OpenOffice at MIT (Draft)

Table of Contents || Revision history || Copyright information

Introduction

This document describes OpenOffice, an office productivity suite similar to Microsoft Office®. OpenOffice includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, and basic drawing capabilities. It offers the following:

In this document, you will learn how to:

OpenOffice and StarOffice

StarOffice is a commercial office suite originally produced by the German company StarDivision. In 1999, Sun Microsystems acquired the company, and released StarOffice 5.2, which was made available at no charge for personal use. They also released much of the source code to the public as the OpenOffice.org project.

Starting with StarOffice 6.0, the two projects share a common code base. StarOffice continues to exist as a commercial product, and includes some proprietry components such as certain Asian fonts, a database component (Adabas D), templates, a clip art gallery, and some file format filters.

StarOffice is available only for Microsoft Windows®, Linux, and Solaris. OpenOffice is available for those platforms, as well as others not supported by StarOffice, most notably MacOS X® (requires Apple X11).

Both StarOffice and OpenOffice are available on Athena (Solaris and Linux) and fully supported by IS&T.

OpenOffice is fully supported by IS&T for stand alone Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The Windows and Mac versions of these programs are not yet supported by IS&T.

Since StarOffice's features are a superset of OpenOffice's, we have chosen to document OpenOffice.

Prerequisites

This document assumes that you are familiar with a graphical desktop environment, and the concept of windows. It also assumes that you are familiar with basic mouse operations such as clicking, selecting, dragging, and right-clicking, and that you are familiar with basic keyboard operations including deleteing text and using the arrow keys to move the cursor.

Getting Started

Starting Up OpenOffice

To start OpenOffice on Athena:

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL):

Or in the GNOME graphical envioronment:

Note: On RHEL the programs oocalc, oodraw, ooimpress, oomath, and oowriter will start the Calc, Draw, Impress, Math, and Writer environments of OpenOffice respectively.

Result: A few seconds after you start OpenOffice via any of the above methods, you'll see the OpenOffice logo, and a progress bar indicating the startup procedure.

Hint: OpenOffice is a large application. If you have a slow machine or a slow network connection (on Athena) it may take a minute or more to load.

Normally, when you start up OpenOffice, a large blank window will appear on your screen with a menubar at the top. If you supply the initial ooffice command line with a filename, OpenOffice will open that document (and convert it, if necessary).

Getting Help

OpenOffice includes many built-in help features that you may find useful when learning the program:

OpenOffice Help
Avaialable through the "Contents" item of the "Help" menu, OpenOffice Help includes detailed information about every aspect of the program. The help has two panes - the left pane helps you find the information you want, and the right pane displays it. The right pane works like a miniature web browser - there are "Back" and "Forward" navigation buttons at the top of the window, and text that is colored blue is a hyperlink, which you can click on to find out more about that topic, or link to a different help page.

Tips
Tips, enabled by default, cause a small yellow box with the name of the command to appear when you hold you mouse over one of the toolbar icons or menu items for a few seconds. If you're unsure what a button does, hold your mouse pointer over the button (do not click) and the small yellow window will pop up and tell you.

Extended Tips
Extended Tips are not enabled by default, but you can enable them by selecting that item from the "Help" menu. They work like regular tips, except instead of the name of the command, it provides a brief description of what the command does. These can be helpful when you are getting aquainted with OpenOffice.

Help Agent
The Help Agent is a feature similar to the paperclip from Microsoft Office, albeit less annoying. When the Help Agent has advice to offer you, you will see a small window with a lightbulb icon appear in the bottom right of your OpenOffice window. You can click on the lightbulb to read the information, or close the window by clicking the little X at the top right. HelpAgent can be completely disabled with the menu item in the "Help" menu.

The OpenOffice Main Window

If you start OpenOffice without supplying a filename on the command line, you'll see a mostly blank window with a menu bar at the top. The File menu is probably the most important menu in this window as it allows you to create and work with existing files.

