasting options.

You probably won't use the metafile or bitmap that much, since they create graphics. And the calc8 option just does exactly the same thing as normal pasting. However, the rest are quite useful.

Using the HTML (HyperText Markup Language) Paste Special Option

As you might guess, using this option pastes an HTML table version of your spreadsheet. This is pretty slick if you are, for instance, creating a web page. And it's a table, so of course you get the table tools. Not just when you click on the table but when you click in the cells or select the text.

Using the DDE Link Paste Special Option

This is a very slick pasting option—it's one of the two I recommend. You get a Writer table version of the spreadsheet content, but it's linked to the original spreadsheet. When the original spreadsheet changes, this copy of it changes, too. Of course, you have full use of the table icons.

Consider this option even if you don't want the link because you retain any border formatting or background shading.

This is also nice since, as you might have noticed, the alignment was corrected. In the spreadsheet the alignment by default was at the bottom of the cell. Now, it's at the top. If this isn't what you want then it's a disadvantage, but it's what I want in this instance.

Using the Unformatted Text Paste Special Option

When it says unformatted, it means unformatted.

However, what you can do with this, if you want, is to re-convert it to a table using the instructions here.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/06/converting_text.html

It's a bit of extra work since you can also use the DDE Link or Formatted Text options to get a regular table.

Using the Formatted Text (RTF) Paste Special Option

This is the other one I recommend. You get a plain old table, in normal Writer format, that's not linked to the original spreadsheet. With the table icons. However, you do lose any formatting associated with the borders or background shading that you might have had in the spreadsheet.

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Sorting Information in OpenOffice Writer Tables

 

A table of ten or so rows is easy to find information in.

A table of ten pages—that's harder.

To make things easier on yourself, you might want to sort the information. Here's how to do it. (This procedure actually kind of works with regular lists, but not very well. Tables are better.)

Here's the table I'll use as an example. (Imagine it's incredibly long, so that the time we'll save and convenience provided will be immense.)

Select the table, including the headings.

Choose Table > Sort. You'll see this window. It looks really techy and complicated, which it is, but I'll point out the really important stuff.

This part is very important. Be sure that you select Row where indicated. This means that it is the rows of information that will be re-ordered. However, you're sorting by a particular column, like the Name or Postal Code column, and Column will show up elsewhere in the window where you do the actual sorting. It's kinda stupid and complicated, but you'll get used to it.

Now you select the column to sort by. Leave Key1 selected, then specify the column you want to sort by (might be Firstname, but you just select the number). Also select the type of data, Alphanumeric or Numeric. If you're sorting by numbers, you MUST select Numeric. Then select the order: Ascending (A-Z, 1-9) or Descending (Z-A, 9-1).

Click this image to see it a bit bigger.

If you want to sort by two columns, such as by state and then by last name, for instance, then you'll want to use the Key 2 options. For Key 2, select the column to sort by, the type of data, and the order, Ascending or Descending.

Click OK.

There you are, all sorted.

 

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Test Drive Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice

 

From jarche.com , why.openoffice.org, ichacked, Tech Smores, and other sites:

Microsoft today announced the opening of a “test drive” so that people can see what Microsoft Office 2007 might look like when it finally goes on sale.

The OpenOffice.org Community invites potential upgraders to go one better - download the full OpenOffice.org 2 office suite today for a test drive, and if you like it, use it free for as long as you like. It’s the ultimate no-strings-attached test drive - if you enjoy the test drive, keep the car!

As office software becomes a commodity product, Microsoft has been forced to make significant changes to the ‘look and feel’ of MS-Office 2007. Because of this, analysts now agree that migrating to Microsoft Office 2007 will be a major upheaval with a significant cost impact.

Unlike changing to Microsoft Office 2007, changing to OpenOffice.org 2 does not require learning how to use office software all over again. Indeed, reports have shown migration to OpenOffice.org 2 is 90% cheaper than migrating to Microsoft Office 2007.

For more information and references to the reports, please see http://why.openoffice.org

Download OpenOffice.org now!

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Finding and Replacing Paragraph Returns and Tabs (Repost)

(Originally published December 2005)

John V and Gabor at the OpenOffice.org Forum helped me find this solution.  See also this blog on bringing text files into spreadsheets.

Call them carriage returns, line breaks, paragraph marks, whatever, sometimes you want fewer of them. Maybe you've brought in some ASCII text that had a line break or two after every paragraph and now with formatted text you don't need it. Or you're turning a spreadsheet or database into text or vice versa.

At any rate, it would be nice to use the Find and Replace window to quickly find'em and change them to whatever you want: nothing at all, or the phrase "el elegante" or whatever.

Note: If you're a macro kind of person, see this page on the ooo forum.

Searching and Replacing, Step by Step

In your OpenOffice.org document, choose Edit > Find and Replace or press Ctrl F. The Find and Replace window will appear.

In the Find and Replace window, enter the symbol for what you want to search for, in the Find field. Here's a quick reference to the symbols to enter for what you're looking for.

• Regular carriage returns  are $
• Soft returns inserted with a Shift Return, are \n
• Just an empty paragraph, i.e. a carriage return but with no text on that line, is ^$
• Tabs are \t

In the Replace field, you typically don't enter anything since you're probably just trying to get rid of whatever you're searching for.

• If you want to replace something with a carriage return, put \n in the Replace field.
• If you want to replace one carriage return with two, put \n\n in the Replace field.
• One thing--you can't replace something with soft returns. As you see, a \n in the Replace field turns into a normal hard return.
• Just use \t normally, in both the Search and the Replace fields, for a tab.

Once your Find and Replace fields contain what they should, click the More Options button. Select the Regular Expressions checkbox. This will make the program look for what those codes represent, rather than literally those characters.

If you're using a mix of regular expressions and normal characters, you might need to use a \ in front of anything you want evaluated normally. For instance, if you really are looking for the symbol $ but you want to replace it with a carriage return \n, then you need to actually search for \$ in the Search field and replace it with \n because $ is a special character.

This illustration shows you're looking for a carriage return (any carriage return), and you're going to replace it with nothing.

Click Find. The first instance (from where the cursor was) of the thing you're looking for will be highlighted.

Click Replace to do the replacing.

And so on. Keep going until you're done. Use Replace All only when you're absolutely positive you'll get the results you want.

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Everybody Loves OpenOffice.org (Especially When They Think It's Microsoft Office)

 

This is another story about change, and tangentially a story about Stevie Nicks.

I’ve already mentioned Louis, who when switching to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office, simply told his users that there would be a big upgrade. No mention of a different office suite program. ;> I love that story.

Here’s another story from the other side of the country. The school district’s latest levy had failed, so they had to cut a couple hundred thousand dollars from the budget. Naturally, there was a big meeting to talk about how to do this.

The school district IT director, Randy, was taking notes during the meeting, and his notes were being projected for everyone to see.

Randy said, “So, one way we could save a huge amount of money would be to cut Microsoft Office and switch to OpenOffice.org.”

Murmurmurmur…general objections…too hard…too different….it would never work.

"Well,” Randy says, “Here’s a question. What program am I using to take notes?”

There was a rousing chorus of “Microsoft Word, of course.”

"Nope,” replied Randy, with what I can only assume was just a hint of a satisfied smirk. (I would have smirked. Randy might be a better person than me.) “It’s OpenOffice.org Writer.”

Wow! No way! But it’s so much like Word!

