OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas

Support OpenOffice.org: Add it to your resume!

Ben Horst writes:

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

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

Read more:

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

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

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

Here's the Styles and Formatting window, docked.

Here's the Styles and Formatting window,  undocked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's what it all looks like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Jones
101 Main
Suite 55
Boulder, CO 80022

Marion Silverman
888 105th Ave
Broomfield, CO 82211

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

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

But with this approach, your addresses look like this.

Bob Jones
101 Main
Suite 55
Boulder, CO 80022

Marion Silverman
888 105th Ave

Broomfield, CO 82211

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

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

databasename.tablename.fieldname EQ ""

Here are the details, using an example of labels.

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

2. Choose the Synchronize Contents checkbox.

3. Click New Document.

4. Here are the labels.

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

6. Select the first soft return, shown selected.

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

8. Repeat, to make them all hard returns.

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

10. Select the Address2 field.

11. Choose Insert > Section.

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

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

Example
databasewithtwoaddresslines.Table1.Address2 EQ ""

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

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

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

13. Click Insert.

14. Click Synchronize.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The beginning of a big fat blog on where all the OpenOffice settings and configurations are stored

I got an excellent question today: where are the AutoFormats stored?

They're not per document, like styles, which is nice. However, they are per user/per machine.

In Windows, they're stored by default here.

documents and settings\username\Application Data\OpenOffice.org2\user\config\autotbl.fmt

On Linux it should be in a similar location relative to where the user data is stored.

General Default Location for Individual Customizations

In Windows, settings are often here.

Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\OpenOffice\user

Default Locations for Templates, AutoTexts, Backups, AutoCorrect, Gallery, Temporary Files, My Documents (default location for File > Open) and Graphics (default location for Insert > Picture > From File) -- and How to Change or Add Locations

You can check, and change, the location of AutoCorrection settings and AutoTexts, plus other items under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths.

Click the picture to see a bigger version.

For each, to add or change paths, select the line and click Edit.  You'll see this window. If there are two or more you can delete paths that aren't the default path. Click Add to add additional paths.

Here's an overview from the online help about each category.

 

Type	Description
AutoCorrect	Contains the settings of the AutoCorrect dialog box.
AutoText	Your AutoTexts are stored in the specified folder.
My Documents	You can see this folder when you first call the Open or Save dialog.
AutoCorrect	This folder stores your own AutoCorrect texts.
AutoText	This folder stores your own AutoText texts.
Gallery	New Gallery themes are stored in this folder.
Graphics	This folder is displayed when you first call the dialog for opening or saving a graphic object.
Backups	Automatic backup copies of documents are stored here.
Templates	In this folder you can store your own templates.
Temporary files	This is where OpenOffice.org puts its temporary files.

 

Setting a Specific Location for a Category of AutoTexts
When you create AutoTexts under Edit > AutoText, you can add a category. Click Category, enter the name of the category, and select the location to store the file for this category from the dropdown list. The list comes from the paths set for AutoTexts under Tools > Options.

Click the graphic to see it bigger.

If you want to put this category in a different location, you can do it on the fly, kind of. Cancel out to the main AutoText window and click Path.  Then click Add to add a new path.

Now when you create a new AutoText category, you can select the new path from the dropdown list.

Go to that directory and you'll see a file with the category as its file name. You can copy this file to other computers, and point users to where the file is.

Locations for Customizations to Spellcheck

Look for the wordbook directory in the location under Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\OpenOffice\user (or the user directory on that computer) for customizations made to spellcheck.

Locations for Plugins

Look for the plugins  directory in the location under Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\OpenOffice\user (or the user directory on that computer). This folder contains the plugins that you installed in OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org recognizes the plug-ins installed in Netscape, Mozilla, or the Microsoft Internet Explorer, so you normally do not need to install plug-ins in this folder.

 

What's Coming

In the coming month I'm going to put together a big fat blog on configuration: how to make sure that a whole bunch of users can have the settings or values you specify for:

• styles/templates
• macros
• menus and toolbars
• colors
• and much more

Please leave a comment if there's a configuration location you'd like to know about or something you've picked up that would be useful. Thanks!

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A very important post for decision-makers considering OpenOffice

The most important thing to make sure you understand about a transition to OpenOffice.org is to run a good hard pilot program first.

But this is a very very close second.

The more tech-savvy you are, the more serious mistakes you can make in an OpenOffice.org transition.

It's very likely that you can't trust your own judgment. Not when it comes to evaluating how users will be able to make the transition.
Because the following, more or less, describes most IT directors or people in related positions who will evaluate and choose OpenOffice.org. And these attributes color how you consider other people's skillsets.

1. You are an experienced computer and find it inconceivable that people don't have at least basic computer skills.
2. You've used a dozen text editors and while you love vi and emacs, you don't really care which one you use. You have no emotional attachment to the current office suite.
3. You understand how office suites work. You have text, you format it; you have cells, you refer to them; they're all pretty much the same. When you learn a new office suite, you just transfer your existing knowledge to a new set of navigation.

If you run a 10-person geek-heavy startup company, all of these assumptions are fine.

If you run any non-software business, a city or county government, a volunteer organization, or anything else that is not a small techy company completely populated with intense techy people, then you probably don't really know your users' skill sets. If you don't take some time to triple-check your assumptions and realistically evaluate their skill sets, then formulate plans to address related issues, you're going to have some serious bumps when you transition to OpenOffice.org.

Note: This is not in any way meant to be condescending. People have all different skillsets, from computers to people skills to decouppage to athletics, and the person who is disinterested in, or struggles with, document margins is sometimes the one who knocks you out on the dance floor or gives the speech at the annual conference that has the salespeople on their feet, cheering. This blog is to help the people in charge of transitioning users to new software ensure that those users have the skills, confidence, training, etc. necessary to do their jobs.

How do I know this?
The usual ways. Observation. Reading posts and comments online.

And through my own experience when I started to do training. I had been a techwriter/course developer in high tech for 12 years when I started doing OpenOffice.org training. I used styles, I coded raw HTML, I'd used four operating systems, etc. I didn't think of myself as techy because I was usually surrounded by people who, for instance, had written the Java certification exam. But I was way more experienced in how to use office suites, especially word processing programs, than the folks I was training. So the class on how to use styles and master documents wasn't a great success. ;>  So I quickly backpedaled and refocused and rewrote the training materials to suit the audience, their experience, and what they needed.

Back to the main topic. First, let me emphasize this:

You can have a very successful transition to OpenOffice.org even if you have users with limited software skillsets.

You just need to work with your users as they are. And since you're very different from them, your unconscious assumptions are likely going to lead you astray.

Let's go back to the numbered list.

Issues Corresponding to the Three Assumptions, and How to Deal With Those Issues

1. You are a techy and you just don't understand how someone can not understand how things work. It's like being able to read, maybe, and not know how someone can look at a word and not sound it out.

Even if you field really basic questions from your users every day, they don't ask  you all the questions. And they just skip some of the questions they should be asking. Get a sense of what their skills really are. In a nonthreatening way, either send out a little questionnaire, have a short session where you put people through their paces on some basic skills, or just send out some of your non-threatening IT folks to observe people doing their jobs. You'll find that a lot of essentials, like being able to navigate a file system, are missing. A lot of people never learned to choose File > Open and go up or down a level to find a file.  Likewise, a lot of people never learned to right-click, they don't know how to do it and they don't know what a great way it is to figure out where a feature they need is.

You can offer people training (and of course having the authority to make it required means they'll come to it).  Possibly start with fundamentals of computers and go from there. You can do daylong sessions, CBT, little tips and tricks every Wednesday at lunch, give prizes to the department that does the most entries on the Internal Tips and Tricks FAQ, whatever. It's all doable. You just need to know what you're working with, and help people get the skills they lack and that can make them happier and more productive.

2. You have no idea how they really feel about transitioning. You think, what's the big deal? It's just another software program.

