Using Open Office

Open Office gives you the most commonly-used office productivity tools. As with most Open Source software, it's free. Many people and companies are now using Open Office as a no-cost replacement for Microsoft Office.

If you buy a new computer, it will probably come equipped with Microsoft Windows, but an office suite will cost extra. Forget the extra-cost software. You can have Open Office for free and still do the same office tasks. Best of all, you're not locked in to using it on only one type of computer. It runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac OS X (under X11), and FreeBSD.

This class gets you up to speed on Open Office quickly.

Prerequisites

You should have a basic understanding of computers. You do not need prior experience with Open Office.

Format

This is a hands-on class that includes lecture and demonstrations. Many of the hands-on exercises involve files supplied on a CD or classroom file server so students don't have to start each exercise entirely from scratch. Some of the exercises involve working with files created by Microsoft Office.

Course Contents

Overview of Open Office Components

• Writer - Text processor similar to Microsoft Word
• Calc - spreadsheet similar to Microsoft Excel
• Impress - Multimedia presentations similar to PowerPoint
• Draw - 2D and 3D Graphics
• Base - Database front end (not like Microsoft Access)
• Math - Create equations and formulae for your documents

Getting Help

• What version?
• Which platform?
• Using What's This
• Using on-disk help
• Internet-accessible help and tutorials
• Help from ALC

File Operations

• Creating/opening/saving documents, spreadsheets, etc.
• File types: OpenDocument, Text document, Microsoft Office, RTF, etc.
• Saving with a password vs. signing with a certificate
• Exporting to PDF and HTML
• Document properties
• Using Templates
• Printing

Formatting Documents

• Character formatting
• Multiple columns
• Setting headers and footers
• Setting borders
• Creating outlines

Writing tools

• Checking spelling
• Thesaurus
• Hyphenation
• Word completion
• Custom quotes
• Keyboard equivalents
• Automatic bold and underline
• Turning off URL recognition
• Strunk & White
• much more...

Tables

• Inserting tables
• Inserting/deleting columns and rows
• Converting text to/from tables
• Splitting/merging cells
• Tables within tables

Eye Appeal

• Adding graphics
• Cruising the gallery
• Setting the document background
• more...

Spreadsheets

• Sheets, rows, columns, cells, etc.
• Sorting
• Functions
• Linking to external data
• Conditional formatting
• Goal seeking
• Creating 2D and 3D charts

Overview of Advanced Features

• Signing documents with digital signatures
• Integrating documents with databases