Create a new document by selecting:

Then choose the type of document to create.

Result: A new file of the type you selected is open and you can being working with your new file.

The Open command allows you to open OpenOffice documents and documents in other formats. Select:

Result: The Open window appears.

Set the File Type to the type of file you wish to open, then select your file.

Result: Your file opens in the large OpenOffice window.

Note: OpenOffice can read the following formats (in addition to OpenOffice or StarOffice formats):

Hint: In most cases, OpenOffice can also write documents in those formats, though some converters are only one-way. All OpenOffice documents can be exported in Adobe PDF or HTML for publishing on the web.

Conventions Used

OpenOffice toolbar buttons have two modes. All of them operate as normal buttons - when you click the button, the function is performed. However, some buttons have a small turquoise arrow at the top right corner of the button, indicating that if you "long click" the button (ie: press and hold), you will get a drop-down menu or window that gives you more options for the function. For example, if you click the "New" document button, you get a new document of the same type as the current document open. If you long-click the button, you can select which type of new document you want.

OpenOffice Writer

OpenOffice Writer is the word processor feature of OpenOffice. To create a new OpenOffice Writer document:

File->New->Text Document
(don't be fooled by 'Text Document' - it's a full featured word processor)

You should now see a blank page, with a border around it, indicating your margin, and a blinking cursor in the top left portion of the page. You may also see a small window titled "Paragraph Styles" - that's a formatting palette that you can safely ignore for now by closing that window or moving it out of the way.

Typing text is pretty straight forward - just start typing, and the text will appear where the cursor is. However, that's pretty boring. So let's examine what you can do with OpenOffice Writer by looking at the different toolbars.

Function Toolbar

The function toolbar is found directly below the menu bar. It looks like this:

This toolbar contains functions that are available in every OpenOffice mode (Writer, Calc, etc). This toolbar is located in the same place in every OpenOffice mode.

The large text field at the left is where the name of your document is displayed. Since you haven't yet saved this document, that field is empty. If you click the drop-down arrow on the right of that field, you'll see a list of your recent documents (if there are any). Note that they are specified as URLs - OpenOffice has the ability to obtain a document over the web and open it. Try entering "http://web.mit.edu" in that field - it should open a new window that displays the MIT Web Page as an OpenOffice Document. This can be a handy feature when using OpenOffice to edit your web pages.

Let's now examine the funtion toolbar buttons:

 Create a new document of the same type as the current document. Long-click to select document type.
Open an OpenOffice document, or any of the document types supported by OpenOffice (ie: MS Office)
Save the current document. If this is a new document, you will be prompted for a name.
Opens the document in read-only mode.
"Print" the document to Adobe PDF format - PDF is format designed for exchanging printed copies of files.
Print the document to the default printer
"Cut" the current selected text or object and put it on the clipboard.
Copy the current selected text or object and put it on the clipboard.
Paste the contents of the clipboard into the current document. Long-click to enable special paste options, such as pasting unformatted text or HTML-formatted text.
Undo the last action. Long-click to undo multiple actions.
Redo the last "undone" action. Long-click to redo multiple actions
Open the "navigator" which allows you to easily move between parts of a document.
Open the "Stylist" window, which allows you to select a "style" for portions of a document.
Insert a hyperlink into the current document to link to another OpenOffice document, or any URL.
Opens the Gallery, which contains sounds and graphics and other objects to insert into the document

 

Main Toolbar

The main toolbar is found at the left side of the OpenOffice window. The contents of the main toolbar change depending on the document type open at the time. All of the functions on the toolbar can also be accessed through the menus.

