Posts Tagged ‘OpenOffice’

CREATING AND SAVING NEW STYLES IN OPENOFFICE WRITER

Monday, April 13th, 2009

As in MS Word, you can create your own styles, both character styles and paragraph styles. There is another type of style that you can create in Oo Writer, which is the frame style, that controls objects like graphics, frames, etc., but we will cover that in another article at a later date.

Just like in MS Word, paragraph styles affect indentation, spacing, font, and font size and apply to the entire paragraph. Character styles affect the size and color of individual characters.

Creating a new style in Oo Writer is just formatting within the Styles and Formatting window.

Follow the steps below:

  1. Select your text.
  2. Choose Format | Styles and Formatting to display the Styles and Formatting window.
  3. Click the appropriate icon at the top for the type of style you wish to create. Right-click in the blank part of the window and choose New.
  4. In the Style window, name your style and specify your other formatting options.
  5. Click OK to close the window and save your style.

You can modify your style much like you do in MS Word – simply select the style and choose Modify.

Yet again, these two programs are not all that different from one another except OpenOffice is FREE.

Headers & Footers in MS Word and OpenOffice Writer

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

A header is text that appears at the top of each page, or the pages that you select, in your document. A footer appears at the bottom of your pages. You may want to add pages numbers to the top or bottom of a document, and you can do so from the header or footer area. You do not have to add headers and footers to each page. Word enables you to type them just one time and it automatically adds them to each page.

Follow the steps below to add a header or footer to your document:

  1. Select View | Header and Footer, to display the Header and Footer toolbar and display an entry area in which you can type the header and footer text

  1. Type your header text. If you want to type footer text, click the toolbar’s Switch Between Header and Footer button to display the footer entry area and type your footer text.
  2. If you want to add page numbers, the date or the time to your header or footer text, click the appropriate buttons on the Header and Footer toolbar.
  3. Click the Close button to anchor the header or footer in your document.

Word normally dims header and footer text so that you can easily distinguish between the header and footer and the rest of your document. You can see these items when editing your document within the Print Layout view, but they remain dimmed while in Normal view. If you want to specify that the header or footer are to appear only on certain pages such as odd or even numbered pages, select File | Page Setup | Layout and check the Different Odd and Even or Different First Page check box. You must be in Print Layout view to see headers and footers in their proper places on the page.

If you want to edit a header or footer, display your document in Print Layout view and then double-click the dimmed header or footer text. Word opens the Header and Footer toolbar and enables you to edit the header or footer text.

Now let’s do the same thing in OpenOffice Writer:

You can create headers and footers for your pages. The most common use for headers and footers is to insert page numbers, but you can use them for anything your little heart desires.

To create a header or footer in OpenOffice Writer, follow the steps below:

  1. Choose Format | Page to open the Page Style dialog box.

  1. Click the Header tab or the Footer tab.
  2. Select the Header on check box or the Footer on Check box.
  3. To turn either off, deselect the check boxes.

Specify the rest of the settings for the header or footer as follows:

  • Same content left/right inserts the same header or footer content on both even and odd pages.
  • Left margin sets the left margin between the page and the header or footer.
  • Right margin sets the right margin between the page and the header or footer.
  • Spacing sets the space between the top or bottom of the page text and the header or footer.
  • Use dynamic spacing allows the header or footer to expand toward the text, overriding the spacing setting.
  • Height sets the height of the header or footer.
  • AutoFit Height adjusts the height of the header or footer according to the amount of text that the header or footer contains.
  1. Click OK to return to your document.

You can now see the header or footer in your document.

Click inside the header or footer, and enter the text and enter the text that you want to appear there.

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OpenOffice

Saturday, August 9th, 2008

Ever heard of OpenOffice? Well it’s an office suite to rival that of MS Office. The major difference between the two of them is that OpenOffice is FREE!

That is correct dear readers, I said free. The learning curve is not steep at all either. If you know your way around MS Office, it is not a huge leap to learn to navigate in OpenOffice either.

In OpenOffice you have Writer, which is the word processing equivalent of MS Word. You also will find Calc in OpenOffice, which is the equivalent of MS excel. Then there is Impress which is the equivalent of MS PowerPoint. You will also find Math and Draw in OpenOffice.

I didn’t really know much about OpenOffice until Dave Hartsock asked me to start writing articles about it for him and now I feel pretty secure using it. If you would like to read some of my articles, hop on over to Dave‘s site and subscribe to his FREE newsletter. He has an archive of my older articles as well as all the other great in formation on his site.

You can download OpenOffice for free here so go ahead and give it a whirl. I think you will like it.