OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit (Paperback)

by Solveig Haugland (Author), Floyd Jones (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Imagine: an office productivity suite that's powerful, easy to use, with great extras like a drawing program and database connectivity, and a fraction of the price of other office suites. For millions of Linux, Lindows, Solaris, and Windows users, this is no fantasy: it's a reality, with the fully enhanced OpenOffice.org release 1.0.1. Learn OpenOffice for the first time, or get to know the great new features in the latest release, with the OpenOffice.org Companion, the comprehensive, user-friendly insider's guide that incorporates solutions to questions from hundreds of new and expert OpenOffice.org users, making this the most practical, task-based book around. It delivers clear, step-by-step instructions, focusing on what you need to do to get your job done. This book is the one and only guide for users of the OpenOffice.org office suite software.

From the Back Cover

Everything you need for OpenOffice.org, the best-selling StarOffice" Companion, adapted for OpenOffice.org

Includes the OpenOffice.org CD: OpenOffice.org official distribution, including great extras like macros and the Mac®OS beta distribution

For Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms

Covers Writer, Web, Calc, Impress, Draw, databases and forms, and more

This practical, user-friendly insider's guide contains everything you need to install and learn OpenOffice.org today! With the OpenOffice.org Companion, you get the best-selling StarOffice"! Companion, adapted and updated for OpenOffice.org, plus the official OpenOffice.org CD, which includes software for all platforms and great extras!

Imagine an office productivity suite that's powerful, easy to use, has great extras (like a drawing program and database connectivity), and is absolutely free! The OpenOffice.org Open Source Project's partnership with Sun Microsystems makes this a reality for millions of Linux®, Solaris®, and Windows® users.

Learn OpenOffice.org for the first time, or explore the great new features in this release. OpenOffice.org Companion also incorporates solutions to questions from hundreds of OpenOffice.org users, both beginners and pros, making this the most practical, task-based book available. It delivers clear, step-by-step instructions on what you need to do to get your job done.

You'll find comprehensive coverage of all this and more:

Great information across applications:

Conversion to and from Microsoft® and StarOffice 5.2 file formats

Installation and setup tips:

How to install for either single users or network installations, for all platforms, with detailed instructions and key trouble-shooting tips Migration tips for StarOffice 5.2 users

Power-user tips, including:

How to print spreadsheet headings on multiple pages, modify XML to edit the files or customize OpenOffice.org, and importing text files into spreadsheets

Quick Start tutorials:

Learn the key features of each application, plus procedures on customizing OpenOffice.org to make using it simple and productive

Comprehensive coverage of each application:

• Writer—Editing, formatting, mail merge, printing to postscript and PDF, long documents, version control, and comparing documents
• Web—Creating Web pages with AutoPilot, hotlinks, viewing and editing source- animated GIFs, and scrolling text marquees
• Calc—Formatting, data entry and calculations in spreadsheets (including the function AutoPilot), scenarios, Goal Seek, exporting to HTML, and inserting spreadsheets in other documents
• Impress—Creating, designing, and delivering presentations, including custom presentations and animation
• Drawing and image-editing features—Using the vast array of drawing tools including 3D, connector lines for technical diagrams, editing raster graphics like photos, and exporting to formats like GIF, EPS, and SVG
• Connecting to data sources—Setting up data-source connections to spreadsheets, Access, Oracle® and other databases via JDBC and other standard access methods. Plus creating mail merges documents and labels with the user-friendly AutoPilot

Want to learn how to get things done with OpenOffice.org? OpenOffice.org Companion is the practical, direct, expert guide you've been searching for, with all the software you need.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1040 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR (March 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0131407457
• ISBN-13: 978-0131407459
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.9 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,000,861 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Replacement for MS Office, October 22, 2003

By	Lance Wilcox (Lombard, IL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With Microsoft about to make another snatch at your wallet with its release of MS Office 2003, it's more than ever worth knowing that you don't have to succumb, you don't have to shell out the $149-$499 Bill Gates plans to charge you in order to maintain the 76% profit margin he earns on the sale of his software suite. You can, instead, order The OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit for $28 and receive a superb office suite, complete with a well-written 1,000-page manual that covers all of the integrated programs. Or, if you have broadband, you can go straight to the web site in the title and download the entire suite for free!

