Software at MIT

Name: Open Office
Category: Office Suite
Last modified: Th Jan 10 2008
Problems or Questions?

Contents

• What is Open Office? Where does it come from?
• Open Office on Athena
• Open Office at MIT
• Other Resources

New (1/10/08): Open Office 2.3.1 is now the default

What is Open Office? Where does it come from?

Open Office is an Office Suite that runs on a variety of platforms including Windows, OSX, Solaris and Linux. It is derived from Star Office (also on Athena), and is highly compatible with it; it is essentially the same as Star Office with a few proprietary features (thesaurus,clip art..) left out. Most documentation written for Star Office also applies to the corresponding release of Open Office.

Open Office on Athena

Open Office 2.3.1 is the current default on Athena; this is the version you get by typing: add ooffice; ooffice &

2.2.1 is also available; you can launch it by typing: add ooffice;ooffice -ver 2.2.1 &

The corresponding Star Office release is version 8

General usage information can be found in the What Runs Where listing. There are also pdf manuals. There is a fairly extensive online help system that explains most features, and many links to documentation from the openoffice.org support page. Star Office and Open Office books are also available from commercial publishers.

Open Office at MIT

Open Office is a supported software package in the Athena Computing Environment. By "supported" we mean:

• We try to provide current versions of Open Office on all Athena platforms
• We maintain a local quickstart
• There is a 2.x user guide and other 2.x documentation
• The Athena Consultants will help Athena users asking Open Office questions in OLC and maintain a collection of stock answers to common questions
• Faculty members and course TAs who need assistance in using Open Office for instructional purposes can contact the Educational Technology Consultants

Other Resources

Open Office mailing lists; Sun has a Star Office FAQ

Problems or Questions?

Help with Open Office
If you are affiliated with MIT, contact Athena Consulting (on Athena, type "olc"). Otherwise, see the other resources above.

Sending bug reports
Athena users should report problems via the "sendbug" command.

Software at MIT
Questions or suggestions about availability of software on Athena should be sent to 3partysw@mit.edu.

Comments on this page
Questions or comments about this web page should be sent to acs-web@mit.edu.

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