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Application: OpenOffice Suite

OpenOffice is an alternative to the Microsoft Office application suite. Unlike MS-Office, OpenOffice is freely distributable with an open source code. It is derived by the Sun's Star Office application suite. Also unlike MS-Office, when OpenOffice is started it runs with all is component parts running at the same time (that is, the word processor module, Writer, the spreadsheet, Calc, the presentation module, Impress and the graphics module, Draw). This effectively means that OpenOffice has a much higher bandwidth overhead when initially opened - indeed, it runs very slowly on most of the older computers in the Ministry - but is more efficient on a newer computer if one is going to use a range of applications. This section discusses the word processing, spreadsheet and presentation modules.

On a superficial level, users will be pleasantly surprised by how similar OpenOffice is to the MS-Office applications. OpenOffice has a title bar, a menu, an object, function and main toolbar (similar to the standard and formatting toolbars), a vertical scroll bar and a status bar. A notable difference at this stage is that the main toolbar, which provides icons that vary according to the module used, is on the far left had side of the OpenOffice window.

In OpenOffice Writer, the menu bar consists of File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Window and Help. In OpenOffice Calc, the menu bar is File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Data, Window and Help. In OpenOffice Impress, they are File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Slide Show and Help. These are exactly the same as those used by MS-Office. However, some of the specific commands are different. Under File -> New for example, a wider range of options are listed, including new text documents, new spreadsheets, new drawings, HTML documents, and new formula (OpenOffice has an inbuilt mathematics module for the specialist symbols used in that discipline). Likewise, as a integrated module File -> Open provides a greater range of options. Apart from all OpenOffice modules and StarOffice files, a variety of MS-Office files can be opened (from those under the MS-Windows95 operating system to MS-Windows XP), Rich Text Format documents, SYLK and Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets, and a large variety of graphics files (bitmaps,GIFs, JPEGs, Kodak Photo CD files, PCX, TIFF, Photoshop).

Like any other application, OpenOffice assumes that you want to save a document according to their format. This comes with the file suffixes *.sxw for Writer, *.sxc for Calc, and *.sxi for Impress. Regrettably, these file formats are not accepted by MS-Office applications. If it sounds somewhat unfair that OpenOffice can read MS-Office files but MS-Office can't read OpenOffice files, you're probably right, particularly given that OpenOffice is has an open source code. Note however that OpenOffice itself is partially guilty of such behaviour as well – through their OpenOffice Draw program, one can only save files in OpenOffice or Star Office formats.

A slight difference in the File menu items in comparison to MS-Office applications is that OpenOffice always presents and prints documents according to the specifications of a particular printer. Thus, even if your computer is not connected to a printer, it is necessary to choose a default one (File -> Printer Settings). As always, it is highly recommended that a presentation is previewed (File -> Preview) before being printed. Note that like in MS-Excel, it is often a good idea to change to a landscape rather than a portrait print (EDIT) to ensure that the maximum amount of data is printed on a page. OpenOffice also has a reload (File -> Reload) option which allows the user to open the last saved version of a file and discard any changes that have been made. Finally, it's worth noticing that unlike MS-Word which has a special menu command for document or selection Word Counts, OpenOffice only offers this command for the entire document under File -> Properties.

As with other applications it is highly recommended that if a file is being sent to or read by others, that one considers what file format is best for other people to use. In this case the OpenOffice format is not recommended, rather it is best to save in an early version of MS-Office (such as Word or Excel 95) or best of all in a universal format which any application can read (text or html for documents, csv – comma separated values – for spreadsheets, or html for presentations). To permanently change the default format for files save the menu command Tools -> Load/Save -> General can be used.