Writer

 Inserts a table into the current document. Long-click to insert other objects such as frames and grahics.
Insert special fields into the document, such as author's name, page number, etc. These fields are filled in automatically by OpenOffice.
Insert objects such as charts, formulas, or even Java Applets.
Inserts line art and other objects using OpenOffice's "Draw" function.
Inserts components used in creating an interactive fill-out form.
Create shortcuts for frequently-typed text, allowing you type an abbreviation and have it replaced by the text of your choice.
Toggles "Direct Cursor" mode, which allows you enter text at any point on the page, including beyond the current insertion point.
Checks spelling in the current document.
Toggles Automatic Spell Checking, which checks spelling as you type, and underlines misspelled words in red.
Allows you to find and/or replace text within your document.
Lists data sources available to OpenOffice and allows you to edit them
Toggles non-printing characters such as paragraph marks. Many writers and editors prefer this mode.
Toggles the display of graphics in the document. A document which has many graphics objects may take longer to load and edit. This temporarily replaces the graphics with frames.
Displays the documents in "online" mode as though it were in a web browser.

Calc

 Insert graphics into the current document. Long-click to choose between inserting graphics or special characters.
Insert cells into the current sheet.
Insert objects such as charts, formulas, or even Java Applets.
Inserts line art and other objects using OpenOffice's "Draw" function.
Inserts components used in creating an interactive fill-out form.
Enables "Auto Format", which allows you to select from one of many predefined formats for a cell or create your own.
Applies styles to the selected cells.
Checks spelling in the current document.
Toggles Automatic Spell Checking, which checks spelling as you type, and underlines misspelled words in red.
Allows you to find and/or replace text within your document.
Lists data sources available to OpenOffice and allows you to edit them
Enables AutoFilter, when working with databases.
Sorts the column or sheet in descending order.
Sorts the column or sheet in ascending order.
Mark cells as a group, so they can be manipulated together.
Ungroup cells previously marked as a group.

Presentation

 Enables "select" mode (default), which allows you to manipulate objects
Activates the zoom tool, which allows you to change the view of the current slide. Long-click for more zoom options.
Insert text boxes. Long-click to choose different text box styles.
Insert rectangle. Long-click to choose between different rectangle styles, filled or unfilled.
Insert circle or ellipse. Long-click to choose different styles of shapes.
Insert 3-dimensional objects. Long-click to choose specific objects.
Insert curves or lines. Long-click to choose specific styles of lines.
Insert arrows. Long-click to choose a specific style.
Insert connectors between objects, which connect objects even if moved. Long-click to choose connector styles.
Rotate the selected object around any of its axes
Align selected objects. Long-click to specify the alignment orientation.
Stack selected objects. Long-click to select the stacking type.
Insert objects such as charts, formulas, or even Java Applets.
Assigns an effect to an object. This effect will be visible during slide show mode.
Defines behavior of an object when clicked during the presentation.
Defines properties of 3-dimensional objects.
Starts the slide-show for the current presentation.

Formatting Toolbar

The formatting toolbar, below the main toolbar, looks like this:

The first field contains the current Paragraph style. In most of your documents, you won't need to change this.

The next field contains the current font. If you select the drop-down arrow in that field, you can see a list of fonts, and what they look like. Select a new font if you wish to change the current one.

The third field contains the current point size of the font. For most papers, you'll want to write in 10 or 12 point font.

The first 3 buttons toggle boldface, italics, or underline respectively. You can click these buttons to turn the feature on or off (the button will appear "pressed" if the feature is on), or you can go back to text you typed, select it, and then press the button for the feature you want. Features can also be combined, like this.

The next 4 buttons deal with the alignment of the current paragraph. They are left, centered, right, and justified, in that order. The first 3 are self-explanatory - the 4th option, justified, makes sure each line of the paragraph is approximately the same width, and will adjust spacing accordingly. One typically sees this in newspaper columns.

The 8th and 9th buttons create a numbered list, or a bulleted list, respectively. The numbering of a list is automatic - if you are typing a numbered list, and need to insert another item in the middle, you can simply start typing it, and the list will renumber itself. This makes it easier to create numbered lists. The "Numbering/Bullets" option, under the "Format" menu, allows you to change the bullet icon, or the numbering method. For example, you can use letters (ie: a,b,c) or Roman numerals instead of digits. You can also use squares, checkmarks, or arrows instead of bullets.