Randy continued. “And you know what? For the last two years, you’ve been receiving Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents from me that I created in OpenOffice.org and saved in Microsoft Office format."

More murmuring, surprise, delight, etc.

And so they voted overwhelmingly to switch to OpenOffice.org and save a pantsload of money.

This is, by the way, took place recently in the  Seattle area, in Microsoft’s back yard.

It's yet another story showing that Change itself, uppercase, is often what we primarily fear; not the actual new thing that’s going to happen.  As the song goes, I've been afraid of changin' cuz I built my life (and my complex mail merges and spreadsheets) around you.

For those of you out there fighting the good fight and evangelizing OpenOffice.org, I think this story has some great lessons. Don’t try to convince people ahead of time. Just start using it within your IT department, or personally, and expose people to it without telling them what it is. Install it on people’s computers and let them play with it. Let the potential users enjoy sitting in the nice open source hot tub. Let them learn to like it without knowing much about it.  Let them come to the conclusion that....hey...you know, this isn't all that different, and we sure could save a lot of money switching to it...hmmm....

Try leading with the product, not with the idea of the product, or with Change.

Click here for additional tips on migrating users to OpenOffice.org, and click here for thoughts on how to make it easier for people to want to switch.

For those who are encountering resistance transitioning--I know that OpenOffice.org isn’t the same as Microsoft Office. It’s different. The Venn overlap is maybe 70%. But when you have to cut a couple hundred thousand from your budget, do you do it by cutting Microsoft Office, or by cutting salaries and books and benefits and other things that really matter? )

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Announcing Some "Classic" Posts

Hi all,

I'm still battling Technorati in my goal to be searchable. I've got lots of posts out there that just don't come up, though posts of people who've linked to the articles do come up. 

I've been through the ringer with the embed codes, categories, tags, etc. and the only thing that seems to work is just republishing. So what I'll be doing for the next few months is, in addition to a full set of new content each week, publishing a couple "classic" posts from over the past year or so.  I'll put "(Repost)" in the title of each and, at the beginning of each, the original publication month.

So--just a heads up for those of you who are going to be thinking "Hmm, that seems awfully familiar..." I'm not trying to pass off old ones as new ones. ;> Not on readers, anyway; just on Technorati.

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Quick and Easy Automatic Numeric Formatting in OpenOffice Writer Tables

One of the great principles of information production is:

Separation of Content and Presentation

The more separate they are, the more you can change one without affecting the other. And the more you can make changes fast.

You already know how to do this. Styles are one example. Another is the automatic number formatting you can apply in spreadsheets. Typically this is for numbers that express dates, dollars, percentages, etc. Here's the spreadsheet with no formatting, and below with automatic currency formatting.

You might not know yet, however, that you have the same abilities with numbers in Writer tables. Here's the same information in a table.

To quickly apply or change the number formatting, select the cell or cells, right-click, and choose Number Format.

In the window that appears, select the format you want. First select the Category, then the Format. You can fiddle around with the options below the lists, including number of decimal places.

Click OK, and you've got the formatting. If you change your mind later and want different formatting, it's easy to change; just repeat this procedure and pick different options.

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Spending Your Money on Something Important (Repost)

Office suite software isn't really all that important.

What's important is pretty much anything else. What your organization is doing: research, services, saving lives, preserving order, education. Preserving the rain forest. Rebuilding New Orleans. Job retraining. Heck, you could argue that a good pumpkin pie is essentially more important than software.

OK, the office suite software helps you do all those things I listed and a million more. But I want to point out that our goal in our eight hours a day is not to use software. It's everything else.

All right. So now think about this.

OpenOffice.org is free.

Other office suites are not.

You switch to OpenOffice.org, and you or your organization is suddenly not spending $500, or $50,000, or $5 million on your office suite licenses.

Add up all the other people or organizations who are no longer spending that money on an office suite, and suddenly we're into some serious cash.

Think about how much your city police force spends on office suite software, and about how that money could probably do some good if it were spent on, say, salaries for additional police.

Think about what that research facility down the road spends on software. Compared to the money they spend for their equipment, maybe not much, but it's money probably better spent on upping the salaries for a few poor post-docs than on office suite software.

Think about how much money the federal government spends on office suite software. Now fantasize about how you would redirect that money if you were in charge.

(Almost makes $4,000 toilet seats pale in comparison, doesn't it? OK, toilet seats are already white, but you know what I mean.)

Amazon saved $17 million when they switched to Linux. Same principle--pay less for something that's not part of your core business.

Think about how much your state spends on office suite software for schools, and how many more teachers and books that money could buy.

A lot.

Education is one of the most important places to think about OpenOffice.org. Education is, to put it mildly, important. Plus, third graders aren't likely to complain that they're used to how Word does styles and they don't want to switch. They're open to anything new. And education isn't exactly overfunded. I live in Colorado which is either 49th or 47th in the nation in funding for education.

For educators, here's an interesting article on trends this year, including OpenOffice.org. 

For anyone thinking about upgrading to Vista, here's an important blog. Dave Rosenberg states that Vista gives you an opportunity to really compare the actual cost and the actual benefits, and he quotes Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group."

So just think about the value. Think about how much money you're spending on your office suite, and what you could do with that money that would be more important.

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Converting Text to Tables in OpenOffice Writer

Tables are a good way to arrange data. Nice, structured, borders between each cell, etc.

The only question is, how do you get the data into a table format?

You can type from scratch, of course. You can painfully copy and paste.

Or if your data is set up right, with a tab or comma or other item separating the data into columns, you can just convert the text to a table.

Let's say you've got this. The arrows are tabs separating the "columns" of data.  (And let's say that it's actually about ten pages long, since this feature is a big timesaver but only if you've got a bunch of data to convert.) The blue is just artistic license.

Select it all.

Choose Table > Convert > Text to Table.

You'll see this window, where you can specify exactly what separates each column of data. It might be a tab, a comma, etc. Also set the options for headings, in the bottom part of the window. The example text here has headings, but yours might not.

 

If, through some sort of search-and-replace procedure, or for whatever reason, the % or & character separates each column, then you can specify that. As long as it's a keyboard character, you can specify it.

 

Click OK, and you've got your table.

 

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Open Source Web Site Templates

Check'em out! Very pretty stuff.

"Open Source Templates was mainly created to support non-profit organizations.

If you run a non profit org, and are needing to cut down on the costs associated with website development than you have come to the right place. We offer a wide range of free for personal use or non profit use website templates that are easy to modify and add content to.

We will be offering a wide range of tutorials dedicated to helping your organization easily download and create your own great looking site in a matter of hours."

See also this web site, http://www.oswd.org/

About this site:

"To put it simply, Open Source Web Design is a collection of web designs submitted by the community that anyone can download free of charge!

The Open Source Web Design project was founded in September, 2000 by Francis J. Skettino. The goal was to provide the Open Source community with quality web designs to help get people's projects on the web in a way that is both organized and good looking. From personal blogs to content managements systems to full fledged businesses, OSWD has been providing free web designs to those who need them for years. With your help, we will continue to do this for years to come. "

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TechTarget Article: Google Spreadsheets Review

I've written an article for TechTarget on the new Google spreadsheets. Here's part of it.

"My first reaction was, "Oh, cute," and "Looks like a good design." It seems like the GUI designers stood up inside the box and looked at what was outside. The design is not revolutionary, but it avoids, at the least, a retread of the client-based spreadsheet GUI. The designers used different types of widgets to provide the navigation and options. There are three tabs for different types of functions: drop down buttons for key features like Saving, buttons for standard toolbar features (Cut, Copy and Paste) and a few plain old links for common features like New and Open."

