Customer Reviews

Beginning OpenOffice 3: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: From Novice to Professional)

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Beginning OpenOffice 3 walks the reader through using the most common features of OpenOffice, arguably one of the most powerful and complete office suite available. And best of all, it is free! Many companies and individuals are discovering it for the first time as they deal with the need to exchange files with others who are using the newest version of Microsoft Office. Given the choice of upgrading all their systems to the newest version or simply downloading OpenOffice 3, many are examining it as a viable option. OpenOffice 3 can open and edit files created with the newest version of Word and save them in a format the Microsoft Office can open and use.

This brings us to the purpose of this book. How do you find out how to use the features to achieve the results you want? One of the best things about this book is the approach the author uses. The entire book is project oriented so you learn by creating projects and solving problems in a real world scenario. The book covers all the different software components - word processing, spreadsheet, database, illustration, and presentation software. The author does an excellent job of focusing on and detailing the most common needs of a typical office. You can literally start from no knowledge of office suite software at all and learn how to become a proficient user in relatively short order.

The chapter on the word processing module starts from the very basics of opening a file or creating a new one. From there the author leads the reader through formatting, creating and using templates, paragraph styles and other common needs. Then he moves the reader through creating a newsletter, inserting graphics, word wrap, changing styles in a page and other advanced topics. This section ends with understanding how to automatically create footnotes, endnotes, table of contents and style sheets.

The section on the spreadsheet module covers creating a spreadsheet, adding formulas, linking formulas to other cells, and multiple other common tasks. In addition it covers creating charts and graphs and making them easy to understand. The chapters on the presentation and illustration programs are much shorter but the programs are much less complex by design. Presentation software needs to be able to create a slide show, change slides on a predetermined time scale, and add bulleted points and other basic actions needed to provide a solid presentation. The illustration module also is designed to create or edit items for inclusion in newsletters or other publishing needs. It is basically somewhat more powerful than paint but much less than Adobe or similar illustration packages.

The database module is covered well with enough detail to learn how to use it but not so much as to get the reader lost in multiple foreign key linking and the like. The author does a very good job of explaining the use of multiple tables and linking them for efficient database creation. He also covers the creation of input forms, queries, and reports and other functional requirements of database management.

Once you have a basic understanding of the different modules the second section of the book involves putting them all together to share content by building a web page with a database, ability to input information over the web and create queries and reports via the web browser.

The writing is concise while still being detailed enough to provide highly functional information. Using it I was able to create a complete web based database for the processing of financial information for grant requests for a local foundation. Granted I already had an extensive understanding of most of these areas but it was quick and easy to build it based on information supplied in the book.

Beginning OpenOffice 3 is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning how to use this powerful office suite.

I am a long time MS office user but when I got my new laptop I didn't want to pay for MS Office and I am totally against using "illegal" software so I installed OpenOffice. I had used it before but never stuck with it for long because I had access to MS Office. Well I am fine with OpenOffice so far. I dual boot my computer and have OpenOffice installed in both MS Vista and Ubuntu 8.10. (please Apple build a Linux version of ITunes)

I had only had limited "training" on the various office programs. I was really good with spreadsheets and databases but never a "power user" in word processing or presentations. Self I thought you should learn more about this OpenOffice thing. So now I have "Beginning Open 3 - From Novice to Professional" by Andy Channelle and started reading it and realize that this is a great way to learn some tricks on how to be more productive with office applications.

The first few chapters introduce "Writer" the word processing application. You can do way more than I have ever tried. Chapter 1 one starts easy but not slow - it brings in Versions which are cool - I have not used that before and now I really like it. Just like CVS you create versions of a document that you can go back to. Then template documents - I guess it's pretty cool if you send out similar documents.

Chapter 2 - Design using writer - it's like a full featured desktop publishing software you can create some pretty fancy layouts. The next chapter goes into more detail on formatting, automatic fields, automatic table of contents and layout. Plenty of detail to really understand what you are doing.

Next we move into spreadsheets - which I have good experience with. I am pleasantly surprised by the depth of features and formulas that are there. I don't see anything much I can't do - including lots of nice graphing.

On to presentations - again there is more than I have ever used and the book does a nice job laying out how it all works - master pages and templates are good concepts to understand.

Next comes the draw program - pretty cool I use GIMP but draw is pretty full featured and even has flow chart templates. The examples are really well done - things you might want to know - lots of layering to get a good look.

I was again very impressed with the functionality of the data program. Just playing around it seems you can create some nice simple applications - and it is very integrated with the rest of OpenOffice - easy "mail merge." (which is well covered in Chapter 10)

Next the author shows off the power of OO to create simple web pages - personally not for me (I write raw html for fun!) but looks pretty easy and even gives the ability to directly connect to your web site (you don't have to use FTP).

Chapter 9 "working with others" gives a good side by side analysis of how OpenOffice compares to MS Office - product by product. They are not the same but OO compares pretty well and works great opening and saving the MS office formats. PS you can also directly create PDF documents from all of the OO applications.

Overall I think this book does a great job exploring a great software product. I am really amazed it has not gotten more market share. Maybe with books like this that will start happening.

Let me be clear this book is not a baby book you will learn something. I wonder what would be in intermediate / expert versions?

Beginning Open Office 3:
From Novice to Professional

Apress / http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430215905
ISBN:978-1-4302-1-590-5

A Review

I had a chance to review this recently published book and my overall impression is very positive. The author has spent time getting to know the program and how it works.

In a series of chapters he explains each of the components and uses a project paradigm to show the common features of each of the parts of the office suite. This not only shows how the different aspects of each program work with each other, but also gives an idea of a workflow that can be used to develop similar projects. While this workflow may not work for you, it is a base to start from and sometimes getting started is the hardest part.

