OpenOffice is a suite of free productivity tools that replaces most of the functionality of Microsoft’s Office platform and adds additional features (though you can’t track stock prices the way youcan on Google Sheets). It also works across multiple operating systems, even on thebest Chromebooks, and it plays well with existing MS Office documents and spreadsheets.
Many of its best features aren’t immediately apparent to new users. We compiled a list of our favorite OpenOffice tips and tricks to help you take advantage of OpenOffice’s versatile offerings.
1Customize your toolbars
OpenOffice has one of the most broadly customizable interfaces of any software of its kind. You can customize the existing headers and add functions to make them accessible with a single click.
2Add extensions for more features
OpenOffice comes with an impressive number of tools. One advantage of its open platform is that you can add third-party extensions to fill gaps that exist.
Extensions give you access to dictionaries in other languages, allow you to import and edit PDFs, add new template options, and other useful functions.
3Turn on writing assists
OpenOffice has several modules to help you draft clean, grammatically valid text documents. you’re able to activate automatic spellchecking, access a thesaurus, or add non-standard dictionaries.
4Add a table of contents to your document
Add a table of contents to documents with several subsections or longer documents you want to break into digestible sections for easier navigation.
5Quickly search the web for keywords in your document
OpenOffice allows you to quickly search the text in your documents on popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, and others. Add this functionality to your toolbar for easy access.
6Create a bibliography to cite your sources
OpenOffice offers a built-in tool for citing sources in formal or academic documents.
7Quickly get a word count
OpenOffice displays the word count in a selected block of text or in the entire document. For the former, select the text you want to count and clickWord Countunder theToolsmenu in the toolbar. To see word and character count in the document, as well as supplementary information, navigate toFile>Properties>Statistics.
8Precisely position text
OpenOffice has a Direct cursor feature that allows you to drop text almost anywhere in a document. This feature is especially handy for formatting presentations.
9Email your document
OpenOffice lets you skip the process of manually attaching a document to an email. Instead, you can send it from the program.
You can email a document in other formats, like PDF. However, the send document as email feature doesn’t work with web-based email clients like Gmail. To take advantage of it, install a mail program and add your email account to it.
10OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet tips
Calc is OpenOffice’s equivalent of Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and lets you build and manage spreadsheets. Here are some quick tips to use some of its most powerful features:
Become an OpenOffice Jedi
Like some of the best software, OpenOffice becomes more powerful and intuitive the more you use it. Start with the above as a cheatsheet, and soon you’ll be creating, formatting, and exporting docs and spreadsheets like a champion. If you’re interested in OpenOffice Writer and use Google’s platform for spreadsheets, check out some quicktips for Google Sheets.
