OpenOffice.org

Summary:

• What is OpenOffice.org?
• OpenOffice Tips
• OpenOffice Links

What is OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice (or more strictly OpenOffice.org) is a fully featured office suite for GNU/Linux and other platforms. The main features of OpenOffice.org are word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, data charting, formula editing, and file conversion facilities (including those for Microsoft's WORD, EXCEL and Adobe's PDF formats).

OpenOffice (sometimes OOo for short) is distributed as part of your Mandrakelinux distribution. Openoffice is a truly huge package - it actually has more lines of source code than the linux kernel - as a result you may find it quite slow at times but it does get the job done. The commercial editon is ~StarOffice from Sun and it includes a handbook and the database Adabas. The drawing program Open Office Draw is described under that page.

One of the key features of OOo is it's ability to read and write Microsoft Office formats (Word, Powerpoint etc). This enables the GNU/Linux user to interact easily with users of other (inferior) operating systems.

Another extremely useful element of OpenOffice is the ability to export to PDF easily. On competing products you have to pay extra to get PDF output, but in OpenOffice a button on the toolbar provides PDF export functionality.

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OpenOffice Tips

• OpenOfficeCommandline: how to convert documents into PDF documents from the command line (same for HTML)

OpenOffice Links

Openoffice is a hugely popular package so unsurprisingly there are lots of useful links:-

• The offical home page Openoffice home page
• A very helpful forum about Openoffice Openoffice forum
• The FAQ about Openoffice Openoffice FAQ
• Mailing lists about Openoffice.org Mailing List index
• Everyone loves screenshots Screenshots
• ~StarOffice 7 from SUN StarOffice 7 Office Suite