The next two buttons indent the current paragraph (such as for a block quote in a paper), and undo the indentation. In this case, the button on the left removes one level of indentation - the button on the right adds one level.

The last 3 buttons deal with color - the one on the left changes the color of the text. The next one highlights text, and the last one changes the background color of the paragraph. With all 3 buttons, you can click and hold, and you should see a color palette appear to select your color. At the top of that color palette will be either "No Fill" or "Automatic" - you can click on that to restore text to the default settings. Keep in mind you will mostly likely be printing in black and white, and thus may wish to pick a light color for highlighting that will show up as a gray in the printed output. If the document is to be produced as a PDF, of course, the original color will be retained.

Rule Bar

There's also the Rule bar, which looks like this:

The scale on the bar is in inches, and each dot represents 1/10 of an inch. The 0 point begins at the page's left margin, which can be set in the "Page" option of the "Format" menu.

The two arrows pointing at each other at the zero point set indentation for paragraphs. The top one sets how much the first line will be indented - the bottom one sets how much the left side of the paragraph will be indented. To change their settings, click and drag them to the place you want. Note that moving the bottom one will also move the top one a relative number of spaces. You can also click at any point in the rule bar to set a tab stop, which looks like a right angle. By default, tab stops are set every inch.

Basic Usage

Typing a text document in OpenOffice is simple - just start typing! The insertion point (a blinking horizonal bar) can be moved within the document (but not past the end of the current text, unless Direct Cursor is enabled) by clicking the left mouse button or using the arrow keys. Selecting text is a accomplished by dragging across the text with the left mouse button, or by holding down the "Shift" key while using the arrow keys.

Once text is selected, any number of operations can be performed on the text (such as double-spacing, centering, bold, italics, etc) by using the menus or function bar.

Fonts can be changed by selecting text and choosing a new font from the font menu. The font menu offers a preview of the font style.

Headers & Footers

Insert > Header and Insert > Footer lead to a Standard style header or footer the first time you use this feature; other styles may be added later. A Standard header or footer appears on every page, including the first one. Predefined tab stops allow text to be placed at the center of the page and at the right margin.

One of the most common uses of a header or footer is for the page number. Go to Insert > Fields > Page Numbers. This will place the current page number at the insertion point. Other commonly used fields that can be accessed in this way are the date, time, and page count (i.e., the total number of pages in the document).

Good style requires that there be no header on the first page; so to suppress it on page 1, you need to create a First Page style header. The process is:

Footnotes & Endnotes

These can be placed in a document by going to Insert > Footnote. The dialog box gives you the option of making the reference a footnote or an endnote; of using automatic numbering or using a special character to designate the reference. Pressing the OK button then takes you to the text area where the text of the reference can be added.

Equations

OpenOffice has an equation editor, at Insert > Object > Formula, which is capable of fairly sophisticated formatting.

Upon entering the equation editor, a Commands window opens. Here you can type the equation, and (after a small delay) the results will appear in an object box in the main text window. Alternatively, you may choose from a menu that appears by right-clicking with the mouse pointer over the command window. For example:

is produced by typing

D sub L = j + {1 over {abs{%lambda sub {j+1}}}} sum from k=1 to j %lambda sub k

Curly braces {} are used to group the various parts of the equation. The sub, over, abs, and sum formatting commands can be typed into the command window or selected from the pop-up menu. Greek characters can be typed by preceding the letter with a % sign, or by clicking on the Sigma icon on the left border of the text window. Click in the main OpenOffice window to close the formula editor.

Transferring between file formats

OpenOffice Calc

OpenOffice Calc is the spreadsheet module of OpenOffice. To create a new spreadsheet document:

File->New->Spreadsheet

You should now see an empty spreadsheet window, that looks like this:

The function toolbar is exactly the same as it is in OpenOffice Writer. In place of the formatting toolbar, there is the Object toolbar, which looks like this:

Object Toolbar

The first two fields allow you to select the font and font size, respectively. The next three buttons allow you to toggle Bold, Italics, or Underline styles for the current font, and the fourth button allows you to select the font color.