This is kind of related to #3, which I'll get to in a second. But hearing that they will be switching to an office suite they've never heard of (or even if they have heard of it) fills people with panic. Fear. Hostility, sometimes. It's fear of the unknown, fear of learning things they don't feel comfortable with, fear of losing skills and ability to do their job that they feel are tied to the software they use. All very normal and human and addressable but they are NOT the feelings you would have. 

How do you address fear and panic? Well, one very practical way that's kind of offtopic is to reassure them that any massive document conversion will be taken care of. Conversion is a big issue people panic about. Also, since it's partly fear of the unknown, show them the software. Have brief 15-minute presentations or CBTs where you run through the software and show just a couple features. Bold Italic Underline, and colored text one week. Send as PDF another week. Show a cool feature like the prefab graphics as a fun feature; people like graphics. Put a bunch of clip art in the Gallery and show that another week -- ditto.

Reassure them that you're not just going to slap it on their desks and make them use it without books or training.

Reassure them that there will be a transition period where they can work with it and learn it.

And for the people who are more angry and resistant than fearful -- well, that's a management issue, not a software issue. It's time for some tough love from the person's supervisor, with the appropriate proportions of carrot and stick for that person. (You need to have support for OOo from the top to make sure you can make this happen.)

This needs to be absolutely clear to everyone in your organization. If using a particular tool to do certain tasks in the person's job description, then that person has an obligation, both ethical and legal, to learn to use that tool to the best of their abilities. This applies to computers and whatever software is installed; hammers; backhoes; or whatever the tool is.

See the addendum at the end of this post for a suggested rough draft of the email from the CEO about the transition.

3. You see how similar OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office are. Going from choosing File > Page Setup to choosing  Format > Page Setup poses no problems for you.

But these are problems for users. Many people just concentrate on what menus and buttons to click to do their job; they don't generalize those skills so that they can easily reapply them in a new piece of software. They feel like they're starting over when they switch to a new word processor, even though the fundamental principles are the same.

This is why they panic at the idea of change. They think their ability to do their job is tied to their current office suite. They think if you take away MS Office or Word Perfect, they'll be no better than an intern off the street. Maybe they fear losing their job, or at least losing their self esteem at performing their job well.

So how do you deal with this? It's nothing terribly original, but when you realize that they aren't going to be able to generalize their skillsets to OpenOffice.org on their own, you can give them the resources they need to learn OOo.

DON'T JUST INSTALL OPENOFFICE.ORG ON THEIR COMPUTERS, THROW THEM A FEW CLUESHEETS, AND FIGURE YOU'RE DONE. This is a really good way to increase support calls by an order of magnitude, make people resent you and OpenOffice.org, and risk having the transition fail.

Essentially, switching some people from MS Office to OOo is like taking a macro and changing the name of the variables. Only the names have changed, but the macro is going to break.

• You have to make sure people know how to use the program before they have to start doing their jobs using the software. This might not involve a lot of training. If people do the same five tasks all day long, then find out what those tasks are, train them on those tasks, leave them documentation for how to do those tasks, and that could be all you need to do.
  
• If there are some tasks that are more difficult in OpenOffice.org than the other office suite, then try templates, styles, menu and toolbar modification, or consider just reassigning a few tasks to another person or group.
• Increase their confidence along with their skill sets. Show them something new and cool, like making a shortcut under Tools > AutoCorrect, Replace tab; or using the drawing tools under View > Toolbars > Drawing. When you make them feel good about their skills and the program, everyone wins.

As Weird as It Feels, You Have to Believe Things That Just Don't Seem to Make Sense (to you)

The key thing is, don't make assumptions about skills users have, even when they seem natural and easy -- to you. 

If you can use OpenOffice.org easily and if your 10-year-old son picked up Openoffice.org in about 15 minutes, that has no bearing on whether or not your users will be able to pick it up on their own in the same way.

It's tempting to believe that your users will be fine, since it's cheaper and easier to do a transition with techy users. It reminds me of the joke about the economist, the engineer, and the chemist who are stuck in a room with no doors or windows. The engineer and economist have various solutions, and the economist just says, "Let's assume that there's a door."  ;>

And I'm sure in some situations, some rare situations, I'm wrong. But in my experience, this is the case. Just be sure you know the real situation, the real users you're transitioning, and address them as they are.

And you, and they, will be fine.

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ADDENDUM: TO MAKE IT CLEAR THAT EVERYONE IN THE ORGANIZATION WILL LEARN OPENOFFICE.ORG AND THAT MAKING A FUSS WILL NOT BRING BACK THE OLD OFFICE SUITE.

It's a good idea for someone with authority to send an email like this to all employees. A friendly but direct email from the CEO or whoever is appropriate stating something like this. Make it clear that there will be few or no  exceptions, there is no turning back, and that kicking up a fuss will not bring back the old office suite.

(This is all assuming that you did a good, thorough job of researching, testing, and piloting OpenOffice.org, ensuring that it is the right tool for the job.)

ACME  team members,

One of the essential attributes of a successful company is the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, and take advantage of new opportunities and tools. Based on the changing marketplace and emergence of new types of software, I and other members of the ACME team, decided to evaluate OpenOffice.org, a powerful and free open source office suite compatible with Microsoft Office.  OpenOffice.org has a text processing module like Word, a spreadsheet like Excel, a presentation tool like Powerpoint, as well as database capabilities and a drawing program. The programs look quite similar to Microsoft Office. To learn more, go to www.openoffice.org.

I have decided that ACME will switch to OpenOffice.org. OpenOffice.org is a good choice for ACME for many reasons, including its excellent feature set and the enormous amount of money we will save by not paying for Microsoft Office licenses.

The transition to OpenOffice.org will be phased, not immediate. We have begun the transition with a pilot program and will begin the official rollout on ________. The rollout will take approximately __________ and by __________, the company will be using OpenOffice.org as its official office suite.

I understand that making this change might seem alarming. Rest assured that the change will not be immediate. All employees will have the opportunity to use and learn OpenOffice.org for a minimum of ________ before being required to use it for work.  All employees will provided with information about the program to help you learn it, and the help desk will support it. You can also download and install OpenOffice.org at home if you would like to use it as your home office suite. I use it myself at home and am delighted with it.

The switch to OpenOffice.org applies to all employees.  (if there are exceptions add the following) The only exceptions are as follows:
- __________
- __________
- __________

To learn more about OpenOffice.org at ACME please go to:
- [create an internal faq site]
- [an internal site where you describe it a little more, including screen captures and videos of how OOo looks]

I am confident that all ACME employees have the ability to learn the new program and do their jobs with the same high quality of excellence that has made us so successful. Thank you for your participation in this transition.

Regards,


[name]

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Beware! Saving in Word format, and mail merges, don't mix.

Mail merges don't work if you're saving your OpenOffice document in Microsoft Word format.

Whether you're doing this manually, or doing it with the window under Tools > Options > Load/Save > General, saving in Word format will strip out the mail merge fields' connection to the database.

So you can save in .doc by default, but you need to save the mail merge documents, whether they're labels, envelopes, or other documents, in OpenOffice.org native .odt format.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Choose File > Templates > Organize.

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

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

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

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

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Right-click to add a note in OpenOffice.org Calc

I understand that in Excel, you have the option to right-click and add a note to a cell.

For a long time, OpenOffice.org didn't have that option. You could choose Insert > Note, or you could add that function to a keyboard shortcut to avoid using the mouse. However, many people were used to the right-click.

Well, it's here. In 2.2 and possibly earlier versions, you can right-click in a cell and get the note option.

A box will appear; type the note.  The display, while you're typing, is kind of twitchy. However, the whole thing does get entered correctly.

When you move your mouse over the cell (you don't have to select the cell), the note displays.

Right-click on the cell to choose to delete or make other choices re the note.

To print notes, choose Format > Page, Sheet tab, and in the Print section in the middle, select Notes.

The notes are printed after the relevant sheet, with a cell reference.

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The Slow Death of Microsoft (or at least some wasting away)

Pretty much everything in the business world evolves and changes. The Detroit auto industry, for instance, has gone through some changes. A lot of phonograph companies are no longer in business.

