LibreOffice 3.4

I have featured OpenOffice.org on this blog a few times in the past. It is a free office suite featuring a word processor, a spreadsheet program, and a presentation maker. Until recently the software was produced by Oracle Corporation, but fears that they would cease to support the project or stop it...

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Linux commands for OpenOffice applications

In order to create a launcher for a particular OpenOffice application, or if you wish to run one from a terminal in Linux, you will need to know which command opens each application. Unlike Microsoft Office, for example, there is one command to run OpenOffice to which you can add a parameter to run...

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How to copy charts into a word processor

When copying charts into a word processor, whether in Microsoft Office from Excel to Word or in openoffice.org from Calc to Writer, the software embeds a special object that links back to the original spreadsheet. If you then change the details in the Excel spreadsheet the chart in the Word document...

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Adding custom lists to Excel and OpenOffice.org

In the last post I demonstrated how to easily enter lists of numbers, days of the week and months of the year in Excel and Calc (the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet application). Both programs offer the option to add custom lists to this feature. In this post I will show you how to add the colours of the...

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How to quickly enter lists in Excel and OpenOffice

Excel spreadsheets often have a column or a row of incremental data. That is, information in the form of a list of numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, etc), times (09:00, 10:00, 11:00, etc), the names of months or the days of the week. You could type all this information into the row or column yourself, or you can...

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OpenOffice Keyboard Shortcuts

Writer, the word processor in OpenOffice.org, uses many of the same keyboard shortcuts as MS Word. The shortcuts for selecting, editing and formatting text follow established standards. Whereas Writer has a keyboard shortcut for 'Paste special' (Ctrl + Shift + V) - something missing in Word - it does...

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Linux applications: Part 1 - Productivity

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have recently switched to a Linux distribution as my operating system of choice. Many other users may be put off from making a similar switch because they are concerned that they may not be able to use the applications that they know from the Windows environment. While...

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