Essentially, I think it's great for some, and others will never take a second look. Click here to read the whole review.

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Be Part of Something Big: The NYC OpenOffice.org "The Metro" Ad Project

My friends Ben Horst and Christian Einfeldt are working on an OpenOffice.org media project.

A group of grassroots activists in the OpenOffice.org community have just announced they are going to undertake a similar media campaign to Spread Firefox, starting with a free (as in beer) New York City daily newspaper called "The Metro," published by Metro International. Most penguinistas know what a huge success the grassroots Spread Firefox ad campaign was. Through ads in the New York Times and the Frankfurt General Newspaper, and the hilarious Firefox videos on the FunnyFox website (video link here), Firefox has probably gained greater popular name brand recognition in the general public than any other free open source software (FOSS) project.

Read more.  Or click here to contribute.

Here's the Digg reference.

Ben and Christian are doing great stuff to promote OpenOffice. Next stop, Oprah? (I see a show with a digital divide theme where she gives away a thousand totally open source laptops to screaming audience members.)

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The World's Biggest and Best School, Resume-Maker, and Source of Available Internships: Open Source Projects

I came across this post by Jon Udell via Ted Leung. Essentially, the gist is that open source projects offer a tremendous opportunity.

"Open source software development, to a degree unmatched by any other modern profession, offers apprentices the opportunity to watch journeymen and masters at work, to interact with them, and to learn how they think, work, succeed, and fail. Transparency and accountability govern not only the production of source code but also the companion processes of design, specification, testing, maintenance, and evaluation."

I'm so glad Jon wrote this, since it raises a great point about open source that's entirely unrelated to the topic of how and when and why to use the programs. It's a point I've carried around in my mental model for years. Open source projects are a wonderful place for anyone to get experience about what they like to do; get experience so that potential employers will give them a second glance; and get experience so that they will actually learn to do those tasks well.

Experience is really important.

I listen to the This I Believe series on NPR, and if I were ever asked to do an essay on something that I believe very strongly, it would be this point about experience. Theory is squat until you try it out. Like the people on What Not to Wear say, try it on! Or like your mom says, eat one bite of your Brussels sprouts. Your roommate says, just go to the party for an hour. Just, as the Nike folks, do it, and see what happens. Doing is an entirely different thing than thinking about stuff.

So that's the first point. How do you know what you want to do with your life? You really don't know how good you are at something, or what a career is really all about, or whether you like something, or anything else important, until you do it. Not study it, not watch it, but do it.  Internships are how I learned in college that I really disliked anything and everything to do with my business major, though the theory was cool enough.  (What I enjoyed was the act of learning about interesting theories about how society works--which often has very little to do with what you do with a business degree.)

Another angle on experience is its role in getting hired. Let's say you know you love project management. That is an absolute certainty. How do you get a job doing project management, on the strength of your business and communications double major and your role as a counselor at Camp Kickamonga?

And then there's the third item, actually learning to do something well. The reason that people look for experience when they hire. How do you find your Obi-Wan who will teach you how to herd cats, or have your horrible but incredibly valuable disastrous learning experience? How do you learn to do basic stuff like write courteous, direct, concise emails?

The answer is experience.

OK...how the heck do you get experience?

• I dug up unpaid internships during college.
• If your parents are in the same profession, that doesn't hurt.
• Volunteering is good. If you want to have experience with project management, figure out something in that genre to do for free for Habitat for Humanity or the animal shelter. Help to organize a blood drive. If you want to become a techwriter, I'm sure there are a zillion places that will be happy for you to document their processes.

Or there's open source projects, which are always ready for more hands and have a huge variety of tasks. It's not just for programmers. Writers, project managers, fundraising, advertising and marketing, web design, maybe even accounting--that's just off the top of my head.

So for anyone out there who's read What Should I Do With My Life and wants to try out a few things, any parent who's got a 23-year-old college graduate slacker in the basement, or anyone of any age who wants to get experience and the advantages it brings, find an open source project.

I won't even try to list them all, but OpenOffice.org is a wonderful product with a great bunch of volunteers.

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AutoFormats in OpenOffice Writer (Also Works in OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheets)

It's time for autoformats. Autoformats are going to save you SO much time, if you do tables with even vaguely complex formatting. Autoformats are like styles for tables -- they capture all the complicated border and shade formatting, "freeze" it under a name like Gray and Red Table, and can be applied easily to new tables.

This is part 3 of the Table series ( here's the first post and here's the second post). Last time, we talked about how, while there are many formatting options for tables and a lot of control, it's a lot of work to do that formatting. And in a large document with 20 or even 2000 tables, that turns into a ginormous amount of work.

Let's say you've got this table, and you need it formatted this way. And you need the other 147 tables in the document formatted this way, too.

All you have to do is:

1. Get the table formatted how you want—including fonts, number formatting (right-click on a number in a cell and choose Number Format), etc. AutoFormats preserve not just formatting characteristics but also fonts.

2. Turn it into an Autoformat

3. Apply that Autoformat to other tables

I've already done step 1, formatting the table.

Let's do step 2. Here's how to make an Autoformat.

Select the formatted table and choose Table > Autoformat.

In the window that appears, click Add. (You might see more autoformats than this.)

In that window, type the name of the autoformat, as descriptively as possible. Click OK.

The autoformat appears. Click OK.

Now we're on step 3.  You have another table that you need to apply the formatting to.

Select it and choose Table > Autoformat.

Select the autoformat you want.

Click More – you can choose whether to include the other formatting shown, when you apply the autoformat.

Click OK.

You'll see the autoformat applied—I'm showing the original and the newly autoformatted tables together. Click to see the illustration larger.

Note that the outer border format is applied to the inside of one column here, since this table has one more column than the table the autoformat was based on. It's a good idea to test and tweak a little bit. If you want to do outer and inner borders differently, make your first table with three or more columns, so that the formatting applies correctly to all tables.

See how simple that was, though, overall? Reapplying the formatting is SO much faster with Autoformats. You can spend vast amounts of time applying formatting to tables manually; autoformats get rid of all that work. Also, unlike styles, autoformats aren't just available by default in the document where you created them. They're available in any document you create. 

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Table Formatting in OpenOffice Writer (Works for Calc Spreadsheet Cells, Too)

 

This is part 2 of the Table series (here's the first post). In this post, I'll show you how to make your tables look exactly the way you want them with border colors, border styles, border placement, and shading. (The first post covered how to control column width; other posts will cover more complex items like vertical spacing, headings, captions, and other advanced table stuff.)

Let's say you've got this fabulous table full of very important information.

It's nice content, but this is, after all, for a glossy brochure on the candidates for mayor, so you want to make it look a little fancier. The candidates, especially that snob Stephanie, would be insulted if you sent this out as is.

So you'll need to make the borders and shading fancier. Bring up the Tables toolbar (View > Toolbars > Table). Dock it and drag it to the top of the work area to dock it.

Click and hold down on the downward-facing black triangle at the far right end of the toolbar and make sure you've got all four of the formatting icons: Line style, line color, borders, and backgrounds. If no check mark appears next to one of them, select it and it'll be added to the toolbar.

The first thing you do is to specify where the borders should be. You can put the borders on just horizontal lines, on horizontal and vertical (as is), on just the top and bottom of the table, etc. You do this first because if you do the formatting, then change where the borders go, all your previous formatting might go away. (Later I'll talk about AutoFormats which will solve that problem, but that's a topic for another blog.)

