Office

• Overview of Star Office and Open Office
• Differences between Star Office, Open Office, and Microsoft Office
• Open Office Installation on Linux
• Tips on using Star/Open Office
• Where to get more information

Overview of Star Office and Open Office

• Word processor
• Spreadsheet
• Presentation
• Draw/graphics
• Database (Star Office only - not Open Office)

The look and feel is very similar to Microsoft Office.

Star Office and Open Office run on all the major platforms:

• Microsoft Windows 95, 98, NT, 200, ME and XP
• Linux
• Solaris on SPARC and Intel
• Mac OS X (in beta)

Pricing:

• Star Office: $76
• Open Office: Free!

It is amazing you can have a full featured Office Productivity suite for either $76 (Star Office with support available from Sun) or free from Open Office.

Differences between Star Office, Open Office, and Microsoft Office

• Includes a more sophisticated spell-checker
• Includes a clip-art collection
• Includes more fonts
• Contains some additional macros and filters
• Includes the Adabas database
• Has a different installation process

The main differences between Microsoft Office and Star/Open Office are:

• Star Office can read and write Microsoft Office files, though not perfectly: Some of the fonts are different, so reading and writing office files sometimes yields a different look of the document. If you want a Star/Open Office document to look exactly the same on another system, you can save it in PDF format and view it with Adobe Acrobat.
• Microsoft's proprietary, un-documented macros are not available in Star/Open Office.

Open Office Installation on Linux

Extract the files from the downloaded file and run the install command as super-user:

tar zxvf OOo*gz
cd OOo*install
su
./install --prefix=/opt

cd /opt/OpenOffice.org....
./setup

Then start Open Office:

~/OpenOffice.org*/soffice

• Change the display between inches and centimeters
• Adding animation to slides
• Use fancy slide "transitions"
• Toggle between full-screen mode and normal mode
• Printing 2 (or 3 or 4 or 6) slides per page for handouts:
• To print only the handouts rather than handouts and the full page slides:
• Print black on white for white on dark slides.

Change the display between inches and centimeters

Adding animation to slides

To set up animation on a slide so each time you press the space bar, the next item in a bullet appears:

• Click the main area of a slide, causing it to be selected with the green "handles" around it.
• Click on the Animation icon in the left stripe:
• Click on the "Text" animation icon that comes up:
• Click on the animation you would like to use for this slide.
• Click on the speed (at the bottom of this pop-up window: Slow, Medium or Fast)
• Click on the green checkmark to assign this animation:

Here is a sample animation pop-up window:

Printing 2 (or 3 or 4 or 6) slides per page for handouts:

• The Official Red Hat Linux Getting Started Guide, Chapter 8. Working with Documents gives a good overview of using Open/Star Office.
• Open/Star Office tutorials
• Sun's Star Office page
• A useful FAQ for OpenOffice.org that applies to Star Office, too.
• After you install Star/Open Office, the Help system has quite a bit of information.
• The Star Office 6.0 Office Suite Companion book is very helpful.
• Open Office mailing lists and archives
• The OpenOffice.org Forum
• Google groups for Star Office and Open Office

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