The next 4 buttons deal with the alignment of the current paragraph. They are left, centered, right, and justified, in that order. The first 3 are self-explanatory - the 4th option, justified, makes sure each line of the paragraph is approximately the same width, and will adjust spacing accordingly. One typically sees this in newspaper columns.

The next group of 5 buttons allow you to change the formatting of a particular cell or group of cells. The first button with the icon of a stack of coins formats the cell as "Currency". The next one formats it as a percentage. The third button removes any previously applied formatting. The fourth and fifth buttons increase or decrease (respectively) the number of decimal places displayed. Note that none of these options actually changes the value, merely how it is displayed in the cell.

The next two buttons indent the current paragraph, and undo the indentation. In this case, the button on the left removes one level of indentation - the button on the right adds one level.

The next two buttons allow you to choose a border and background color for a cell or group of cells.

The last 3 buttons control the vertical alignment of a cell's contents. The buttons align the contents to the top, middle, or bottom, respectively.

Formula Toolbar

The forumla toolbar can assist you with entering a forumla in a cell.

The most common type of formula used in a spreadsheet is the "SUM" formula, which totals the selected cells. OpenOffice makes it easy to sum a group of cells. Simply click the mouse in the cell in which you want the total to appear. Then click the "Sum" icon (in the shape of the Greek letter sigma). The formula field will now contain "=SUM()", and two new buttons will appear to the left of the field - a green checkmark and a red "X". You can move the mouse pointer to the first cell in a row or column, and click and hold the mouse button while moving the pointer down a column or across a row. A red rectangle will appear around the selected cells, and a range of cells will be specified in in the formula bar. (For example, if you started at cell B2 and dragged the pointer down to cell B15, you would see "=SUM(B2:B15)" in the Formula field. Then, click the green checkmark to accept the formula (or simply press 'Enter'), or the red "X" to cancel. If you chose to accept the formula, you would see the total of all the cells in the range you selected appear in the cell you initially chose to receive the total.

Formulas

There are many more formulas available in OpenOffice Calc. The small button to the left of the Sigma in the toolbar is an "AutoPilot" wizard, which can guide you through setting up complex formulas.

The tab on the left shows all the functions available in OpenOffice, while the pane on the right gives details about what the function does and what arguments it takes. Select the function you want, and click "Next". You will then be prompted to enter the function inputs.

You can either type in a static value, select a cell from the spreadsheet, or click the "Fx" button, which will allow you enter another function whose result will be the input to this function. The formula field, at the bottom of the window, will display the constructed formula, and the Result field will show you what the result will be. Currently, it displays an error code, since the function contains no valid input.

Formulas can also be entered by hand, but they must begin with an equals (=) sign.

Workbooks and Worksheets

OpenOffice Calc spreadsheets are actually "workbooks" which contain several spreadsheets. In the bottom left of the OpenOffice window, you can see spreadsheet tabs:

These allow you to select different spreadsheets in the workbook. You can rename the tabs by clicking the right mouse button on the tab, and choosing "Rename sheet". This feature can be useful if you have several spreadsheets which fall into the same category. For example, you could have a file named "budget" that has separate tabs for each month's budget. Additional tabs can be created by right-clicking in the tab area and choosing "Insert Sheet" from the pop-up menu.

OpenOffice Presentation

OpenOffice Presentation is presentation software similar to Microsoft PowerPoint®.

When you create a new Presentation, you'll be presented with an AutoPilot window:

You can choose to create an empty presentation, or use one of the templates. In this document, we will not use the templates. Click Next after making your selection.

In the next window, you can select a background color scheme, and a target output medium.

In the final window, you can select what, if any, transition you want between slides, and whether slides will be changed manually or automatically.

Once the presentation is created, you can create the first slide. Select a blank slide, or a pre-defined layout, and click ok. In this example, we'll accept the default of "Title Slide".