So select the table. Let's say that you want to put the borders only on the horizontal lines, not vertically You'd think that you'd click and hold down on the Borders icon and choose horizontal, as shown.

That's logical but that's not quite the way it works. You need to clear the border positions first by saying you don't want any borders anywhere. You can't just switch from one to another directly. So first, click on the No Borders At All icon in the upper right corner, as shown.

Now select the horizontal-only borders icon, or whatever icon you like in order to apply the border placement you want. The formatting will be applied.

Now, format up a storm. In addition to border placement, you can change:

• Border style -- Double lines, thin lines ,thick lines, etc.
• Border color -- And keep in mind that if you reallllly want to go nuts, you can make your own colors.
• Background shading -- A background color for the heading row is one nice effect. Alternating shading can be very effective for making long tables easier to read. Be sure that you change the font color as necessary to make sure the table is legible.

 

Border Style
Select the table, select the border style icon, and pick something.

Border Color
Select the table, select the border color icon, and pick something.

Background Shading
Select the table, select the background shading icon, and pick something.

Removing a Color
To remove border color or background shading formatting, choose the No Fill option.

Here's your table. (It's pretty horrible in color, of course, but it shows some of the effects.)

 

Now, you might also want to just apply formatting to one row. For instance, you can select the heading row, apply a heavier border style and different border color and shading color. Maybe you just have shading on the heading row and nowwhere else. The basic message here is, select the column or row to apply formatting to; you don't have to apply the same formatting to the entire table.

Here's the big cahuna, which I'm just going to touch on lightly since it's really just about whatever you want to do with it. Let's say you want some really specific formatting in different parts of the table. Select the table, choose Table > Table Properties, and click the Borders tab.

As when you used the toolbar icons, you first select WHERE you want the formatting. Use the prefab icons or click on a line in the User-Defined area. To deselect a line, click on it again or click somewhere else.

Then specify the formatting such as line style, color, etc.

Set other options such as distance from text, shadow, etc.

Click OK.

All That Work to Format Just One Table?????

This was a lot of work, wasn't it?

Doing it once is a lot of work. Doing it 40 times is hard labor.

Wouldn't it be nice if there were something like styles, but for tables, that would preserve the formatting for a table and allow you to reapply it to any other table?

Hmmm.... ;>

Tune in next time.

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OpenOffice Tables in Writer: A Set of Solid Basics

A reader wrote to me with some questions about moving tables, and I realized I hadn't done much about tables in this blog.  It's high time, of course. Writer tables are a bit different than in MS Word, so it's definitely worth explaining those key differences.

Here's a basic table in Writer. Nothing surprising--you have a header row (optional) with different formatting (by default), and borders on every column and row (by default).

 

This is the first post, on creating them, moving them, changing width, etc. All the table blogs will be in the new Tables category.

Creating Tables

Creating tables is pretty simple. Just choose Insert > Table, or Table > Insert > Table. When you get the following window, just mark your choices. Keep in mind that the number of rows includes the heading row (which you usually want, but not always).

Another approach is to click and hold down on the Table icon shown, in the toolbar at the top of your work area, and just select the layout you want.

 

Turn On Nonprinting Characters

It's much easier to tell what's going on in text documents, and in tables, if you have nonprinting characters showing. These are mainly the carriage returns, but also spaces (little dots) and tabs (arrows). Choose View > Nonprinting Characters and select it to put a checkmark by it.

 

The nonprinting characters will appear.

Make Sure You've Got the Table Toolbar

The Table toolbar has a host of goodies to use. Choose View > Toolbars > Table if you don't see it.

Drag it up to be with the rest of the toolbars and release, to dock it, so that it will stay around rather than appearing and disappearing as you click in and out of the table.

What If You Want a Space Above Your Table?

Here's something that happens a lot. You've inserted a table at the top of the document, but now you need text above the table.

All you have to do is click in the upper left corner and press Return.

Deleting Tables

If you just select a table and its content and press Delete, only the content is deleted. Now, if you just want to delete the content, that's great. But to delete the table, you need to do one of the following:

Select the blank line above the table, as well as the table, and press Delete.

Or select the table, right-click, choose Row > Delete or Column > Delete.

 

Or select  the table, and click the Delete Row or Delete Column icon on the Table toolbar.

Adding Rows or Columns

You can add rows or columns with the icons on the toolbar. Click in the row or column next to where you want to add the row or column, and click the appropriate green icon.

You can also click in the lower right cell of a table and press Tab. You'll get a new row.

Moving Tables

If you want to move a table, just cut and paste. Select the whole table, plus the blank line above it. Cut (Ctrl X), then go to where you want the table and paste (Ctrl V).

Changing Column Width Manually

You can drag the column widths to change them, or use the big properties window.

Here's how to drag:

Click in the column that you want to change. You'll see markers on the ruler for the columns.

Move your mouse over the column marker. You'll see the mouse pointer change as shown.

Click and hold down on the column marker and drag it right or left to change width.

Release and the column will have a new width.

To change the right and left margins of the tables, move your mouse over the part of the ruler where it changes from white to gray, and drag as you did to change the column width.

To do this in a window instead, select the table and choose Table > Table Properties. Click the Column tab and type the width values for each column. Click OK.

When this blog continues....more on things like borders and shading, autoformats, automatic column width adjustments, and much more!

---

Dave Richard's Blog With the City of Largo, Florida

I always recommend that those considering switching to OpenOffice.org find those who have already done it. Take them out to lunch, chat, learn  someone else's experience with the actual implementation.

The City of Largo has been running OpenOffice.org and Linux for several years; their big cahuna IT guy Dave Richards has a new blog where he talks about cool techy OpenOffice.org and Linux stuff. He says,  "Instead of focusing on the development process, I can speak of deployment issues."

Check it out.

---

What the Heck Is Up With Solveig's OpenOffice 2.0 Book?

Hi all,

I'm getting tense about the book delay so thought I'd just share what the poop is.

The problem is that this is yet ANOTHER delay. Circa 2003, I was going to do a 1.x book and that got posted on Amazon. Then we decided against it, but Amazon wouldn't take it off their page no matter how many times I wrote to them. So my apologies to those of you who ordered the book three years ago.

Now, what's up with the 2.0 book?  I am proud to say I am done with my part except for the index, which is not in any way critical path. It's my publisher who needs to get the book on the schedule to be proofed and put through the production process, and hasn't done so yet. Apparently there's the perception that OpenOffice.org books don't sell that well, and so my book is getting pushed down the schedule after other books from the same publisher. 

We of course know it's going to ROCKET off the shelves. ;>   (Fingers crossed, at least.)

I've also sent my editor many title possibilities, based on your suggestions, and the Open Road/Route 66 theme. He's working on that.

So--that's the deal. I'm badgering my editor frequently but that it's kind of out of my hands.

On the bright side, there is some progress on making PDFs of the book available for purchase--$5 here, $10 there, etc. I'll announce that as soon as it's available, but I don't want to give a date. It'll probably be before the paper book.

If you want to post a comment about how you and 384 of your closest friends and family members will be buying several copies each of the paper book, then of course feel free. ;> I'll see if that will make the 'powers that be" budge on the proofing/production schedule. But I'm not making this post to try to manufacture a public horde of checkbook-wielding supporters, though; really just wanted to explain.

Sun's OpenOffice Tshirts

Remember the cool Sun tshirts from the contest they had?