And so even though it seems impossible to think that Microsoft would ever be less than its current massive size and influence, it will happen. Not only because of history but because of the reasons in this blog by Quentin Stafford-Fraser.

I'm sure Microsoft will evolve, diversify, maybe go more into games, etc. But they're not permanent the way they are now. Nothing is.

From the blog. This of course is not an issue specific to Microsoft, but an issue with standard big corporate software development in the current model.

The third, and most telling, nail in Microsoft’s coffin was highlighted for me in a talk given by a former Microsoft employee who had recently moved to Yahoo. I can’t remember his name, for which my apologies. But I remember very clearly what he said.

He had developed a new feature for Outlook/Exchange in 2004. It was a cool feature and was due to be incorporated in the next release, in 2007. But then it was deemed to be a little too aggressive to include it so quickly, so it was postponed until the following release, which will presumably be in 2009/10.  Six years after he finished it! When he moved to Yahoo, he would implement a new feature and it was not unusual for someone to ask, “Could this go live this afternoon?”

 

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Publisher Users: Making Postcards, Brochures, and Other Cool Stuff With OpenOffice Writer and Draw, and Existing Microsoft Templates (Repost)

Reposted April 2007 because this post doesn't show up in Technorati searches.

Update: See The Linux Box for more ready-made OpenOffice Impress templates.

One of the biggest losses people experience when switching to open source is the loss of all those cool templates. They are, as the song says, a hard habit to break.

The good news is, you usually don't have to break the habit. (Unless you've been using Publisher, unfortunately, and you can't open Publisher files in anything—not even Word.) Here's how to keep on using the same templates you know and love; find new ones, or create your own in Draw and Writer.

You Can Still Use Your Own Word Templates and Any Others You Can Find

Here's where you might really start to enjoy the value of OpenOffice.org's compatibility with Microsoft Office.
You can still use all those Microsoft Office templates you got with the software. (Assuming the license doesn't forbid it--just putting that in just in case. ;> ) In OpenOffice.org, just choose File > Open, go to Program Files\Microsoft Office\templates (or wherever) and find the one you want. 

You can also set up OpenOffice.org to just find those templates. See this blog on templates. Go to the end.

And you can google around for more. I googled for “postcard templates” and came to this nice site from HP. The templates are available not just in Publisher but in Word. Click the image to see it larger if you like.

http://www.hp.com/sbso/productivity/office/direct_marketing.html

Follow a few links, and you get here. Click the image to see it larger if you like.

http://www.hp.com/sbso/productivity/office/stocklayout/stocklayout_overview.html

 

I decided to download the postcard template and the brochure template. I clicked on each; here's what it looked like to choose the brochure template.

Once the files were downloaded, I just went to OpenOffice.org, chose File > Open,  and opened them in OpenOffice Writer. Here's what the postcard template looks like.

 

I modified it according to my own information; it was relatively easy. Here's what that looks like. Here's the file itself. Right-click on the link and choose to save link as.

So that's really all there is to it. Use your own  or find new ones. There are a zillion free templates out there, and you can use the Word format templates (or Powerpoint, or Excel) in OpenOffice.org. Just google for the free ones, or ask friends where they are.

Making Your Own Postcards, Brochures, etc. in Draw and Writer

Now, that's not all the fun. If you want to create a postcard yourself, let's say in Draw, you can go ahead and do that, too. Or a brochure, or anything with specific measurements.

(You can do this in Writer to; I'm just showing it in Draw since the previous section was all about Writer.)

You need to know three  things.
- Choose Format > Page and click the Page tab to set the overall page size and orientation.

- Use the drawing tools like the text box and shapes to create the borders of the items in the document. Choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to bring up that toolbar.

- Select any item, right-click, and choose Position and Size. In the window that appears, click the Position and Size tab. will let you specify that the border of the postcard box, for instance, is 4x6. Remember to mark or unmark the Keep Ratio checkbox depending on whether you want to change one measurement of the object or both.

 

So let's do an example.

 

I'm going to create another postcard template. So I choose File > New > Drawing to create a new Draw document. I choose Format > Page, click the Page tab, and set the page size and margins.  I'll need a document that's like the first one or the second one, depending on what I'm printing on.

Option 1: A document with no margins, 6 across by 8 high (for two 4x6 postcards), and portrait orientation

Option 2: A document with half-inch margins, 7 across by 9 high (for two 4x6 postcards with two half-inch margins around the outside),  and portrait orientation

Next, I create a box to show me where the content should go. I just click on the rectangle tool in the Drawing toolbar and draw the box. I don't want a fill in it so I make the fill Invisible.

I right-click on the border of the rectangle, choose Position and Size, and click on the Position and Size tab. I choose 6 wide by 4 high, and unmark the Keep Ratio checkbox.

I put the edge of the box against the edge of where the postcard paper will end.

At this point, I make a template of it, so I can get at it again. See this blog on templates. If you want my document to download and make into a template,  here it is. Right-click on the link and choose to save link as.

 

Now I just make one version of the postcard, the way I want it. I put the content in the box, keeping in mind I need a bit of space between the text and the edge of the paper.

 

I copy the postcard and paste it, and drag the pasted version down to the bottom end of the document.

 

And now I just delete the boxes.

 

That's all there is to it. A little bit of work to set up, but the template takes care of that; you only need to do it once.

 

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Adding Graphics, or Video, to the Gallery for Easier Access to Clip Art and Other Pictures

Note, August 20th: I just discovered a very simple way to add graphics from the Gallery to the background of your header or footer, page, or paragraph.

I would  say that a nice big gallery of clip art or other useful graphics is worth way more than a thousand words, if you're trying to convince your users to like OpenOffice.org. (Nothin' wrong with the program, but we know that change can be a pain.) Some users find it difficult to navigate a file system, which is what you need to do if you're using Insert > Picture > From File. And, frankly, dragging from a nice pane of graphics is easier.

When I go to a client site, there's always some resistance among users to doing the switch. However, people just love going through the gallery. The mood definitely changes when people see the graphics and start dragging pictures of cheese and armadillos and yellow school buses onto their documents.

To get a bunch of graphics, just google for free clip art and download it.  Here are a few options specifically for teachers.

Some clip art

http://clip-art.kaboose.com/index.html
http://school.discovery.com/clipart/new.html
http://www.teacherfiles.com/clip_art.htm  (BIG collection)

Free animations
http://register.freeze.com/download/index.aspx?sx=348413c5-d957-4f6c-bfe7-d91ca643ee6a

You might also consider the phenomenal Big Box of Art, vast amounts of clip art for not a lot of money.

So whether you want easier access to pictures or video, or good change management techniques, the gallery is a nice feature.

The locations of all the gallery graphics and other gallery info is stored in openoffice\share\gallery, in the .sdv files. Copy those files to other computers if you want them to have the same graphics, when you're done doing the configuration.

1. Click the Gallery icon or choose Tools > Gallery.

2. The gallery will appear.

3. Click New Theme.

4.  Click the General tab, and type the name of the theme that you want displayed in the Gallery.

5. Click the Files tab and click Find Files.

6. In the window that appears, go to the directory containing the graphics. The directory can contain subdirectories; all graphics in all subdirectories will be brought in for you to choose from. Click OK.

7. All the graphics in that directory and any subdirectories will be brought into the window.

8. To add only some, use Ctrl select or Shift select to select specific graphics. Select the Preview checkbox to see graphics. Then click Add.

To add all graphics, just click Add All.

9. A window will show the graphics being added.

10. Find more graphics and add them the same way, or just click OK. You'll see the graphics in the gallery. To add a graphic to a document, just drag it into the document.

If  you need to change the name or add files later, right-click on the theme and choose Properties. This will take you back to the same window.

---

---

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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One Way to Export Data From OpenOffice Base to a Spreadsheet

In OpenOffice.org 2.2 you can now export data in a reasonable manner. Here's one way in 2.4.

Here's another way you might try. It's almost identical to the (albeit invisible) import method.

1. Open your database .odb file.
2. Click the Tables icon.
3. Right-click on the name of the table to export. Choose Copy.
4. Go to a spreadsheet. Paste.

