[Techtalk] Any OpenOffice pros?

[TechChiq]

On Tue, 2003-10-21 at 07:37, Dan Richter wrote:
> I've started using OpenOffice Writer and it seems pretty powerful. (The 
> auto-completion on each word typed takes a little getting used to, but 
> it really does speed things up.)

If you ever want to turn that off, go into the Tools menu and select
Auto Correct/Auto Format.Click on the Word Completion tab. Then just
uncheck 'Complete Word' (and 'Collect Suggestions' if you wish) and then
click OK. This way you can type "normally". I found that "feature"
annoying myself, so I turned it off. It seems like it only confused me
and made me type slower for some odd reason. Just my .02 :) Also, if you
don't like it's quoting, you can click on the Quoting tab and then
uncheck to replace double quotes.

> As far as I've seen OOW has the tools 
> you find in Word, but some of them are kind of hard to find. (I don't 
> think they're any more or less intuitive than Word; I just don't happen 
> to know where to look for them in OOW.)

I've never used Word, but used MS Works' word processor. To compare
those two, there's no comparison. Open Office is MUCH better! :)

> So enough of the anecdote: I have two questions. First, does anyone know 
> how to set up OOW in an outline fashion, with titles and subtitles? 

That, I'm afraid, is something I too am trying to figure out. When I
clicked on their registration button and filled out their survey, that
is one of the things I suggested they add, as I don't seem to be able to
find it. I would like to make outlines as well, for building things like
manuals (I did make a nice Windows computer manual for my boyfriend
after overhauling his old Gateway 2000 P/133 machine! LOL!) He was VERY
impressed with the manual. I was very impressed with OO's word
processor. :) Expecially the Index creator. But I was hoping for an
outline maker to start building the "base" of the manual but never found
a way.

> Second, does anyone know how to automatically generate a table of contents?

That is the most coolest feature! :) You can create alphabetical indexes
and table of contents pages by going into the Insert Menu, then into the
Indexes/Tables menu and then select Indexes and Tables. In the
Index/Table tab, Erase the info in the Title box and type in your title.
Then in the drop down box below it, choose the type of index or table.
The other tabs and such you can use to experiment and tweak the whole
table further. Also when it's generated (I recommend doing this after
you got your document written), you can also highlight parts of the
indes, then right click and choose "paragraph" or "character" to further
customize elements of the Index/Table. (Or the Format Menu, Paragraph
item). You can also update the index/table (right click on it to find
the Update) after making changes. 

Another thing is that if you make an index or something that uses a
concordance (recommended for indexes), go through your document, and
then in a separate text editor make a list of items that you want to put
in the index. One item per line. Then, go back and on each line put a
semi-colon after the keyword, then type in a name exactly how you want
it to appear in the index, 4 more semi-colons and a zero, another
semi-colon and another zero. It would look something like this:

alphabet;Alphabet;;;;0;0

Do this for every entry/keyword and save it to an idx-name.sdi file.
Note that the 'name' can be anything you want. Then just go into the
index/tables config and select concordance, and for file, choose 'open'
and find your concordance! I found this much easier than using the 'new'
option and trying to remember keywords to type in, and navigating their
concordance creator.

Best of luck with this. I think you'll really find OpenOffice easy to
use and quite powerful once you get used to it. I'm still learning, too.
Already I'm impressed! :)

-- 
TechChiq
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