After starting with straightforward projects he graduates into more complex methods of not only using the programs by themselves, but also how the parts of the office suite can work together. He is very good at showing some of the more esoteric things that can trip you up.
Throughout the book he notes how OO.o differs from Microsoft Office, where they're similar, and there's a section that discusses some tests involving importing and exporting files between the two office suites. He finishes up by talking about some of the common extensions that can be used to make life with OpenOffice easier and more productive.

There are a couple of factual errors that I found, but those relate more to cross platform considerations and not so much with the program usage itself.

I will note that the most jarring thing I found that increased the difficulty of reading this book is the lack of "calling out" program specific references (like dialog items, etc) by the use of a different font. For me, it broke up the rhythm of reading the text. I realize that, being a programmer, that may just be a style that I am used to seeing in technical books and it could very well be normal for this kind of application centric book.

All in all I recommend this book for those people that may be familiar with the Microsoft Office suite and are contemplating switching to a freer alternative or to those that are just starting out with an office suite and want a good background in how to use the features of this type of software.

I tried to go through Chapter 4 "Spreadsheets in Calc" while following along in OpenOffice. It was very frustrating with all the errors, ommisions and a strange combination of rambling text that gives nearly no information followed by instructions so terse that I was sure that I was missing a page. He wrote "C2:C5" when he meant "B2"B5". He wrote "April" when he should have written "January". He has you create a couple of projects -- a good idea, but he doesn't actually follow through. I really don't know what it is he was trying to do other than show that HE knows how to use the software. That's very different than showing someone else how to do it as well. Maybe that's what the title means -- OpenOffice as explained by a Novice to a Professional!

If you can follow the instructions, you don't need the book -- if you can't, the book won't help.

I've used the Open Office Suite for many years, primarily Calc and Write, yet I found much useful information in this book, in particular on how to use the Open Office Suite components in combination. Students and others that are frequently creating new office documents, particularly in collaboration with others, would especially benefit from reading this book. The book uses common office suite projects as examples, showing you how to set up Standard Templates and Styles in Write and Master Pages in Impress along with other configuration settings so that you will be more productive. Well illustrated throughout, there are many useful tips on how to use Open Office more effectively included and more importantly, there are frequent tips on what techniques to avoid, or which of a choice of techniques is best in a given circumstance.

The book is split into two sections; individual Office applications are covered in the first two thirds of the book, while the second section covers working across applications - both within Open Office as an individual and in collaboration with others. Importantly, this section covers the typical scenarios of collaborative working from where Open Office is used by all the team to where some of the team use a competing Office Suite. This section to also finishes with a great chapter on how to increase the power of the Open Office Suite via extensions.

For those not familiar with databases, the use of Base is covered in an excellent, concise introductory project that is used to highlight many useful database techniques.

While the limitations of Write as a web editor are described in the web project in chapter 8, lots of handy hints are provided on how to achive a web page that would suit the requirements of most of us.

Chapter 9 is arguably the most useful chapter in the book, with plenty of tips on how to work effectively with others whether they are also using Open Office or using another office suite. There is useful guidance on the best format to save OO.o documents in when exchanging documents with others along with some tips on where document conversions are likely to cause problems. The chapter also includes an excellent section on how to navigate through the many options available to you when saving your OO.o document as a pdf document. Linking and embedding and the advantages and disadvantages of each technique are covered in chapter 10, which also contains a frustratingly brief introduction to macros. Given the ability of macros to automate frequently repeated tasks, I would have liked to see more coverage of this topic in a book claiming to cater to professional use.

The final chapter introduces the reader to Extensions, providing overviews on how to install and use many useful add-ons to OO.o. I particularly liked the Writer's Tools, with the backup tools and Visual Word Count tool my favourites.

I would have preferred a more lengthy index; the amount of content and many useful tips in the book surely justify more than the 11 pages provided.

Whether you use Open Office on a Windows, Mac or Linux platform, you are sure to find much in this book to improve your productivity. The Open Office suite is powerful enough to meet the needs of the great majority of office suite software users - particularly when supported by this book.

Beginning Openoffice 3 for the novice but not much for the intermittent or advanced user. I have seen better help files free on the internet.

I would strongly urged anyone who wants to use OpenOffice to first check the freely available "Getting Stated Guides" on [...]

I found these to be much more complete than this book which provide only limited information by example. I found this is just as easy to grasp as well.

Save yourself some money and learn more with these free guides. At least check them out and decided for yourself.

I liked the idea of free word processing. I bought the book for reference since I'm a beginner. I am writing an e-book and things are going fine until I opened up the columns and row table. I entered my data and then couldn't close the table and go back to writing. I beat my head against the wall thinking what's wrong with me. I tried everything. The book didn't help at all. It gave me no simple instruction on how to do this. I'm frustrated and am hoping a college student can help me. I'm a computer technician, I thought this would be a walk in the park. The book is not well written. It is not for beginners.

This book has a nice layout and is easy to read. However, it is not a good choice for somebody like me, an experienced Wordperfect user who is migrating to Openoffice Writer. The chapter on Writer is almost 100 pages long, but it does not cover a lot of ground, and discusses in exhausting depth the most basic of functions, such as opening documents, basic editing functions, and creating styles for publishing a book. I am looking for a clear and concise guide that includes the basics but also tells me about the advanced functions: how to set up automated document production, how to understand and control sections and paragraphs, columns, and setting up tables of cases and authorities. None of these issues is covered. If you are in the same boat, you should look elsewhere.

Would rate this book as best for the new/intermediate user of Open Office. Chapter on using Base I felt was a little weak.