The data will appear.

---

OpenOffice Template for Writer: Suppressing the Page Number on the First Page

Suppressing the page number on the first page of a document is, unfortunately, not available simply by selecting the Suppress First Page Number checkbox.

You can set up your own documents, using page styles, so that you nave no page number on the first page, but a page number on the second and subsequent pages.
http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/12/merry_christmas.html

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/09/starting_page_n.html

But if you want a template already made, here are two.
No page number on first page, second page is numbered page 1

No page number on first page, second page is numbered page 2

Here's how to use them.

1. Right-click on each item to download it. Save each file to a location on your computer or a network drive you can access.

Note: You might want to just save the templates to the location already listed under Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths, Templates item. Then in step 3 choose Commands > Update instead of Commands > Import.

2. Then in OpenOffice.org Writer choose File > Templates > Organize.

3. If you saved the template to one of the existing template paths, choose Commands > Update instead and continue to step 4.

If you saved the template to another location, then select a category on the left side,  click and hold down on the Commands button and choose Import as shown.

Find the files where you downloaded them. To select both, select the first, then hold down Ctrl and select the second. Click Open.

4. The templates will appear. Click Close.

5.  If you want one of the templates to be what comes up when you choose File > New > Text document, then right-click on it and choose Set as Default Template. I strongly recommend customizing the default template, whether you use this one or another one.

6.  Click Close.

7. To access the templates, choose File > New > Templates and Documents. If necessary, click the Templates icon at the left, double-click the name of the category you put the templates in in step 3, and you'll see the templates. Select the one you want.

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Creating PDF Online Help With OpenOffice Writer and Its PDF Feature

A friend emailed me asking about templates for creating online help like you usually get by pressing F1. I didn't know of any, though I suspect that if you found one in Word, it would work OK in Writer.

That got me thinking about the PDF function, though. You can use the built-in ability to link to different headings and fields, and the PDF output function, not to mention the easy automatic hotlinked table of contents feature, to make some very nice PDF online help. Heck, with a little hacking you could be single-sourcing your online help and manual documentation.

My main point here, though, is to provide a template with which anyone can easily start making online help.  So I've posted various tools.

• A semi-empty template you can start using immediately. Right-click on the link for this and choose to save it, rather than clicking on the link to open it.
• The same document containing sample text and detailed instructions, in document rather than template format.  Right-click on the link for this and choose to save it, rather than clicking on the link to open it.
• A PDF of the same document

Essentially, you just:

• Use the styles Heading1 on down on the headings of each of your help topics

• Use the Insert > Hyperlink feature or the Hyperlink icon to link to various points within your document. You can link to any text that has a heading style applied to it, to graphics, tables, bookmarks, etc.
• Update the TOC when you change anything, and it'll automatically show everything correctly.
• Choose File > Export as PDF when you're ready to produce.

And that's all.

 

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50 Open Source success stories in Business, Education, and Government

Success stories! If you're considering switching to any open source program, read on.

http://www.crmchump.org/2006/10/in_a_world_wher.html

Here's one story.

Golden also mentioned the implementation of SugarCRM Oregon Department of Human Services. The service provider needed a CRM put into place quickly, due to new HIPAA regulations in electronic billing. Believe it or not, Oregon DHS was sold on the idea when an IT engineer surfed the internet, found open-source SugarCRM, downloaded it onto a laptop and showed it around the department the next day. After “a couple of days” configuring, Oregon DHS went live with the system via the same laptop.

And get this, especially the end.

CRMBlog recently reported the story of the implementation over at Learning.com, a developer of online technology integration and assessment tools for public schools. Within six months of installing NetSuite, Learning.com had achieved results in acceleration of its business processes by a crazy 1500 percent and ultimately doubled business in 2005. And best of all, Learning.com reportedly required no extra personnel or personnel costs in making the switch.

Click here to read more.

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Easy Version of OpenOffice.org -- Easier Ways to Do Everything

An alert user pointed out to me a great new feature.  It's the Easy Version of OpenOffice.org.

Just choose File > Use Easy Version. The interface will flicker a bit and you'll see a different set of menus. Among the benefits:
- An easy-to-follow wizard for importing and exporting from Base
- Reliable, simple envelope printing
- A checkbox for suppressing the page number on the first page
- And much more.

I feel so silly -- I've been blogging all this time to show how to do things in the standard version, when there was an easy version to use, all this time.

---

Printing Exactly the Records You Want to Print for a Mail Merge in OpenOffice Labels, Envelopes, or other Documents

Used to be, it was hard to just print the records you wanted to print in a mail merge, in OpenOffice.org mail merges.

Bob  Jones   121 Ludlow
Marie Hanson  1688 Oak
Kathy Bates  88 Pearl

What if you're mad at Marie, though, as well as Jean, John, and Xavier,  and just want to print a holiday letter to Bob and to Kathy and the other 119 people in your list who you're still speaking to?

You had to either go through the HUGE and complex mail merge wizard, or just print a letter each for Marie, Jean, John, and Xavier, and throw them away.

However, in 2.something of OpenOffice.org, you can just Ctrl - Select the records to print.

1. Make your mail merge document: labels, letter, envelopes, whatever.

2. Choose File > Print and say Yes, you want to print a form letter. NEVER mark the checkbox.

3. In the window that appears, you can scroll down to view the database and table you're using at the left side. This isn't necessary but it might help you feel more organized.

4. Click on the light gray box next to the first record you want to print.  Hold down Ctrl and click on the light gray box next to the next record you want to print. And so on.

You'll see that at the left side,  Selected Records is now marked.

5. Now just select Printer or File to print as you normally would, and click OK. The normal printing window will appear if you select Printer.

---

 

Repost to make some blogs searchable

Technorati has done it again -- I have a three week gap of unlisted posts. I've reposted them but that usually doesn't work, so I'm listing them here with links and some keywords.

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.

(Read more)

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.

(Read more)

Lots of Extra Settings for Firefox

This is another tip I've cribbed from Dave Richards, of the City of Largo. 

The reason that Firefox took off where Netscape floundered is that they had the guts to just take stuff out and make it what most people need: a nice little no-fuss browser that loads fast. (Bill Joy also has a good quote about how it takes real guts to cut features -- wonder what he thinks about Java now. )

So that's what Firefox is. However, there are many features, some very useful and some perhaps more obscure, like the number of threads to keep open for downloading graphics. If you want to get at them, just type about:config in a Firefox browser window.

(Read more)

Support ODF; Support Democracy in Texas!

Texas is discussing open document format, the format used by OpenOffice.org and not so much by Microsoft.

Read more on Sam Hiser's blog.

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/03/support_odf_sup.html

---

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.

(Read more)

Texas is discussing open document format, the format used by OpenOffice.org and not so much by Microsoft.

Read more on Sam Hiser's blog.

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/03/support_odf_sup.html

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.

(Read more)

Support ODF; Support Democracy in Texas!

Texas is discussing open document format, the format used by OpenOffice.org and not so much by Microsoft.

Read more on Sam Hiser's blog.

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/03/support_odf_sup.html

Sample Project for Joining Tables, Regarding Primary Keys

If you don't spend every day hip deep in databases, you might not always be clear on the whole primary key thing, and how to join them.

I want to clarify that this will work.

Let's say you've got two tables.

One is a table with city residents' IDs and names, street numbers, street names, etc.

The other is a table with street names and the days on which garbage is collected.

You need to send people a letter telling them what day their garbage is collected on. Thus you need to link the two tables.

The primary key on the first table, the ID field, is different than the primary key on the second. The primary key on the second could be the street name since the street name is unique in that table.

1   Oak    Monday
2  Elm     Monday
3  Main  Tuesday

and so on.

To create the query, you don't need to link the primary keys. You can link the two tables simply by connecting the two Street Name fields when you create the query.

1. Open the database file containing the two tables.
2. Click the Queries icon at the left.
3. Click the option to create a query in design view.