 

I don't know when it happened, but the promised tshirts are out now at Cafepress. The store name is sunopensource. Not quite as cool looking since the colors aren't there but still pretty good.

And just because I can, here's the link to my tshirts. ;>  Among others: "OpenOffice.org: Great office software. No Bills to pay."

---

Changing the Proportions of Drawing Objects in OpenOffice

The new drawing objects in OpenOffice.org 2.0 are a lot of fun, and very useful, as well. (I've just shown some fun ones here.)

If you don't see them in Draw, Impress, or other programs, choose View > Toolbars > Drawing.

One nice feature they come with is a little yellow handle that lets you change their proportions.

All objects don't have this, but many do. Just grab the yellow handle and drag it.

Release, and the proportions change.

Here's how it looks with some other shapes.

---

TechTarget Article: Using OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheet Scenarios With Different Variables

I've written an article on how to use the Scenario feature in OpenOffice.org or StarOffice Calc.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1191742,00.html

This is what scenarios look like.

Here's the intro, i.e. what scenarios are and why you'd use them. They're pretty slick.

I've been there. We've all been there. You're sitting there in the third hour of a boring meeting, nibbling on the last doughnut and trying to figure out what your income and expenses would have to be to move to a small island in British Columbia and support yourself with your macrame skills. Or you're giving a presentation to the director and a couple veeps and one of them just asked you, "OK, I like those numbers, but what if we sold the routers for $20,000 and outsourced all the work to Budapest?"

The common thread here is multiple scenarios. You want to see the effect of different values for the items that affect your bottom line: gross income, expenses, macrame yarn costs (buying in bulk saves you a lot of money), etc.

You can copy and paste, retyping the values each time, or you can tell your director that you'll, um, get back to her this afternoon. But the clever, slick, timesaving approach is to use the OpenOffice.org Calc scenarios feature.

Using the OpenOffice Calc Subtotal Feature

You have many ways to add up figures in spreadsheets. The Quick Sum feature on the toolbar, for instance. Click below or to the right of a column or row of numbers, and click the Quick Sum icon.

Then the proposed total appears, and you can just press Enter or click the green checkmark icon if you want it.

However, sometimes things are a little more complicated? What if you had something like this, with groups of figures you want to subtotal? You'd want subtotals as well as a total. If you put in the subtotals with the Quick Sum feature, then you'd have to make sure that your Total figure included only the original cells, not the subtotal amounts, as well.

A situation like this is when you'd use the Subtotal feature.

Select the data and the headings; selecting the headings makes it easier to choose the data to work with.

Choose Data > Subtotals.

In the Subtotals window, in the first tab, select the columns you want to add up, and be sure that Sum is marked as shown.

If you don't want to add, but do averages or something, you can do that, as well.  Select the function you want in the Use Function list.

Click the Options button and be sure that the Pre-Sort Area According to Groups option is unmarked. Marking it will reorganize the data, and not in a good way.

Click OK.

The subtotals will appear; here are the results with Sum as the function.

Here's an example of the results with Average chosen as the function instead of Sum.

Look at the left-hand border of the spreadsheet; you'll see little + signs and brackets. Click each to determine which of the data you see; you can display everything for each group of data, or just the total.

Creating XML Forms From Scratch in OpenOffice -- They're a Lot More Helpful Than Input Field Forms

I've written a TechTarget article about how to create forms from scratch.

The point is that, whilst training some folks in Kentucky (the Dr. Hobo gang ;> ), I realized that the commonly used input field forms (see example in the article) are OK in their way but not as helpful as they could be to the people using them. Certainly not as helpful as the XML forms that can contain dropdown lists, formatted date and time fields, checkboxes, etc. Thus, I think folks who use a lot of input field forms should seriously consider ditching those in favor of XML forms. The switch can result in increased speed when entering data, reduced errors, and reduced training time for people starting to use the forms.

This isn't about forms that are hooked up to database forms. This is specifically addressed at all those forms that you or someone else fills in on the computer, then prints or saves with the information in the form. You can of course use this info for forms hooked up to databases; that's just not the focus.

Great Review of StarOffice (Which of Course Is Essentially Just Like OpenOffice)

Here's the Software Editorial review, and here's the intro.

STAR OFFICE 8 as a office software package is one of the finest alternatives to Microsoft Office, not that Microsofts version is bad in any way, its just that it costs a great deal more and in some cases does not deliver the same features as this particular product.

But you may be wondering why would I pay for STAR OFFICE 8 when clearly OPEN OFFICE 2.0 is a freeware which means it does not cost a thing ? this is a question that we will answer in this article.

Additionally what other features does STAR OFFICE 8 have that are of interest compared to other products ?

Before we answer these questions it is worth noting that with over 50 million downloads including OPEN OFFICE, you should know that it is a highly rated package, that has brought much satisfaction amongst the populace, and therefore I myself have adopted STAR OFFICE to write this review.

OpenOffice User's Guide: Now With Bar Code Information for Envelopes

The User's Guide from the OpenOffice.org community now has information for putting bar codes on envelopes! It's all about getting the right POSTNET font, I understand.

TechTarget Article: Using Customization Tools to Ease Migration Problems, and Just Make OpenOffice Easier to Use

I've written an article for TechTarget on the general theme of using the customization tools in OpenOffice.org to make life better for users. Whether they're just using OpenOffice (or StarOffice), or switching from Microsoft Office, you can customize toolbars, menus, and keyboard shortcuts to make life easier.

Here's how it starts--thanks to Louis for the story and to Scott for his pivotal role.

"One of my blog readers reports that, when he migrated his organization to OpenOffice.org, he didn't even tell the users that they were switching to a different office suite. He just said that there was going to be a big upgrade. Then, he and his migration cohorts modified the OpenOffice.org menus and toolbars to resemble the Microsoft Office layout and phrasing as much as possible (without violating copyright, of course) and gave that configured version to the users. He reports very few problems with the migration.

"I love that story. Is the biggest problem with change simply that it is change?"

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

OpenOffice.org openoffice training open source open source training web publishing education Microsoft Office Office 2007 open source burning software  free software 

OpenOffice.org Support From Sun

Just wanted to make sure everyone knows--you can get OpenOffice.org support from Sun. Just sign up and pay for their support plan. (I was reminded of this while surfing here.

http://www.sun.com/service/serviceplans/software/openoffice/

On that note, I want to also emphasize that there are a lot of other businesses out there providing services and products you can pay for, for OpenOffice.org and StarOffice. Open source doesn't necessarily mean unsupported.  If you need someone to convert your MS documents, train your users, support your users, help or do the initial installation, or just create a few templates, just google around and you'll likely find a few organizations ready to help.

One place to start for services in general is this site:

http://support.openoffice.org/index.html

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)

Assigning OpenOffice or StarOffice Styles With the Keyboard, and Some Handy Reformatting Keyboard Shortcuts

I occasionally mention, in class, that you can apply styles with the keyboard too. However, I'm a menu user by nature so I usually forget to emphasize it enough. Here are the steps for setting up styles so you can apply them with a keyboard shortcut. The procedure comes from the new Tips and Tricks blog from the folks creating the OpenOffice.org / StarOffice Help.

