For millions of Linux and UNIX users, the 100% free, community-source licensed StarOffice has become the program that finally made Windows superfluous. Now, there's a comprehensive, task-based guide to making the most of StarOffice -- straight from Sun Microsystems, the product's developer! StarOffice Companion covers every major component of StarOffice: StarWriter word processing, the StarWeb built-in browser; StarCalc spreadsheets; StarImpress presentations; the StarDraw and StarImage graphics tools; StarSchedule scheduling; StarMail and the StarOffice address book; the StarBase database, and more. From start to finish, the book is designed to focus on the most important features in each module -- and the tasks and tips users need to maximize their productivity. Well written and exquisitely well organized, this book fills the only missing link that has prevented even more users from embracing StarOffice: the absence of excellent documentation.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From the Inside Flap
PrefaceStarOffice - Overturning Universal Truths
It used to be that the saying, "You get what you pay for," ranked up there with such indisputable truths as, "What goes up must come down," "Water is wet," and "I had to restart Windows today."
In giving away StarOffice, a powerful, full-featured suite of office software applications, Sun Microsystems has made the saying, "you get what you pay for," not only disputable, but just plain false. StarOffice's applications for working with documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations, Web sites, graphics, and databases, and for managing schedules, appointments, and email, make StarOffice a legitimate replacement for any office product on the market.
StarOffice is free. It provides a user-friendly, flexible, and completely integrated work environment. It provides a comprehensive set of tools that let you, for example, create a Web site start-to-finish (along with graphics, animations, and image maps) and upload the files to a Web server. It supports an obscene number of file formats. It needs less storage space than Microsoft Office.
What goes up must come down. Water is wet. StarOffice is free.
(And yes, I really did have to restart Windows today.)Microsoft Office Compatibility
StarOffice is particularly strong in its ability to open Microsoft Office file formats and save the documents back as Microsoft Office files. It even boasts an AutoPilot that automatically converts entire directories of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and their templates to StarOffice formats, from which you can save back to the original Microsoft formats.What It Runs On
StarOffice runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Even though MacOS isn't currently supported, you can set StarOffice to display dialog boxes that look exactly like Macintosh dialog boxes.About this Book
This is a book that lets you find what you need quickly and get it done. This isn't a book for "dummies," with epic-length procedures for cutting and pasting. On the other hand, we don't include extensive details on technical concepts like ODBC and LDAP.
We wrote the book that we would want: all the important stuff, but nothing too basic or technically impractical for the intermediate user (and with a little humor along the way). We also talked to hundreds of new StarOffice users, so we were able to document what people really need to do using StarOffice to do it.
We made certain assumptions before starting this book. We assume that you are familiar and comfortable with the operating system you're using, and that you have previously used products like StarOffice, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, or presentation tool.Reading Is Fundamental
If you're like most intermediate users, you already know enough to be dangerous, which means you'll probably just dive in and try to do things in StarOffice without any help. Sometimes that strategy works, other times it doesn't. If it doesn't, read the relevant sections in this book. We also indexed the living daylights out of this book, so use the Index, too, particularly a little entry we like to call "troubleshooting."What Now?
Download and install StarOffice 5.2 if you haven't already. See Chapter 1, Installation, on page 3 for more information.
Go through Chapter 3, Taming the StarOffice Environment, on page 91. It gives you an overview of the StarOffice work environment and shows you lots of useful things that will help you no matter which StarOffice applications you're using.
Use the tutorials. We've included something for those of you who like to plunge in quickly and get your hands dirty without reading all the procedures ahead of time. At the beginning of most major parts of the book, there's a section called Quick Start that contains a Guided Tour. The guided tour leads you through specific steps that will help you get to know a lot of the features for each product, including features you probably won't come across while just exploring, as well as few of the product's "gotchas" that we want you to know ahead of time.
Don't panic!
From the Back Cover
The practical, user-friendly, insider's guide to mastering StarOffice!
- The step-by-step, task-based productivity guide to StarOffice
- For Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms
- Covers Writer, Calc, Impress, Web, Draw, Image, Schedule, Mail, Address Book, Base, and more
Imagine: an office productivity suite that's powerful, easy to use, thoroughly integrated—and free! For millions of Linux, Solaris, and Windows users, this is no fantasy. It's a reality, with StarOffice. Now, there's a comprehensive, task-based guide to making the most of StarOffice 5.2—direct from Sun Microsystems, developer of StarOffice!
StarOffice 5.2 Companion also incorporates solutions to questions from hundreds of new StarOffice users, making this the most practical, task-oriented book around. This book delivers clear, step-by-step coverage of every key StarOffice component—focusing on the features, techniques, and tips that help you do what you need to do to get your job done.
You'll find comprehensive coverage of all of the following and more:
- Conversion to and from Microsoft file formats—on individual files, entire folders, and scores of other file formats
- StarOffice Writer: editing, formatting, collaboration, long documents, mail merge, and printing
- StarOffice Calc: data entry, formatting, calculations, functions, and data analysis tools
- StarOffice Impress: creating, organizing, designing, and delivering presentations
- StarOffice Draw and Image: lines, objects, colors, text, vector drawings, and raster graphics in popular formats like JPG and GIF
- StarOffice Web: browsing the Internet, creating HTML documents, hyperlinks, converting other StarOffice formats to HTML, WebCast presentations, FTP, and animated text and graphics
- StarOffice Schedule: event and task management, views and filters, notifications, workgroup scheduling, and PalmPilot synchronization
- StarOffice Mail and Address Book: email, newsgroups, and contacts management
- Installation and printer setup information: Getting StarOffice up and running quickly on your home computer, and detailed instructions for implementing an enterprise-wide networked solution
- Customizing the StarOffice integrated environment to make using StarOffice simple and productive
StarOffice Companion also contains detailed coverage of StarOffice 5.2's Web browsing and database features—even an introduction to StarOffice Basic, StarOffice's powerful macro automation language.
Want to get productive with StarOffice? Here's the practical, direct, expert guide you've been searching for: StarOffice 5.2 Companion.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tells you how it REALLY works,
By Elizabeth Andrews (Hailey, ID United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: StarOffice 5.2 Companion (Paperback)
This is the first book I've looked at that makes me think the authors actually used StarOffice. It appears that they tried everything because there's a lot of information on how things are supposed to work but don't. There are also helpful, unexpected things like how to do a workaround on a process that's really a pain, like outline numbering.It's hilarious, too--check out the tutorial on using Draw and Image together.
21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In retrospect...,
By Eric A Geater (Jackson, TN United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: StarOffice 5.2 Companion (Paperback)
The book does offer a better insight to the functionality of the StarOffice 5.2 Office Suite, but it reads like a dirge. This is ill-suited to the flow of the software, which is also stodgy at best. Please note, though, that after spending time with both the book and the software, eventually all questions were answered, and I have completely transferred my Office requirements to StarOffice 5.2. Yes, the book helped. :-)
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Required Reading,
By
This review is from: StarOffice 5.2 Companion (Paperback)
Superb writing style (even funny). Comprehensive coverage for beginner through intermediate user. Good introduction to StarOffice Basic programming. (None of my MS Office books is so well written.) StarOffice 5.2 is a fantastic office suite (for Linux and MS Windows) at a fantastic price. The only way to learn the hundreds of SO features is with a book like this. Otherwise you'll never know the power of this software. For those trying to learn StarOffice 5.2 this book is required reading. (The book that comes with the purchased software package is less complete or fun and is more to get users started.)
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