4. In the window that appears, select the first table name and click Add.

5. Select the second table name and click Add.

6. Click in the second table, on the common field, in this case the StreetName field, and drag your mouse to the other table's StreetName field. (If this doesn't work, drag from the first table's field to the second table's field.)

7. Now create your query. Double-click the name of any field you want in the query. In this case it might be Name, Street Number, Street Name, and Garbage Day.

Run the query by clicking the Run Query icon.

The results will appear.

Save the query and close it.

Now create your mail merge. You can create a new Text Document and choose View > Data Sources. Open the database containing the query and under Queries select the query you created

Drag the fields you want into the letter. You might want it like this.

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Creating Calculated Fields in OpenOffice Base

When you make a database, you of course have it chock full of data.

Contractor name, Contractor pay rate, Number of hours the contractor worked, etc.
Invoice ID, Item price, Number of items purchased, etc.

Now, let's say you want to figure out something based that data. The pay rate times the hours to equal the total amount paid, for instance.

To do that, you make a query.

1. Create a database. (File > New > Database, select the first radio button in that window and continue.)
2. Create or add a table.  (Choose the Wizard or design view.)

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3. Open the database file. (File > Open and find the .odb file.)
4. Click the Queries icon at the far left.

5. Click Create Query in Design View.

6. In the window that appear, select the table that contains the fields you need to calculate and click Add.

7. The table will appear in its own separate window. Add all the fields that you want in the query -- you might all of them. To add a field, double-click it. It will appear in the design area at the bottom.

8. To add the calculation, click in the top cell of the first blank column. Type fieldname*fieldname

<>

For instance, to multiply the contents of Payrate by Hoursonjob,   type
Payrate*Hoursonjob

In the cell below that, the cell to the right of the Alias label, type the name you want to use to refer to this calculated field, like TotalPaid.

Then click the Run Query icon to run the query.

You'll see your results, with the calculation.

For any of the columns, including the result, you can apply currency formatting. Right-click on the column heading and choose Column Format.

Select the format you want and click OK.

The formatting is applied.

Now you can:

• Just view the data
• Run a report based on the query
• Create a mail merge of some sort based on the query

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Support ODF; Support Democracy in Texas!

Texas is discussing open document format, the format used by OpenOffice.org and not so much by Microsoft.

Read more on Sam Hiser's blog.

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/03/support_odf_sup.html

---

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.

---

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.

---

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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OpenOffice.org Base Queries: Switching Between SQL and Design View

One of the simplest ways to write a query in OpenOffice Base, while still not having to be a programmer, is to use the Design view. Or even if you're as comfortable with SQL as anything in life, design view is still kind of a pleasant little tool.

To create a query in design view, open the database file, click the Queries icon, and click the Design View option.

You can click Add to add the table or tables to the query, then double-click each field you want in the query. It appears in the query design area. Add your functions, criteria, etc. Run the query if you like.

Now, let's say you have a sudden attack of the SQLs. You can just choose View > Switch Design View On/Off and the view will change to SQL.

Here's the SQL view.

Make the same menu selection again and the view changes back.

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Backspace, don't Delete, to delete cell contents in OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheets

Deleting in OpenOffice.org Calc's spreadsheet can be a bit annoying. You get this window each time.

It can be useful when you want very specific delete options. But sometimes you just want a plain delete with no backtalk.

How do you get that? Just use Backspace instead of Delete.

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Importing Fonts Into OpenOffice.org 2.1

OpenOffice.org will just pick up whatever fonts you've got on your system. As someone who's worked with a lot of desktop publishing projects and who's mostly on Windows, I have a lot of fonts.

But let's say you don't have a lot of fonts, and you want more fonts for OpenOffice.

OpenOffice is there for you. In 2.1 there's a link from the Wizards to an installation site.

Choose File > Wizards > Install Fonts From Web.

Just follow the wizard through. Here are the windows.

Click on English and here's the text you see.

===========================

FontOOo

Version 1.6.1

FontOOo is a wizard allowing free fonts installation.

 

FontOOo is a wizard to simplify the downloading and installation of selected, high-quality fonts available on the internet.  License restrictions prevent these fonts from being directly shipped as part of OpenOffice.org but do allow end-user installation and use for no cost.   Please carefully read and follow the license for each of the fonts you install.

 

Click the button to start the wizard

Notes:

You will have to restart OpenOffice.org and the quickstarter to see your new fonts.

FontOOo only works at OpenOffice.org level and no font is installed at operating system level

 

This wizard is licensed under the terms of the LGPL, available here:
http://www.opensource.org/licenses/lgpl-license.php

Author: Laurent Godard – © 2004–2006 – [email protected]

===========================

Select available fonts. If they're dimmed, click Next and select any that are available.

I selected all these and installed them.

Selectwhat you want installed and click Next. The process will run. Restart OpenOffice.org and the quickstarter when you're done.

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Top 10 Reasons to Fall in Love With OpenOffice.org

In honor of the day, here's a slightly tongue-in-check, but very true, list of reasons to consider OpenOffice.org.

You might be looking for a new relationship this year. An office suite that doesn't cost you more than you get from it. An office suite that supports you in accomplishing your goals rather than spending all your time supporting it. OpenOffice.org is here for you. Here are some great reasons to fall in love with it.

10. OpenOffice.org will change to please you. It will, if you so desire, meet you at the door each evening with a menu of your favorite choices. (Which is to say, you can configure the menus and toolbars to say and portray whatever you want.)

9.  Does Microsoft Office give you $450 of love for everyone who uses it? It's a user, not a giver. Spend your money on something important. Education. Cancer research. A truly great pepperoni pizza. OpenOffice.org doesn't take you  away from what you want to do.

8.    OpenOffice.org makes great PDFs, with a zillion graphics, display, and security settings you usually only see in Adobe products.

7.  Want cool templates? All your  Microsoft Office templates work in OpenOffice.org.

6. OpenOffice.org won't leave the relationship and take  all your stuff with it. Microsoft Office makes files in its own proprietary format. OpenOffice.org uses OpenDocument format that anyone can make a program to open. It's your data -- don't pay someone to let you access it.

5.  As Lyle Lovett says in his song, "I married her just because she looks like you." OpenOffice.org looks more like your current version of Microsoft Office than Microsoft Office 2007 does.

4.  OpenOffice.org gets along with all your friends. It runs on Vista. On Linux. On Mac.

3.   Want support? Sun Microsystems provides it.

2.  Microsoft Office is high maintenance -- if you don't keep track of all your licenses, Bill's jack-booted thugs come around and throw a hissy fit. OpenOffice.org is low maintanance. Upgrade or don't, and either way, pay nothing.

1. Cost of buying OpenOffice.org licenses for everyone in your organization: $0.  Never having to pay Bill another cent: Priceless.

http://www.openoffice.org   Download it today. Start loving it tonight.

(Start migrating tomorrow morning.)

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TechTarget Article: Compatibility Tips for Word and OpenOffice Writer

I've written an article for TechTarget.com about how to create documents to convert as well as possible between Microsoft Word and OpenOffice.org Writer.

http://searchopensource.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid39_gci1186330,00.html

It's essentially about how, when Word documents don't open all that well in OpenOffice Writer, it's often because...well, the original document wasn't in great shape. The article talks about how to use tools appropriately to make documents that are well constructed no matter what application you're using, and how well constructed documents convert better between office suites, operating systems, and other environments.

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I've got Microsoft Vista

For various reasons, I suddenly bought a new HP Pavilion laptop last week ($800 down to $650!). One key reason was that I couldn't keep my old laptop going on AC, even with valiant attempts to duct-tape the cord to the computer hard enough or at the right angle to keep the juice going.

So I'm the proud yet somewhat abashed owner of a slick new Vista-running laptop, with wireless internet (yay!) and various other features that weren't on my laptop that I bought in 2002.

Vista -- well, it certainly seems attractive. Kind of a Macintosh look to the graphics. And lots of helpful things pop up so I'm sure that the OS is easier for some people. Frankly, I was expecting more of a dramatic difference given all the emotional pants-wetting that was going on.