The Edit menu commands are very similar to those in the MS-Office suite for basic functions like cut, copy, paste, select all, undo, and repeat, find and replace. In addition to these menu commands, OpenOffice also has a special Navigator floating toolbar for inserting special characters like headers, footers, tables, graphics, bookmarks, sections, hyperlinks and so forth. All of these however are available through the standard menu commands (e.g., Insert -> Header etc), and it is always better practise and more efficient (with a couple of exceptions) to use the drop-down menus rather than toolbars. The Insert menu offers options appropriate for each module. Thus, in Writer the insert options are special characters, headers, footers, bookmarks, indexes, tables, graphics and section breaks etc., whereas in Calc, the insert options are cells, rows, columns, sheets, functions etc., and for the Impress module, new, duplicate and summary slides and slide fields. Not only are these commands very similar to those in MS-Office, even the function list has more than passing similarity – mainly due to the fact that many of the mathematical and financial functions have been generally accepted for a number of years. Nonetheless, once one knows how to use Excel, they can be reasonably assured that the will also be skilled at the OpenOffice Calc module.

Likewise, the Format menu commands vary slightly according to the module being used. The word processor module allows formatting according to character, paragraph, page, bullets, case, autoformat options, and stylist, which is equivalent of styles and formatting in MS-Word. In the spreadsheet module, the format options are for cells, rows, columns, sheets, pages, ranges and, like Excel, with an option for conditional formatting. The format options for Impress however are significantly different compared to those for PowerPoint. These differences are due to the fact that PowerPoint provides a large number of preset styles, whilst Impress, whilst also providing a set of preset styles, also provides greater opportunity to individual modification of each slide, treating them rather like a drawing package. Thus in Impress, apart from the standard formatting options for character, case, numbers, bullets and so forth, there are also commands for modifying lines and areas.

The tools command in the OpenOffice suite consists of a spellchecker, hyphenation, numbering and footnotes, a graphics and sound gallery (right mouse click and insert to include), macros and configuration options and general options. There is also a default bibliography database with simple sort and filter functions which indicates that future versions of OpenOffice will also include a database application like MS-Access. Note that unlike MS-Office, the tools menu does not include a thesaurus, word count (this is available in File-> Properties, but only for the entire document, not for selected text), collaboration, tracking, or compare and merge (this is under Edit -> Compare). The presentation module does include an 'eyedropper' command for minor changes to a presentation, and the spreadsheet module includes a detective command which carries out the same functions as the Excel formula auditing command.

The general options command in OpenOffice is very detailed. The following should be implemented. For compatibility purposes it is recommended that under the Load/Save options, documents, spreadsheets and presentations should be saved as Microsoft 97/XP. The autosave option should be set at 10 minutes. Language choice recommendations are as per the discussion on the MS-Office suite. As per that discussion, curved or "smart" quotation marks should be replaced by straight quotation marks. This option is found under Tools -> Autocorrect/Autoformat. Options also exist for automatic word completion and word replacement. Use of these is a personal choice.

The data menu commands in the Calc module include the sort, filter, subtotal, validation, text to columns, group and outline, and consolidate commands that are like MS-Excel. Likewise, the data pilot command performs the same function as the pivot table and charts command and the multiple operations command, for calculating and displaying several formulas simultaneously, is the equivalent of the MS-Excel scenario command. Furthermore, the Calc module also offers define and select range command. The slide show menu in the Impress module includes running the slide show, timing rehearsals, settings and custom shows, animations and special effects. These are equivalent to the same and similar commands in MS-PowerPoint.

The window menu commands in OpenOffice provide same functions as the commands in MS-Office. That is, the user can open new windows, switch between windows and display multiple windows simultaneously. The help menu commands are likewise similar, with the standard contents, optional tips and a help agent. One notable improvement in the OpenOffice help system is the inclusion of bookmarks in the help files in addition to the standard contents, index and find tabs. There is also a registration command – whilst OpenOffice is freely distributable, the producers like to have an idea how many people are using their product.

As mentioned at the start of this (brief!) section, the OpenOffice suite is very similar to MS-Office. It does occasionally do some quirky things, like display underlined text when no underline exists. But one can be somewhat forgiving for an application that is only at stage 1.0.1 of its development and is free, compared to one which has already undergone ten revisions and is comparatively expensive.