I discovered the OpenOffice.org software about a month ago and downloaded it on my office computer. My professional responsibilities call for heavy use of a word processor and light use of a spread sheet. I was able to download, install, and run OpenOffice.org without a hitch and found that these two functions, at least, are superb replacements for the MS Office software I had been using. Since my home computer has only a dial-up line, I ordered The OpenOffice.Org 1.0 Resource Kit for that and again had perfect success loading the suite from the included CD-ROM. I recommend the latter approach, in fact, even if you do have broadband, since the thorough, lucid manual will allow you, in short order, to make fuller use of the software than before. I am myself, for example, making much better use of the OpenOffice.org spread sheet than I ever made of Excel because of the detailed instructions in the manual.

The software and the manual have both made a believer of me. OpenOffice.org seems to me the most usable software yet to come out of the "open source" movement (I have hopes for Linux but they haven't yet been fulfilled). I have used OpenOffice.org to open and revise MS Word documents and Excel spread sheets and to save them in both the compact, efficient XML file format and the baggier MS Office format for the use of colleagues. As a private user in a professional setting, I have been completely satisfied with this software and guide. As a result, it gives me great pleasure these days to look at Bill Gates' absurd prices for his now-obsolete product and to know that this is money I never need to give him again. So if you're looking for a complete, full-featured suite of the common office programs, you have a choice: You can spend less than $30 for this book and CD-ROM, or you can spend hundreds for MS Office. My advice: spend the $30, keep the hundreds.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Software, great book, good choice., March 4, 2003

By	Chris Rogers (Indianapolis) - See all my reviews

I bought ten of these kits for the people in my office, since we're switching the local rec center over to OOo. I really like it. It's one-stop shopping for the book and CD, and it's got a good range of information for the sysadmin (me) as well as people who are just running some spreadsheets. I heartily recommend the troubleshooting section of the install chapter. I also sat down my users and ran them through the tutorials in the book, and they're getting going with the product pretty well, esp considering they're not real intense computer people. It's a pretty fun book too, easy to understand without having to interpret.

This is a really good price. My own opinion is, nobody should be bothering to get the StarOffice product anymore, unless they're a huge business and really want support. StarOffice and OpenOffice.org are virtually the same (just some missing templates basically). This resource kit is really the best choice if you're looking to get something beyond a free Openoffice.org download and trying to figure it out on your own. There's a lot of docs on the openoffice site but wrangling them all together and finding what you need can take some time. The book index is good so you can find stuff pretty easily.

I've used Haugland's StarOffice book, which is also excellent, at a previous job, and the OpenOffice book you get with this is quite similar. So just a note, if you already have the Staroffice 6.0 Companion, you don't need this book, but when you're telling your friends to ditch Microsoft, tell them to just get the OpenOffice resource kit and they'll be good to go.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lucid, comprehensive, and enjoyable, June 26, 2004

By	Eric Krupin (Salt Lake City, UT) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Knowing that it's mostly intelligent, clear-thinking people who will be willing to venture outside the for-your-own-good totalitarianism of Microsoftland, the authoress efficiently plots you a straight-line course to mastery of the product. She doesn't waste your time telling you where to find the File menu, or, at the other extreme, how to parse the source code. Her revivifying doses of occasional wit are actually amusing - unlike the Borscht Belt shtick found in the "For Dummies" volumes. And there's no bullstuff either. One section is aptly titled "How To Turn Off Annoying Features". And when she finds the DirectCursor feature more of a menace than an asset, she tells you in plain words to avoid it. Even the page layouts are refreshingly sane and uncluttered. I'm actually reading the thing cover-to-cover, believe it or not.

Best computer instruction book ever?