1. Select Tools - Customize from the main menu
2. Select the Keyboard tab
3. Select the shortcut key to assign from the list of shortcut keys
4. Select Style from the Category list
   Scroll right down to the Styles entry and click the + sign to show the style types of OOo
5. Select the style to assign from the Function list
6. Click Ok

I also want to include two very useful comments from that blog entry:

Two other useful shortcuts related to this are: Ctrl+0 - Apply the style "Default" to the current or to the currently selected paragraph(s) Ctrl+Shift+Space - Reset the formatting of the current selection to the style applied, i.e. remove any "hard" or manual formatting from it.

Posted by Lutz Hoeger on May 17, 2006 at 07:53 AM CEST #

Thanks, Lutz. We should have mentioned these.
I actually use Ctrl+Shift+Space very often in ill-formatted docs where direct formatting prevents changes of styles to get visible.

Posted by Frank Peters on May 17, 2006 at 09:51 AM CEST #

TechTarget Article: Autotext and Auto Formatting Shortcuts

This isn't totally new content since I've done a similar blog post, but it's very useful stuff.  It's about AutoText and automatic formatting options, so that you can create shortcuts of special characters, a signature, standard legal text, graphics, or several pages of all of the above. You can use the keyboard or insert them with the mouse.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1183532,00.html

Useful Icons in the OpenOffice Standard Toolbar That I Should Use More

I'm such a dyed-in-the-wool menu user that I often ignore the very useful icons on the Standard toolbar in OpenOffice.org. This is the toolbar, usually at the top of your work area; click the picture here to see it fullsize.

Some of these icons are only in Writer, or only in Calc. See the end of this post for what to do to add icons that you don't see but think should be available.

Mail Merge (the simple one) - You can get to it without adding it to your menu, by clicking this icon.

Then this window appears, and you can go on from there. (In the next window, choose to use an existing data source.)

Pasting - The Paste icon is fine but you can click and hold down on it, and get extra options which are nice when pasting between different applications, or when you want the pasted content to be linked to the original. The options vary depending on what and where you copied, and where you're pasting.

Page Preview - You can choose File > Page Preview too, but this is quicker.

Data Sources - Click the Data Sources icon instead of choosing View > Data Sources. Then you'll see your actual data sources, as you'd expect.

Click to see a bigger version.

Zoom - Click Zoom to see a bigger version of your document (or a smaller version).

When you click that icon, you get this window.

Show Draw Functions - You can choose View > Toolbars > Drawing, but this is a lot quicker.

Here's the toolbar you get.

Sort Ascending, and Sort Descending - Select cells in your spreadsheet and use these icons to sort quickly.

Navigator - Click this icon to see the Navigator, a very useful tool for seeing what's in your document, and going to different parts of it. It's most effective with larger documents.

Here's the navigator.

New Document From Template - This is much quicker than choosing File > New > Documents and templates.

You get the same window you'd expect.

New Document - This is a little easier than choosing File > New. Click and hold down on the icon to get the choices.

Table - Just click and hold down on this icon and choose the dimensions of your table.

Show Nonprinting Characters - To show things like carriage returns and tab marks, click this icon.

Here's what they look like, showing (they don't print).

If You Don't See All These Icons (Like the New Document From Template Icon)
Click  and hold down on the downward-pointing black triangle on the standard toolbar.

Then choose Visible buttons.

Then find anything without a checkmark next to it, and select it to add it to your toolbar.

To make sure you have room for all the icons, select anything with a checkmark that you don't want, and hide it.

Slick Feature in 2.0.3 -- Email an MS Version of Your File: Updated With Screen Shot and Link May 12th

Dave Richards of Largo, FL mentioned in a recent email that there's a slick feature in the 2.o.3 build of OpenOffice.org. (2.0.2 is the current stable release.)

Currently, if you need to send an MS Office version of a file to an MS Office user, you need to:

• Choose File > Save As
• Choose the right format, such as Word or Excel
• Name the file and save it
• Go to your email program and create a new email
• Find the correct MS version of the file
• Attach it to your email and send it
• And make sure that you don't get confused between the MS and OpenOffice.org versions of your file

CORRECTION  from Pete: While the above steps  work, it's easier to just Save As Word or Excel, then choose File > Send > Document as Email.

Now, all of this is doable. (And you can choose to always save in MS format under Tools > Options > Load/Save > General.) 

But how much slicker would it be if you could just tell OpenOffice.org "I want to send an MS version of this file I'm working on" and the program would take care of the rest?

That's what the 2.0.3 build contains.

Dave sent me the following info and screen shot. Get the software here. ftp://ftp.ussg.iu.edu/pub/openoffice/developer/

Milestone 169 just came out.

Here's what it looks like.

 

A Couple Convenient Toolbar Tips for OpenOffice Calc Number Formatting

I tell people in class that the best thing to do is to use the tooltips to figure out what icons are for. Nonetheless, it took me a while to start using a couple nice, simple little icons on the calc formatting toolbar:

• Add Decimal Place
• Delete Decimal Place

Here's the toolbar for number formatting in cells.

The currency, date, and percentage formatting pop out at you relatively easily. The defaults for your language are used: for US English it's $X,XXX.XX, X,XXX.XX%, and MM/DD/YY.

I also like the Standard Number Format icon, which lets you remove the fancier numbering formatting and just say “this is a plain old number.”

Here's where the decimal place icons come in. Let's say you've got some numbers like this.

The number of decimal places for the first column, Items, is uneven, so you'd like to add decimal places to the two middle ones. Just select the cells, and click Add Decimal Place.

 

The cells now have two decimal places.

 

Or look at the percentage numbers—maybe you just want to have no decimal places at all for the percentage points. Select the cells and click Delete Decimal Place.

The decimal places are deleted.

If you change your mind, you can always add again, and the same numbers come back. The names should be more accurately Hide and Show since no deleting is done.

Also note that the totals stay the same, so no rounding is done.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you don't have all the icons pictured in the toolbars, do this. Click and hold down on the black downward-facing arrow at the right side of the Calc formatting toolbar. Choose Visible buttons. A list of items will appear. Anything without a checkmark isn't displayed on the toolbar, but can be. Select any item you want; if it's not showing it will be displayed, and if it is currently on the toolbar (with a checkmark) it will be hidden. You can change the icons back and forth; nothing is deleted or added, just hidden or displayed.

Migrating to OpenOffice 90% cheaper than upgrading to Office 12

From Langemark's Cafe and Computerworld: migrating to OpenOffice.org is 90% cheaper than going to Office 12.

"The industry's two major office suites, Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, will soon be releasing new versions. Recent research into these versions by large government departments indicates that for many sites, it is now 10 times cheaper to migrate to the new OpenOffice.org 2.0 than upgrading to Microsoft Office 12."

Plus, how much hassle will Office 12 be? Yikes.

 

Another Reason to Watch House -- They Use OpenOffice.org on Linux!

From A Modest Construct

Season 1, episode 16.  Of course, it's version 1.x but that was the only thing out then.

I love House--watched Hugh Laurie in Black Adder and never would have guessed he had this side to him. Great show.

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.

Free OpenOffice Training Materials: OpenOffice.org "Essentials" Setup Workbook

Note: The lab files were up, went missing, and have been reposted.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

I have finally assembled and posted the 2.0 version of my free OpenOffice workbook, "OpenOffice.org Essentials." It's a bunch of setup tips for things like word completion, how to use the long-click icons, and more.