Anyway, the main point is that the first thing I did once everything was set up for the OS was to download OOo 2.1. It installed slick and runs fine.

Now have SUSE, UBUNTU, XP, and Vista in the house. (What does it mean if I have more operating systems than cats? Not by much, granted. I guess I'd rather have that ratio remain on the side of the operating systems.)

Of course, the big issue is, what's MS Office 2007 like? I haven't activated my free trial yet but I will be SURE  to let you know what I think of it when I do. ;>

Very cool feature in OpenOffice Calc spreadsheets: Edit > Paste Special, Transpose

Chris from the Boulder LUG pointed this out to me last night while I was singing the praises of Edit > Paste Special in OpenOffice.org.

Let's say you've got this data.

It's accurate, but you want the columns and rows in different positions. You want it flopped 90 degrees like this.

Here's all you need to do.

1. Copy the original data.

2. Choose Edit > Paste Special.

3. Leave All selected and select Transpose.

4. Click OK.

And there you are, with the whole thing flopped around the way you want it.

Now just delete the old data, drag the pasted data over it -- whatever you want.

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OpenOffice Label Templates Article got Dugg and Delicioused

I'm a little fuzzy on how it happened, but my article, somewhat edited down, got Dugg and Delicioused bigtime last week! (The folks at WorldLabel sometimes engage me to write articles, and they re-released it. Kind of like a DVD Director's Cut or something. ;> )

Apparently it even made the front page of Delicious. Very fun.

Anyway, here's the article.

http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1955/making_labels_with_openoffice_org_templates

If you feel the urge to Digg it, or just FYI, it's in the Software category.
http://www.digg.com/software

---

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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Educators: Do schools really care about Vista? (Or Microsoft Office 2007?)

Wesley Fryer has a nice take on Vista and schools.

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2007/01/30/vista-is-out-but-do-educators-care/

He says, among other things:

Well, Windows Vista is now on the market, but my question is: Do any educators care? I don’t know of any midwest U.S. school districts planning to make the transition to Vista anytime soon.

I'm skeptical too.  (But you knew that. ;> )  Really, though. What's the attraction? I'm not sure what genuine benefit, matching the amount of money that would have to be spent and the effort to upgrade, that schools get.

What happens when your current licenses run out, though, or when MS comes aknockin' and says, upgrade or else? (I'm not exactly sure how all the licensing systems work but I believe in general, you have to upgrade sooner or later.)

Open source, perhaps?

I'm not saying OpenOffice.org and Linux are for everyone, but I think they deserve serious evaluation by any educators with limited budgets.  (I assume that's pretty much all school districts.) When the software doesn't cost anything, that frees up an awful lot of money. Which means students and teachers can get a better education, better facilities and supplies, and better salaries.

But it's a pain to switch. Yes. Any change is a pain. Switching from WordPerfect to Word was a big pain for most people, who left WP kicking and screaming. It's part of using computers.

Just take a real look at each side. For staying with Microsoft and for going with open source, evaluate all the money and  training and lost time and converting the documents and installing the software and networking and everything else. Then when you have all the facts, do a comparison of what it really would be like on Vista and MS Office 2007, versus what it really would be like on Linux and OpenOffice.org (and Firefox and Moodle and the other cool education-related pieces of open source software out there).

One public organization with 3000 employees is saving 2.8 million dollars over the next six years, just by switching to OpenOffice.org. That's a lot of money.

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Conditional Formatting in OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheets

I saw this article in Lifehacker this morning.
http://lifehacker.com/software/excel/excel-tip--conditional-formatting-231340.php

All about how conditional formatting in Excel is so useful. Well, yes, it is, but (as I said while bristling slightly, in my comment on the lifehacker site ;>  )  you can do the same things in OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheets.

Here's how you use conditional formatting.

First, you have to make styles. There's no way around this but it's very simple.

1. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.

2. Be sure that Cell Styles are displayed in the Styles and Formatting window.

3. Right-click in a blank spot and choose New.

4. Name the style something appropriate.

5. Define the style.

6. Click OK.

Next, just set up the conditions. Let's say that you want to have a total show up with the GreenBold style you just created, if it's 500,000 or more, and you want it to show up as RedItalic style if it's 200,000 or less.   Click the following image to see it bigger.

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Top 10 Reasons to Use OpenOffice.org Instead of Microsoft Office 2007

Hi all,

I'm working on a tshirt for those who are already fully assimilated, to wear to help convince the Microsoft Office users. I'm looking for ideas that are better than what I came up with. 

Any thoughts on other Top 10 Reasons? I'm looking for factual or silly or just funny. ;>

Thanks,
Solveig

Click the image to see a bigger version.

OpenOffice.org Calc Project: Child Support Calculation Worksheet (Or Anything Else With Lots of Totals and Variables)

I was training some pretty advanced students this past week in Frankfort, Kentucky, and they do legal-oriented things, as well. So I put together an exercise where they created a child support calculation worksheet. Now, I know this is an emotional issue for a lot of people ;> but I want to emphasize that the features that I pulled together here can be used to calculate other things, as well. (You might also want to check out Scenarios.)

Here are  the features I combined.

Referencing a total in another sheet -- You can have one sheet to add up things like the components of the parents' income: W2 income, royalties, etc. You could have another sheet to add up things like expenses: rent, dog care, etc. Then copy the total cell, and choose Edit > Paste Special, Link, to take each of those totals to a third sheet and subtract expenses from income.

Whenever the components of the total in the first and second sheets are updated, then the totals in those sheets and in the third sheet will be updated.

Dropdown lists -- A common specification you'll need to make is who the custodial parent is. You can use a dropdown list under Tools > Validity to create a list that has two values, Mother and Father.

Choose Tools > Data Validity, and in the Criteria  tab, select List. Type the values you want, and don't allow empty values.

Then in the Error Alert tab, be sure the error checkbox is selected. Click OK.

Here's what the list looks like.

Using help under Data > Validity -- Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to enter.  In this case you can provide help. Choose Data > Validity, select the Input Help tab, choose to show input help, type what you want the user to read, and click OK.

The help then appears when the field is selected.

Using the IF function -- You create a condition, like IF B4 = "Mother".   Which means, if the custodial parent is the mother. You then create a statement for what you want displayed if that's true, and what you want displayed if that's false.

The following statement, in the field that displays what the father owes the mother per month, says that if the custodial parent is the mother and that if the father's net is more than the mother's, the father owes the mother the difference in their incomes, divided by 10, multiplied bythe number of children. Othewise, he owes her nothing. Obviously, the calculation for the amount owed should match the law rather than whatever I make up here on the fly.

=IF(B1="Mother"  AND  (C11>B11);(((C11-B11)/10)*B2);0)

Protecting cells -- If you're letting people download this spreadsheet to do their calculations, you don't want them changing any of the cells that contain calculations. You'd protect all the totals cells, the referenced cells, and the calculation for child support containing the IF statement, of course.

Select all the cells in a sheet and choose Format > Cells. In Cell Protection, turn OFF protection. (Bear with me.) Click OK.

Then just select the cells you want to protect (select - Ctrl to select multiple noncontiguous cells). Choose Format > Cells again, and turn ON cell protection. Finally, choose Tools > Protect Document > Sheet and enter a password to protect all protected cells in that sheet.

Here's the spreadsheet; it's just a hack so of course not legally binding but you can get the impression of the power of combining these features. The password is password if you'd like to take that off and play with the spreadsheet.

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OpenOffice.org 2.1 Changes

I eagerly searched the openoffice.org web site to find the list of changes in 2.1.

Mmm, this will tell me everything I need to know, I thought, and smiled saucily to myself. (Or something like that.)

http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.1.0.html

<>

Well...it's a little dry

. A little developer-oriented. Not that I mind that they seemed to have fixed a bunch of bugs. Love the bug-fixin'.

One very nice feature is the security in PDF. File > Export as PDF, name the file, and you get the new security tab.

