Comparison of Ways to do Things using Microsoft Word and OOoWriter

Experienced users of Microsoft Word may take awhile to discover how to do common tasks in OOWriter, because some of the menus and the terminology are a bit different; in a few cases no direct equivalent method is available. This series of pages summarizes my research and experiments with OOoWriter 1.1 on Windows ME. You may find some differences if you're using another operating system or version of OpenOffice.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

Converting Documents from Microsoft Word to OOoWriter

I'm happy to report that OpenOffice.org 1.1.0 does a very good job of converting Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP files to OOo files -- much better than the previous releases I tested. Most of the problems I had noticed with conversions done by OOo1.0.2 did not appear when I converted the same Word files using OOo1.1.0. Some conversion problems remain. Most of these are probably due to OOoWriter not having any counterpart to some features of Word.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

Creating and Using Master Documents in OOoWriter 1.1

This page is an excerpt from Taming OpenOffice.org Writer (no longer available). A variation of this material is in OpenOffice.org Writer: The Free Alternative to Microsoft Word. Yes, master documents do work in OpenOffice.org Writer. However, you need to have a very disciplined approach to make sure they work correctly and reliably.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

Creating Cross-References Between Documents

I've now discovered that you can indeed do cross-references between documents, if they are both subdocuments of a master document. The method is obscure, and the help file (although giving a clue) wasn't much help.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

How to Change All Font Sizes in a Document at Once

Many people want a facility in OOo to enlarge or reduce the size of all fonts in a document at once, preferably by clicking on an icon. Although I do not know any way to do that, I have found a workaround that provides a similar result. It takes a bit of setting up but otherwise works quickly and easily.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

How to Start Page Numbering With a Number Greater Than 1

Follow these instructions to start the page numbering in a document at a number greater than 1.

OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Word Processing>Software>OpenOffice

Moving to OpenOffice: Batch Converting Legacy Documents

What if you want to load XML versions of a large collection of Word files, Excel spreadsheets, or PowerPoint files into an XML-aware database where you can query the collection?

DuCharme, Bob. OpenOffice.org (2006). Articles>Software>Word Processing>OpenOffice

Opening Open Formats with XSLT

This month I'm taking a break from covering XSLT 2.0 to describe how the combination of XSLT 1.0 and an application with an open XML format solved a problem for me. I solved this problem so quickly and easily that it got me thinking about how the combination of XSLT 1.0 and the increasing amount of open XML formats are opening up a world of simple, valuable new applications and utilities for us to write.

DuCharme, Bob. OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

The OpenOffice.org XML Project

The OpenOffice.org XML project is the home of of XML related features of OpenOffice.org, like its OASIS OpenDocument/ISO/IEC 26300 file format implementation. It further provides some XML base implementations, like XML parser and printer components.

OpenOffice.org (2005). Organizations>Writing>XML>OpenOffice

Read and Write DocBook XML Using OpenOffice.org

The project goal is to explore the possibility of using OpenOffice.org as a WYSIWYG editor of XML content. The principle is to edit structured documents using styles. These styles are then transformed to XML tags on export.

OpenOffice.org (2005). Articles>Documentation>Software>OpenOffice

Differences in Use Between OpenOffice Writer and Word  

This document summarizes the differences in use between OpenOffice.org Writer 1.1.x and Microsoft Word (various versions).

OpenOffice.org (2007). Articles>Documentation>Word Processing>OpenOffice