Feel free to link to it, send it to other people, and reprint it however you like--just credit and link to me, and don't, you know, republish it under someone else's name. ;>

There are a few lab files that you can use if you want.  Right-click on each and choose Save Link Target As to download the file

• word1.doc
• excel1.xls
• spreadsheet1.ods
• A directory of documents and templates  called monthlyreports to convert with the document converter wizard. Unzip the file when you download it, then point to that directory as the files you want to convert. (You can also just point to whatever Microsoft files you have on your computer--there's nothing special about these files.)

Realtors and Open Source Software

I found NAR's technology site, which helps realtors use open source software and other technology. Here's the site, CRT, and here's the blog.

Center for REALTOR® Technology The Center for REALTOR® Technology (CRT) serves REALTORS® and REALTOR® associations as an industry advocate, implementation consultant and technology information resource.

And here's an article on an open source desktop for realtors.

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.

Interview with OpenOffice.org's Louis Suarez-Potts

I found an interesting interview with OpenOffice's Louis Suarez-Potts courtesy of Marshall Kirkpatrick.

By the way--the question about documentation and the answer give the impression that the only documentation out there on OpenOffice.org is from a few overworked techwriters. Soooo not the case. Books have been around for years. Just hit Amazon or your local bookstore and you'll find my books and books from many others. There are many resources for anyone learning OpenOffice.org.

Open Source Resources for Educators in Texas

Through Michael Guhlin (the post has a nice story about switching to open source), I found this site, which helps educators switch to OpenOffice.org and other open source software.

http://www.sosoftexas.org/joomla/

The first goal listed is "To promote opportunities for all students within the State of Texas to benefit from Open Source technology applications."

Since the TCEA conference I understand there's been a lot of movement in Texas toward open source, which is great. Looks like the SOS of Texas has some resources for you.

If you or your school is interested in OpenOffice.org or StarOffice learning materials of any kind, please contact me, of course. I offer site licenses with a big educational discount.

Tweaking Your OpenOffice Forms Created From the Wizard

A reader wrote to me about how to automatate a 50-page document that had a mix of canned and uncanned text, data entry fields, etc. I didn't have a perfect solution but the email did remind me about forms.

I wrote an article for TechTarget about how to create forms based on a database; that post is here. The salient portion is actually here on TechTarget.  The main point is that the simplest and easiest approach to creating a nice data entry form is through the wizard.

Another approach is to choose File > New > XML Form Document. I haven't even begun to get into the guts of forms like that--here are some of the windows/palettes you get when creating XML forms. Click to see it larger.

As a nonprogrammer, I'd just like to say that Submissions and Bindings sounds a little kinkier than a basic data entry form, and also that I need to do a lot more work before I can blog intelligently on either topic.

And now I'll move on to my main point in this blog, which is....

How to tweak your forms created in the wizard if they're not what you want.

OK. So you've created this form in the wizard.

You want to make a few changes--one, obviously, that the Review field isn't big enough.

Open the database that it was based on, choose Forms, then right-click on the form name and choose Edit.

The form will open up looking like this.

To change the size of a field or make other changes, first ungroup it from its prompt. Right-click on the field, choose Group > Ungroup.

Then  just click on the field  and resize it the way you would a text box or a graphic.

You can check the form to see if it's what you want now. Click the Design Mode On/Off icon in the Form Controls toolbar. (If you don't see that toolbar, choose View > Toolbars > Form Controls.)

However, the field still doesn't look right--it doesn't wrap and the text is centered vertically in the middle.

So click the Form Design On/Off icon again to go back to edit mode and fix this.

At this point, you always just right-click on the field and choose Control, pretty much regardless of what you need to do. You'll see the form control window. Scroll through the first tab and see if there's anything that jumps out at you. In this case, there is--I changed the text option from single line to Multi Line.  (DO NOT CHOOSE MULTILINE WITH FORMATTING. This will delete the connection to the database.)

   

Now the field looks the way you want.

Now, let's say you need to change one of the fields from a regular entry field to a list box or combo box, which would present a list of choices. A List Box requires the user to select one of the items you set up; a Combo Box lets the user select from the list or enter their own.

To demo this, I'll use the Genre field in this form. I ungroup the field as before, plus I had to  rearrange fields below it to give it some room. Then I resize it to make it bigger, so that there'll be room to display the options.

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Now I right-click on the field and choose Replace With. Here are all the options. List box, radio buttons, all sorts of fields, etc.

I'm going to choose Combo Box. Here's what it looks like.

Now I'll create the items that will show up in the list. I right-click and choose Control.

In the window that appears, click on the List Entries  field, and type the items you want to appear in the list. After each one, type Shift + Enter to go to the next line. When you're done, close the window.

That's all there is to it. The field will look like this.

And when you create a new record, you get the same options to choose from. The selection is saved in the database the form is connected to.

There's a lot more you can do to tweak forms, of course, but those are two pretty representative types. Just use the Replace option, and right-click and choose Control to manipulate the changed field.

StumbleUpon.com Is Pretty Cool

I'm not actually all that into the social bookmarking thing--the tiny little Luddite/pencil person in me resists techy overhead.

[By "pencil person," I mean I like to choose the least complicated way of doing something, even if it might not be as slick or cool. During the space race, as the story goes, the US spent millions developing a pen that would write in space. It's very cool; I got one as a gift when I was working at Great Plains Software. However, it cost millions and it took a long time. What did the Soviet Union do? Yep--they just used pencils.]

However, I've been getting a ton of views lately directly from the Stumbleupon.com site so I decided it bore some more investigating.  (Thanks y'all, by the way. ;>  ) I had gone before but didn't see an easy way to go to content and just skipped it.

Here's the Stumbleupon main page  statement.

"StumbleUpon uses / ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like–minded stumblers have liked."

So I bumbled around, figured out how to do it (not quickly). It's a little different, you have to actually install a browser plugin (anything from Mozilla, aka Netscape and Firefox). You also have to create an ID but you just have to (I believe) click the link to create an ID and it creates one for you, bang.

To install the toolbar, don't download the file and try to install it; just click on the link at this URL.
https://addons.mozilla.org/mozilla/138/

The toolbar looks like this in your browser once it's installed. Click the picture to see a larger version.

You can search in the search field, or you can just click the far-left  "Stumble!" button to be sent to any site you like. Click the button and you'll get a window where you can choose categories. After that clicking Stumble will just take you from one very interesting and/or useful site to another.

I chose Science/Tech as the category and was taken to the OpenOffice.org site, a few others, and then to GnuCash. It says "Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses."



I hadn't seen, or remembered seeing, such a practical open source product like this, so I thought it was worth noting here.

Anyway, back to Stumbleupon. However you get to a site, you can click the Reviews of This Page icon and see what other Stumblers thought of it.



And of course you can click the Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down site to vote on it.

I haven't used all the icons on the toolbar, but I was impressed with what StumbleUpon showed me. If you're into this kind of thing, give it a try; if you're not, then try it anyway the next time you're on hold, or between hands playing online poker.  It's not the easiest interface to find your way around in (their web site), but the results are useful.

Optimizing OpenOffice by Adjusting Settings Under Tools > Options

Faster is better. Here are two ways to improve performance in OpenOffice.org: changing memory settings, and not using the JRE (Java Runtime Environment).

Memory Settings
Sugree at howforge.com had a good experience adjusting some of the options that I recommend for improved performance. He has a nice set of info, from Linux Journal, for specific settings.

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Memory and set the following options.

• Undo
  • Number of steps = 20 (or fewer--most of us don't use that many)
• Graphics cache
  • Use for OpenOffice.org = 128 MB
  • Memory per object = 20 MB
  • Remove from memory after = 00:10 hh:mm
• Cache for inserted objects
  • Number of objects = 20 (or try fewer)

Here's what it looks like. Click the window to see a larger image since the amounts don't really show up very well.