Here's something a little more feature-oriented.
http://www.cheeplinux.com/product_info.php?products_id=413

"There are a number of important new features for users in this release. The presentations application, Impress, now supports multiple monitors, with the presenter choosing where to display the presentation. The Calc spreadsheet has an improved HTML export capability, using styles to better recreate in a browser the appearance of the original spreadsheet. The database application, Base, has a number of enhancements, including improved support for Microsoft's Access product. The popular Quickstarter is now available for GNU/Linux users as a GTK application. OpenOffice.org's impressive language support is enhanced with five more localisations.

Version 2.1 also provides new support for developers, extending version control to extensions, simplifying the management of packages for those developing extensions. And, for those wanting to take advantage of new features as they become available between releases, 2.1 includes 'an improved on-line notifier, which checks regularly and informs users if a new version is available (users may choose to disable this option at any time).'"

Regarding that HTML export for spreadsheets, I clearly need to do some research into that since I don't see the point yet.  I exported a spreadsheet by choosing File > Export and chose the XHTML format. A browser didn't open the file that was exported. Changing the extension to .html gave me a blank file (with lots of markup under View > Source). And when I opened the .xhtml file in OpenOffice, I just got a bunch of markup.

By way of contrast, copying a spreadsheet into a Web document in Writer works pretty nicely.

Spreadsheet

Spreadsheet copied and pasted into a new Web document. (I added the borders, which weren't there when pasted, but then the original spreadsheet had no borders, so that's the correct way to paste it.)

So I'll gather up what I can about the point for the user of XHTML, or feel free to comment here, but so far I am unclear on the benefit.

Has anyone else found anything cool and new or different in 2.1? Or a more clear/detailed/UI-oriented guide to the changes?

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Getting Started With Firefox

As mentioned on Monday, I recently wrote and taught a class on Thunderbird and Firefox for the first time. 

At any rate, I thought I'd post an excerpt of some of the instructions I wrote for the class. These are not exercises per se, just instructions.

Click here for an excerpt of my Firefox  instructions, including using tabs or windows, and changing the default download location to something besides the desktop.

And here's an additional tip I just picked up. If you close a tab that you didn't mean to close, type Ctrl Shift T  to get it back.

Also:

F6 (or Alt-D or Alt-L) = switch focus to the address bar and highlight address. So you can hit F6 and then start typing the address immediately

Ctrl-PageUp and Ctrl-PageDown = move to next or previous tab. You might find it easier than Ctrl-Tab and Ctrl-Shift-Tab

Hold Alt while scrolling a page to scroll one line at a time instead of three.

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Mail Merge in OpenOffice Writer: Creating Mail Merge Documents From Text/CSV or Spreadsheets

I've got a lot of info out there, including lots of coverage in my book, about mail merges. However, I don't have a nice simple straightforward blog on it with everything in the same place all spelled out. Didn't, that is. This is all you need to do to make a nice simple document based on data in text files or spreadsheets.

What You Have to Do

1. Get your data. You've already got it, probably. This blog  is for people with data in text files, and in spreadsheets.

2. Turn it into a data source.

3. Create your mail merge document and suck the data in through the data source.

4. Print, specifying how many of the data records you want to print for, and whether to print to a file or printer.

1. Get Your Data

You probably already have it. It's in a .txt file or .csv that's comma or tab separated, perhaps. Or it's just a spreadsheet.

2. Make the Data Source: Text File Instructions

If your data is in text files, follow these steps.

1. Choose File > New > Database.

2. Make the selection shown, with Text as the format.

3. Click Next.

4. Specify the DIRECTORY where the text files are. Each text file in that directory will be a table in your database. Then select the item separating fields, i.e. a tab or comma or something else.

5. When all the settings look correct, click Next.

6. Umark the option to open the database for editing. You can open it; you just don't have to.

7. Click Next.

8. Save the data source (aka database) under a name that will help you remember what it is.

You're done.

2. Make the Data Source: Spreadsheet Instructions

If your data is in a spreadsheet, follow these steps.

1. Choose File > New > Database.

2. Make the selection shown, with Spreadsheet as the format.

 

3. Click Next.

4. Specify the spreadsheet file. Each SHEET in that spreadsheet will be a table in your database.

 

5. Click Next.

6. Umark the option to open the database for editing. You can open it; you just don't have to.

 

7. Click Next.

8. Save the data source (aka database) under a name that will help you remember what it is.
 

You're done.

3. Create Your Mail Merge Document and Suck the Data In From the Datasource

You can also use the simple or complex mail merge.

Simple:  http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/03/techtarget_arti_1.html

Complex: http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2006/02/techtarget_arti.html

But this is a nice way to do it too.

1. Create a new Writer document or open a document containing text that you want in the mail merge document.

2. Choose View > Data Sources. Everything you've created will be displayed. Click the + sign by the data source you want to use, then click + by Tables til you see the data you want to use.

3. Type any content you want and do any formatting. You can do this later too.

4. Click on the NAME OF THE FIELD, not the piece of data, that you want in the mail merge.

5. Drag it into the document and release. The field name will appear.

 

6. Add any other content and fields you want.

Save the document. You're ready to print.

4. Print the Mail Merge Document.

1. Choose File > Print.

2. You'll see this message. Click Yes. DON'T MARK THE CHECKBOX SAYING YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE THE MESSAGE AGAIN.

3. In the print window, specify the range of records, if you don't want them all, and specify to print to a printer, or to files.

4. Click OK.

5. In the print window, specify the printer and click Print.

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More Brilliant People Saying that Office 2007 Is A Whole Different Program, So Why Not Just Use OpenOffice.org?

Baslow expresses what I've been talking about for a while.

The current Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org work in a roughly similar way. But the new Microsoft Office 2007 is essentially a whole new program, according to many reviewers including David Pogue. So when you're thinking about switching to Microsoft Office 2007, don't just think about the price -- think about the retraining effort.

So why upgrade to MS Office 2007? Pay nothing, and switch to OpenOffice.org, instead. You retrain for both, but the cost of OpenOffice.org is hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions of dollars less than Microsoft Office, depending on how big your organization is. Saving a lot of money is, well, really good. It lets you spend that money on something that's actually important: education, cure for cancer, better pizza, or whatever your business or organization is about.

Here's my extended-dance-version blog post on this.

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Getting Started With Thunderbird

I recently wrote and taught a class on Thunderbird and Firefox for the first time. I tell ya, I like it. It's a nice little program. Not overblow;  I'm not one for the big Outlook-style programs that tell you when you need to blow your nose and offer to schedule it for you (and also, Thunderbird doesn't have scheduling features).

At any rate, I thought I'd post an excerpt of some of the instructions I wrote for the class. These are not exercises per se since with email it's harder to control, and less necessary to control, the files and environment in which one uses the program.  If you're looking for a nice little email program for Windows or Linux, give Thunderbird a whirl.

Click here for an excerpt of my Thunderbird instructions including setting up accounts.

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Weird Calculation and Sorting Problems in OpenOffice Calc Spreadsheets and Writer Tables

This is a followup of my post yesterday about correct cell format.

Sometimes weird stuff happens in cells.

• Calculations don't work. They just sit there displaying the formula instead of running and displaying the results.

• Date formats don't work. You type in a perfectly good date and some bizarre number appears instead.
• Sorting doesn't work. Sorting numbers might change the order, but to an order you don't expect.

Why? Because the cells think that they are text. So it doesn't make sense to do calculations. You can't multiple bread * milk, so  you can't multiply two other things that Openoffice thinks are text.

This happens in Calc spreadsheets and Writer tables. To find out if the contents of your cells are deluded about their identity, select them, right-click, and choose Number Format.

If you see this, then the cells have the wrong format.

To correct this in Writer, just select the correct format and click OK.

To correct this in Calc:

• Close the number formatting window
• Select the problem cell
• Cut out the contents -- be sure to select and cut the series of characters in the cell, not the cell itself
• Reselect the entire cell, then press Delete
• In the window that appears, be sure that Format is selected. Click OK.

• With the cell still selected, right-click again and choose Format Cells. Select the correct format and click OK.

• Choose Edit > Paste Special
• Choose Unformatted Text and click OK

• Now the calculation should work correctly. And if it wasn't a calculation but a number, now rerun the sort and it should work correctly.