 

In an slide template, such as this one, title and body areas have been pre-defined for you, and you can click in those areas to add your text and a slide title. The small dialog box over the window can be used for quick access to functions, such as inserting a new slide, changing the layout, or duplicating the current slide. These functions can also be accessed via the menus.

Object Toolbar

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The Object toolbar in Presentation mode allows you to control the look and feel of lines and filled areas, when selected.

Tips & Tricks

Automatic Word Completion
OpenOffice maintains in memory a list of some of the longer words you've used. As you type, the program may retrieve one and display it highlighted in blue. If this is the word you really intend, just press the Enter key and the remainder of the word will be inserted for you. Otherwise, just keep typing. To modify the behavior of this feature, or to turn it on or off, select the Tools menu, then AutoFormat/AutoCorrect, and the Word Completion tab.
Windows and Orphans
Page separations generally occur automatically. (Use Control-Return to force a page break.) Automatic pagination, however, often leads to a single line at the bottom of a page separated from the rest of its paragraph (a widow) or a single line at the top of a page separated from the rest of its paragraph (an orphan). Format > Paragraph > Text Flow allows you to turn on widow and orphan protection, and so eliminate stray single lines of text.
Hanging Indent
OpenOffice has a preset paragraph style for a "hanging indent," in which the first line is written on the margin, but all other lines in the paragraph are indented. To use it, go to Format > Styles > Catalog, and from the list of paragraph styles (the top selection in the dialog box), select "Hanging indent" and press "OK." A list of paragraph styles used in the current document is stored in the leftmost box of the second toolbar row; to return to the standard paragraph style, select Default from this list.
Recording Changes
If several people are reviewing and editing the same document, a record can be made of what changes have been made to it. Additions appear underlined, and deletions appear in a strikethrough style. To turn the feature on (or off), go to Edit > Changes > Record.
By default, these changes will be anonymous. To be identified as the author of the change, you need to go to Tools > Options. If necessary, expand the OpenOffice section of the lefthand list, and click on User Data, then fill in the First and Last Name fields. You now need to exit OpenOffice and start it again. From this point on, any recorded changes you make will be associated with you.
Place the mouse pointer over any recorded change in the text, and a message will appear indicating that the text was inserted or deleted, the author of the change, and the date and time of the change.
To produce the final version of the document, go to Edit > Changes > Accept or Reject. Each recorded change will be highlighted in the original document. A dialog box will show the data concerning each change, and offer the opportunity to accept it in the final version, reject it, accept all the changes, or reject them all.

Printing

Creating PDF files

Adobe Portable Document Format, or PDF, is a cross-platform format commonly used for distributing final copies of documents. To create a PDF file, click the "PDF" button in the function bar, or choose "Export to PDF" from the File menu. You will be prompted for a name and location to save the file. This file can then be e-mailed, posted on the web, or saved for printing at another location.

Print Preview

To preview what the printed file will look like, choose "Preview" from the "File" menu. The window content will change to show a preview, and add a new toolbar which will let you zoom in and out, or close preview mode.

Printing on Athena

Note: This section applies only to Athena workstations. On Redhat Enterprise Linux installations, printer setup is done via the "System Settings" option of the GNOME menu. OpenOffice will be able to print to any printer configured on your workstation.

Athena, like any Unix system, stores information about which printer you commonly use in an environmental variable called $PRINTER. To see your printer, type:

     athena% echo $PRINTER

at the Athena prompt. If there is an association between your workstation and a printer, the printer name will appear. If no name appears, then no printer has been defined for your workstation.

By default, OpenOffice prints to whatever printer queue has been defined in $PRINTER. So if $PRINTER is empty, the file has nowhere to go, and an error message appears in the Athena xterm window.

Changing printers

The Athena installation of OpenOffice includes a list of all the printers in the public clusters. To select one, from within a document go to File > Printer Settings or File > Print. A dialog box will appearwith that list. Select the printer you wish to use.

 

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