(article updated by JH on 16 September 2010)
In last Thursday’s session, Graham and I showed members how to put together
and use our audio-visual equipment. I’ve updated our website page as regards
this, if you’d like more information.
In the second part of the session, I talked about Open Office (OO). This
can be downloaded free of charge from the following site …
http://www.openoffice.org/
You will be downloading a fairly large file size (128MB), so do this in
the morning rather than later in the day, to save yourself a lot of time.
Those of you who have Windows XP should create a Restore Point on your
computer before downloading any program, in case your computer were to
crash.
You can use OO to create text documents, newsletters, PDFs (portable
document files), slide shows and spreadsheets … all for free.
Why bother creating a PDF?
Well, businesses like to sent PDFs to each other, as the content (text and
photos) stays stable when opened ~ it doesn’t shift around the page). They
tend to be tamper-proof (the sender can set “permissions” to prevent them
being copied or printed, and can encrypt the contents also). This can be
over-rided by those in the know, however.
PDFs are also 100% virus-free, which was news to me, when I read this.
They are great for web-designers like myself – they can be incorporated
into websites as newsletters and timetables, and can save the webmaster
a lot of time.
Readers like yourself can easily download a PDF file onto say your Desktop
(File > Save As) ....or copy and paste it onto a Word document, or print
it off.
You can use the pale blue zoom tools on the top toolbar, to zoom in
or out of the PDF page.
To open up OO, click on your blue Desktop icon …
You will see the usual tools on the top toolbar, that you need to create a
text document, and you could now proceed to create such a document in OO.
What you could now do is to browse and then open up a Microsoft Word
document you’ve received / copied / created yourself, opening it up
into Open Office Writer.
File > Open … and then browse for the document you want, that’s filed
away on your computer.
Next up is the Word document, I wish to import into OO Writer. This was
created by our newsletter editor.
… and here is the same document now in OO Writer, which I have edited
in OO … adding a heading, and changing the font styles and colours.
At this point, you can now save your work
… save it as a .odt file first of all ...
File > Save As > an open document text file,
When saving your document, type in a title for it followed immediately by
the characters: .odt. This is very important!
Press the "Save" button.
This creates a .odt file, which you can now convert to a PDF file.
Select "File" > "Export as a PDF".
When you do the latter, you will be presented with a PDF Options window.
Under “General”, you could change the quality of the PDF.
Under “Security” you could set up encryption & permissions, if you so wish.
I just click on “Export”.
Choose a title for your PDF, and choose where you’d like to save it ... > Save.
Done!
A couple of tips for you when using OO Writer…
1. To insert a photo and to write some text alongside it, you could create
a table.
Select Table > create one with 2 columns
> untick box for Border
Insert your photo into one column & text in the other.
You can re-position the centre dividing column, if you so wish.
(If anyone finds a text box facility in OO Writer, please would you let me know?)
2. To change the size of the page you’re looking at in OO Writer ….
select View > Zoom > Variable (size) > say 80%
In the above list in my U3A folder, you'll see the icons for a Word
document, an open document text file, and then the Adobe Acrobat
document which is the PDF. The latter is a larger file size than the
odt file, which disproves the idea that files are reduced in size by
converting them to PDF.
To change the layout of the page from Portrait to Landscape format,
select "Format" on the top toolbar, and then "Page". Click on the circle for
Landscape > OK
To create a page with columns on it, select Format > Columns, and choose the layout you'd like (also look at the other options on offer, such as a
dividing line between the columns)
To include a column(s) in say the centre of your document, create a title for
your document. Press the Enter key to start a new line.
Select Insert > Section
Select Columns > choose the settings you like.
Select Insert ... you will then see grey lines separating the columns.
To revert back to a single column lower down in the document, you could
repeat the above but choose a single column setting.