See yesterday's post about number recognition, toward the end, for how to recognize a badly formatted cell that thinks it's text, even though it might have a $ and decimal places.

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A Little Thing About OpenOffice Number Formats in Writer Tables and Calc Spreadsheets

I was just putting together a proposal, putting in the numbers for each category in a Writer table, just like I always do. I was applying automatic number formatting for the currency amounts.

The number formatting was being really annoying, though. I set the number format for a bunch of blank cells, then had to set it again when I put in the numbers since it didn't take.

I also had to re-apply currency formatting when I changed a number. It was $800.00, formatted correctly, and when I changed it to 900, it left-aligned itself and changed its number formatting to Text. That was particularly annoying.

Before we continue,  why do you care about number formatting? It's convenient but there's more. Note that the particular issue I encountered exists in Writer, but the problems if you don't have correct number formatting exist in both  Writer and Calc.

• It's easier to apply formatting that will make decimals and currency symbols appear than to retype it.
• Sorting won't work correctly if the numbers don't know they're numbers.
• Calculations won't work correctly if the numbers don't know they're numbers.

Back to the topic at hand -- why was this happening? Why was number formatting misbehaving? It usually doesn't. But it was today. It's because the default setting "Number Recognition" had been removed. Or maybe it's not on by default in 2.1.

Making Sure Your Number Formatting Sticks
Here's what to do to prevent number formatting annoyance.

1. Create your table.

2. Select the cells that you want to have numbers in.

3. Right-click and choose Number Recognition. You want a checkmark to appear next to  This will keep OpenOffice.org aware that the content you enter is, indeed, numbers and that the program should darned well apply number formatting when you tell it to.

4. Now, apply the appropriate number formatting. Right-click again on the selected cells and choose Number Format. Have your way with it, select the options you want, then click OK.

Notes on How to Detect Incorrectly Formatted Cells
A correctly formatted cell is right aligned like these.

You can have the currency symbol and decimals applied correctly, BUT if the numbers are left aligned, then they still don't know that they're numbers. They think they're text. Weird, huh? So keep an eye out for left-aligned correctly formatted numbers.

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Vista Launch Will Boost Desktop Linux

I'm glad lots of other people are spreading the word that, you know, Vista....is not necessarily worth the money.

"The launch of Windows Vista has created a huge opportunity for Linux vendors to take a larger share of the corporate desktop market, according to the president of Linux Australia."

http://scott2096.blogspot.com/2007/01/vista-launch-will-boost-desktop-linux.html

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Vista_launch_will_boost_desktop_Linux/0,130061733,339273059,00.htm

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Things That Are Hard to Figure Out in OpenOffice Writer: Page Numbers, Different Page Orientations, Watermarks, New Document Formats, and Dragging Cells (Repost)

Another "classic" post! These are perennial questions and through reposting I'll be able to get these to come up as searchable in blog searches.

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

I get a lot of questions when I train, and just in emails. A lot of them are about things that aren't actually hard to do but they're hard to figure out how to do in the first place. Here's how to do some of them.

Adding a Page Number to an OpenOffice.org Writer document
Note: See a related post on starting a document with no page number on the first page and page 1 on the second page.

You can do this a number of ways, but this is the quickest.

1. First, make a footer for the page number to appear in. Choose Insert > Footer > Default.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the document; you'll see the footer.
3. Click in the footer. Press Tab if you want the page number in the middle, press again if you want it at the right.
4. Type the word page if you want, followed by a space.
5. Choose Insert > Fields > Page Number.
6. Format the text in the footer the way you want it.

If you want to have no page number on the first page and start with 1 or 2 on the second page, that's a bit more advanced. Stay tuned for the blog on page styles.

(You can do the footer turn-on by choose Format > Page > Footers, too.)

Putting a Portrait Page and a Landscape Page in the Same Document

You absolutely can do this. It just takes a little while. You set up a page style that's horizontal, and one that's vertical, and then you just switch.

Here's a 2.0 document (twopagestyles.odt) that has a vertical page style and a horizontal page style. (You can set them up yourself using styles—Format > Styles and Formatting, then use the help.)

1. Type your content.
2. Choose Format > Styles and Formatting.
3. Click the Page Styles icon at the top of the Styles and Formatting window.
4. Double-click the first page style you want to use, the vertical or the horizontal. (It should probably be vertical, since this page style will apply to everything above your cursor in the document.)
5. Click at the bottom of the page using that page style.
6. Choose Insert > Manual Break.
7. In the Page Style list, select the other page style, such as Horizontal.
8. Click OK.
9. Put the content on that page that you want.
10. Click at the bottom of that page.
11. Choose Insert > Manual Break.
12. In the Page Style list, select the first page style, such as Vertical.
13. Click OK. Now you're back to where you started.

Stay tuned for the blog on page styles, to create page styles yourself from scratch, and to do some gnarly pagination control.

Getting exactly what you want when you choose File > New ____ Document.

The default empty blank text document and spreadsheet are fine but you'd like the margins to be wider, or the font to be different, or for it to have certain styles. It's easy to switch out what comes up under File > New > ____ Document.

1. First, make a new document or spreadsheet. Set up the page the way you want, create or import styles, add footers and page numbers, etc.
2. Then choose File > Templates > Save.
3. Name the document, leave the category My Templates selected, and click OK.
4. Choose File > Templates > Organize.
5. Double-click the My Templates category.
6. Right-click on your template you created previously and choose Set as Default Template.
7. Click OK.

Now that document will come up when you choose File > New > _____ Document (text or spreadsheet).

To go back to the original, just repeat those steps but instead of choosing Set as Default Template, choose Reset Default Template > Text Document or Reset Default Template > Spreadsheet.

Making a Watermark

If you want a graphic or piece of text behind the content of your page, you can approach it a few different ways.

If you want a text-based watermark for your document, like CONFIDENTIAL, behind just a few pages, follow these steps. You'll  need to place the text box on every page where you want it to appear.

1. Click the “T” text icon, or if you don't see one, choose View > Toolbars > Drawing to make it appear.

2. Draw a box with the tool and type what you want inside, like CONFIDENTIAL.

3. Select the text and make it really big, maybe 66 points. You can use the font size dropdown list on the object bar for this.

4. Make the text gray if you want it lighter. Use the Font Color icon on the object bar.

5. Click somewhere else in your document, like a blank spot or some regular text.

6. If you want the text vertical or diagonal, click on the text box, right-click and choose Position and Size, click the Rotation tab, and in the Rotation field type the number of degrees. (You can also click on a point in the Default Settings region.) 55 degrees is good for a diagonal watermark.

7. Click on the text box you just drew, right-click, and choose Wrap > In Background.

8. Drag the text box to reposition it if it's not where you want, make the text larger or smaller, rotate it more or less, and make any other adjustments.

Here's an OpenOffice.org 2.0 document (watermarktemplate.odt  ) you can use with a watermark.

If you want a graphic-based watermark for just a few pages of your document, paste it into your document on each page where you want the graphic, or choose Insert  > Picture > From File. Then  do step 7 from the previous step to wrap the graphic in the background.

To make the graphic lighter, select it. The Picture toolbar should appear but if it doesn't, choose View > Toolbars > Picture. Use the Brightness icon to make the graphic lighter and use the Contrast icon to decrease contrast.

To put a graphic in the background of every page of your document (every page with the Default page style, that is, or every page with the page style you modify if you know styles), follow these steps.

1. Be sure you have the graphic, that it's light enough, and that you know where the graphic is.
2. Choose Format > Page.
3. Click the Background tab.
4. From the As dropdown list, select graphic.
5. In the Type area, be sure Position is selected.
6. Click Browse and find the graphic.
7. Click Open.

Dragging a Cell in a Spreadsheet

I get a kick out of how obscure this is. You can select two or more cells and drag them, but you can't drag just one.

Unless you do this.

1. Select the cell.
2. Click and hold down, drag the mouse down one cell, then back up one cell, and release.

Now you can drag the cell wherever you want.

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