Now, I haven't played around enough to know how this will affect other applications you're using at the same time. But give this a whirl and see how it works for you.

JRE (with a warning)
I was reminded of this by Neil. 

Choose Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Java. Unmark the Use a Java Runtime Environment option.

Here's what the window looks like; click it to see a larger version if you like.

Neil also warns that when you don't use the JRE:

• Wizards don't work
• The database functions don't work
• You can't save in some of the funky formats like  Pocket word.

So if you're going to spend the day doing hard-core work with big spreadsheets, go ahead and turn off the JRE, but turn it on the next day when you're going to be creating lots of databases with the wizards.

More info on all that in Wikipedia.

 

A Few Small but Useful Spreadsheet Printing Tips for OpenOffice Calc

I was fiddling with a very large and ungainly spreadsheet this morning. Just bad setup, period. I was trying to figure out how in the world to keep track of what was supposed to show up in print preview, and what was actually showing up. Here's what helped.

Use the Print Column and Row Headers feature.
Choose Format > Page, click the Sheet tab, and under Print, select Print Column and Row Headers. Here's what the window looks like; click this and any other image if you want to see a bigger version.

Here's what the spreadsheet looks like in Page Preview (File > Page Preview) with that option marked.

Print the Grid for Readability
Another handy option for readability is to print the grid. The option is in the same window; choose Format > Page, click the Sheet tab, and in the Print area, mark the Grid option.

Repeat Column and Row Headings

I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. You can repeat columns and/or rows on each page by using the print range feature. It's very handy to have that data repeat. Here's what a spreadsheet looks like without the feature, and with it.

Without repeated columns and rows: page 6 of spreadsheet

With repeated columns and rows: page 6 of spreadsheet

Choose Format > Print Ranges > Edit. Click in the dropdown by the Rows to Repeat and select User-Defined, then click in the field next to it. Then, in the spreadsheet itself,  click on the cells of the rows you want to repeat. Click in A1 to repeat just the first row, for instance; select A1 and A2 to repeat two rows on every page.

Do the same for columns. Click in A1 to repeat one column; select A1 and B1 to repeat two columns, and so on.

Here's what the window would look like if you wanted to repeat two rows and one column on every page.  You can also type, as you see:  $1 for row one; type $1:$2 for rows 1 and 2.  Type $A for column A; type $A:$B for columns A and B, type $A:$D to repeat columns A through D; and so on.

Use the Page Break Preview

This really helped me this morning with the unwieldy spreadsheet. Choose View > Page Break Preview.

This is what a big view of the spreadsheet looks like in this view. Click it to see the screen shot full size.

Here's a more focused view.

If you have blank areas of the spreadsheet displayed, the page numbers might not match what's in page preview or what prints. However, the page breaks will be correct.

When you want to go back to normal view, choose View > Normal.

If you want to insert the page breaks manually, click to insert the break, and choose Insert > Manual Break > Row Break, or Insert > Manual Break > Column Break.

Print Across and Down, or Down Then Across
Remember that with big spreadsheets, you can choose to print two ways:

• Print the first chunk of  rows in their entirety, across all the columns, and then come back to print the next chunk of rows

• Print the first chunk of  columns  in their entirety, across all the rows and then come back to print the next chunk of columns

You can set this by choosing Format > Page, clicking the Sheet tab, and making the appropriate selection at the top of the window.

And Finally: Use the Shortcut Between Page Preview and Page Setup
You will probably be in Page Preview mode a lot (choose File > Page Preview). You'll also spend time in the Page styles window setting various options in the sheet tab. You might think you need to close the page preview mode, then go to the page setup window by choosing Format > Page. You can, but it's much quicker to just click the Page button while you're in Page Preview. That'll take you to the page setup window. Change your options there, then click OK and you'll pop back to the  page preview window, with the changes you just made reflected in the view.

So: Choose File > Page Preview.
And click the Page button below  to go to the page setup window.

My Parents' Home Town Library Uses Linux and OpenOffice!

I was in the Kalispell Public Library today (or possibly the Flathead County Library, not sure what it's specifically called) in Kalispell, Montana today, to use their Internet. (My parents' Internet is what is called glacial.)

The stations are nice, with options for Internet, Office, etc. I didn't really pay attention to the office stuff til my allotted hour was over, and then I thought--gosh, that Spreadsheet icon is Oddly Familiar.

It was familiar of course because it was the Linux OpenOffice.org icon for spreadsheets. I talked to Katy, the librarian at the reference desk and she said, yes, they use Userful, a workstation setup apparently from a company in Canada.

So I just wanted to mention that, since, yay! open source in my home town library, where I have spent billions of hours. And also of course, if there are any librarians out there looking for a good prefab Linux workstation for public use, I really liked this one. It has a setup for restricting time per workstation per person, was nicely set up, of course, and just generally seemed very nice and workable.

And thirdly, I'm definitely going to contact the company providing the workstations and see if we can work out a deal with bundling some of my workbook content. I've been thinking that I would love to give a site license of my workbooks, if I could get a big enough group of libraries or schools or other groups together.

(And yes, I actually am writing this at 4 in the morning on Wednesday; it's not a prefab that I set up to post early in the morning. Presumably I'll get back to sleep at some point. Sheesh.)

Draft Chapters for my OpenOffice 2 Book

It's time to report in on how the OpenOffice 2.o book is doing! I'm glad to report that I've got pretty much 90% of it done. I'm going to let it sit for a bit, do some other projects, then come back to it and finish up. I think "spring" will still apply since June 21st is the first day of summer. ;'>

First, thanks again to all who gave me great tips on items to include in the OpenOffice 2 book. I have incorporated the suggestions that I have room for (it's primarily a beginner/intermediate book). I'm hammering home styles, I'm trying to make it very easy for people to integrate templates, I'm talking about graphics and frames, lots of stuff on tables, autotext and shortcuts are definitely in, and I'm enhancing the chapter on working with MS Office. And of course I'm doing lots of mail merge tools, with tips on creating a separate Envelopes printer, as well as using the Secret Mail Merge Louis told me about. I'm also going to add Ross's excellent suggestion to try nested frames.
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/03/i_want_to_know_.html

Some topics are covered fully, some are going to be covered briefly either in the appropriate chapter or in a "How to get started on the top 20 things I didn't have room to include in this book" appendix. ;>

I'm now posting a couple sample chapters, in their DRAFT state. I'd like feedback, and I'd like to just send them out there for anyone to use, for those who ordered two years ago because Amazon posted the book WAY too early. ;>

Here are the caveats and review guidelines.

CAVEATS:

• This is DRAFT material. I've been back through it but it hasn't been edited or proofed.
• I haven't completed the chapter on working with Microsoft Office users. I need to research more specific problems and solutions, though I think the tips in the chapter will take people a long way.
• You can use  these chapters yourself but of course not reprint them, publish them under your own name, etc.

Feel free to just download and read. If in addition you'd like to comment, please follow these guidelines.

• It's too early for typos, so you don't need to worry about those.
• Tell me other things you'd like to know about.
• Tell me anything that's wrong.
  
• I'd love to hear about solutions you've come up with or tips you'd like to contribute.

Here are the chapters.

• Working with Microsoft Office
• Lists

Thanks! I appreciate all input. I'll most likely post additional chapters before it's published.

 

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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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