Sams Teach Yourself OpenOffice.org All In One (Paperback)

~ Greg Perry (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

OpenOffice.org includes many of the features found in Microsoft Office and StarOffice, but it is free. For millions of Windows, Mac, and Linux users, OpenOffice.org provides an office productivity suite that is powerful and easy to use, and includes the same modules as Microsoft Office including powerful database connectivity. For companies and organizations that are migrating from Windows to Linux because of the licensing costs, OpenOffice.org provides a customizable open-source environment for networking systems that support multiple platforms.

Sams Teach Yourself Open.Office.org All in One is task tutorial and starter kit that is designed to help Microsoft Office users get OpenOffice.org 1.1 up and running quickly. The book provides step-by-step instructions for using the most important features of OpenOffice.org productively.

About the Author

Greg Perry is a speaker and a writer on both the programming and application sides of computing. He is known for his skills at bringing advanced computer topics to the novice's level. Perry has been a programmer and a trainer since the early 1980s. He received his first degree in computer science and a master's degree in corporate finance. Perry has sold more than 2 million computer books worldwide, including such titles as Digital Video with Windows XP in a Snap, Sams Teach Yourself Windows XP in 24 Hours, Sams Teach Yourself Visual Basic 6 in 21 Days, as well as the phenomenal bestseller Sams Teach Yourself Office 2003 in 24 Hours. He also writes about rental property management, social and political issues, creates and manages websites, loves to travel and enjoys home life with his lovely wife Jayne and their two fluffy dogs Casper and Zucchi.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Sams (August 14, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672326183
• ISBN-13: 978-0672326189
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,154,181 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This item is part of The Sams Teach Yourself Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not really All in One at all..., December 30, 2004

By	SwissMac - See all my reviews

OpenOffice has some fine points, and in some areas can do things Microsoft Office finds impossible - live connection to a database being one of them. Unfortunately there is very little documentation available anywhere to get to grips with automation or the finer points of working with server based Open Source databases such as MySQL, a program that is probably the world's favourite Open Source database solution.

I bought this book hoping it would enable me to get to grips with OpenOffice as a complete package. However, the "All in One" label seems misplaced as in more than one place the authors plainly state that they do not want to cover the database connection issues, but focus instead on very simple matters like "How to Open a File" or "Printing" or even "How to Save your Work". Oh dear.

Perhaps this omission is because there is very little information in the public domain for them to research and so they could not actually find out how to use OpenOffice in a more complex yet productive way. I would have hoped that any author claiming to be writing an "All in One" guide would have been able to work this out for themselves so they can pass on this knowledge to the rest of us. That's why I buy books: to get help with the hard stuff.

This book may be of some use to complete computer beginners, or to non-technical staff who are being migrated onto the OpenOffice platform from a large Office suite and need to find their way around reliably.

I can't see it being helpful to developers or to people who wish to use OpenOffice as part of an application that uses live data, or to people who need to perform repetitive tasks hundreds of times and need help understanding how to adapt the software to their own individual needs.

A shame, because the software program itself seems rather good. I just wish I could find a book that fully explains the difficult stuff to me, and doesn't patronise me with banal "how tos" of rather intuititive actions that most people can figure out in less than two minutes.

I do appreciate the book is probably not aimed at geeky IT nerds, but I do not work in IT yet still need rather a lot more than this book offers. All in One it certainly isn't.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars free and almost as capable, October 16, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Tired of paying tribute to the latest Microsoft Office suite? Each year or so, Microsoft Office comes out with an upgrade. Usually, powerful new features are introduced. But haven't you wondered how many of these, or indeed of existing features, do you actually use?

Herein, the book shows you a viable and free alternative. Perry does say forthrightly that Microsoft Office has more features than OpenOffice, and for certain operations, is easier to use. (Fewer steps.)

But he then goes onto explain the very many existing capabilities of OpenOffice. You should see right up that the Writer, Calc, Impress and Draw are very polished. A lot of thought has gone into making the usability as easy as possible. Hopefully, the book might indicate that OpenOffice's choices of menus and actions is very intuitive. Its designers do not want to cede any ground to Microsoft on the usability issues.

One thing to note is that you can experiment, by just trying out one of the OpenOffice packages, in lieu of its Microsoft counterpart. While still using the rest of the Microsoft suite. A low risk approach, backed up by the book's advice on the program you're testing.