Tip: Store menues and toolbars in a template

In different work situations we need to use different tools and we have the opportunity to design OpenOffice.org to provide us with the relevant tools at all times. This because we can store specific settings in documents and templates.

If you have created a new menu or menu item or maybe a new toolbar, you can choose not to store it in the application, but in one specific document or template file. In this way you will be able to use that tool in the situation where you need it.

Open the template in edit mode and make your changes using Tools - Customize... . When you are finished making your changes, just remember to select the template as storage for your change. Whenever you use the template in the future, the new tool will be available for you.

Administration of OpenOffice.org

Imagine you are asked to deploy OpenOffice.org in a large company, maybe 1.000 users or more. You will definitively need some tools. Lucky for you, there is an Administration Guide for that purpose. What about accessing user profile settings from on an LDAP server or restricting functionality for users. Would that be relevant in a large installation ?

Just turn in on the Administration Guide here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Administration_Guide

Thats a challenge

Once in a while I see some challenging questions on the Danish support site http://www.oooforum.dk . Today I found a question about outline numbering. The question came from a couple of guys from University of Southern Denmark (http://www.sdu.dk/?sc_lang=en). The university is using OpenOffice.org and these two are doing an assignment.

They need to make a TOC like this:

Header
1. First chapter
1.1 First issue in first chapter
1.2 Second issue in first chapter
2. Second chapter
2.1 First issue in second chapter
Another header
3. Third chapter
3.1 ...
3.2 ...
etc.

Please note that they want to continue the numbering of chapters, even if there is a header in between. The problem is, that the normal behavior would be like this:

Header
1. First chapter
1.1 First issue in first chapter
1.2 Second issue in first chapter
2. Second chapter
2.1 First issue in second chapter
Another header
1. Third chapter
1.1 ...
1.2 ...
etc.

The outline numbering will reset after the heading entry.

The difficult part is, that the document actually contains four numbered levels of headings 8+ the top level). But only two numbered levels is to shown in the TOC.

Hmmm.....

Normally this would be accomplished this way:

Header <- Heading 1
1. First chapter <- Heading 2
1.1 First issue in first chapter <- Heading 3
1.2 Second issue in first chapter <- Heading 3
2. Second chapter <- Heading 2
2.1 First issue in second chapter <- Heading 3
Another header <- Heading 1
1. Third chapter <- Heading 2
1.1 ... <- Heading 2
1.2 ... <- Heading 2
etc.

But the problem is, that the outline numbering always starts from the top. So what we did was this

Header <- Heading 3
1. First chapter <-Heading 1
1.1 First issue in first chapter <- Heading 2
1.2 Second issue in first chapter <- Heading 2
2. Second chapter <- Heading 1
2.1 First issue in second chapter <- Heading 2
Another header <- Heading 3
3. Third chapter <-Heading 1
3.1 ... <- Heading 2
3.2 ... <- Heading 2
etc.

The header styles and TOC styles was changed, so it looks as if Header is higher level that Chapter and issue. The TOC is evaluating untill third level and the two first levels are numbered.

Done.

How to put a watermark text on your documents

I know at least three ways you can put a watermark text in your documents:

• Background image
• Drawing text
• Insert Fontwork

1) Background image
Select your page style in the style navigator. Right click and choose Modify.
Select the Background tab and select Graphics in the first field.
Now you can select an image file from your system.
You can either stretch the image or place it on a specific position.

2) Drawing text
From the Toolbar Drawing, select the tool Text.
Draw a box with you mouse and type the text in the box
If you want to see the background text on all pages, you can draw the box in the page header or footer
Mark the text in the box and format it as you need (text size, font, color etc.)
If you mark the text, you can use the rotate tool to rotate the text (grab the corners with your mouse and drag)
Mark the text box and right click. Select Arrange. Select In background

3) Fontwork
Click once in the page header og footer
Click Fontwork Gallery and select a Fontwork style
Type the text you want to appear in the background
Select the inserted Fontwork, right click and select Wrap - In background

Conclusion

Each of the above methods has advantages and disadvantages. Choose from your needs in the individual case. There might even be other methods to achieve the same or better results.

Search the Internet form OpenOffice.org

Very often when you are working with text documents in Writer, you need to do some research or look up a word on the Internet while you are writing. You can actually look up words on the Internet directly from OpenOffice.org bur very few people has yet discovered this handsome feature in the application.

Some general search sites are predefined in OpenOffice.org, e.g. AltaVista, Gogle and Yahoo, but you can also define your own searches. I often use the Mariam-Webster on-line dictionary to look up English words.

How to define a new search

First you have to find out how the search site parses the search string in the URL address. Try to make a simple search on the search site and the take a look at the URL address when you see the result. On Mariam-Webster it looks like this:

The word I was looking up here was 'accent'.

Now copy the URL string and open OpenOffice.org Writer

Select Tools – Options – Internet – Search

Create a new search and paste the URL from the clipboard into the 'prefix' field.

Select 'Or' and do the same again

Select 'Exact' and do the same again.

Close the Options dialog.

How to search from OpenOffice.org

If the toolbar “Hyperlink bar” is not visible in OpenOffice.org you should make it visible by selecting View – Toolbars and then select “Hyperlink bar”.

Now you are ready to look up any word from your document. Select a word in the text and you will see that the word is now automatically filled in the first field on the Hyperlink bar.

Now you just need to click the search icon and select the search site you want to use. In this case I select M-W and my browser will immediately show me the search result.

Conclusion

OpenOffice.org has lots and lots of secret features and this is one of them. Very few people will discover all features, but if you try to have a look around the application you will find lots of them.

I can recommend Solveig Hauglands blog. She has made a lot of small tricks and how-tos.

Arrgh... problems with my calendar sync again

I'm using the Mozilla Lightning plug-in for Thunderbird for calendaring. This, together with Google calendar has been a very fine solution for me for a long time. Specially after I found a small sync application called GCALDaemon to sync my local calendar with Google.

Yesterday, I upgraded my Lightning plug-in to version 0.5 and at the same time I installed another plug-in called 'Provider for Google Calendar'. This plug-in should be the native Google sync application in the future. So far so good. Upgrade and install and restarted Thunderbird. I also removed the GCALDaemon from my computer.

This is where Arrgh comes in to the picture. It didn't work. I could see my calendar entries for about five seconds, and then the calendar view was empty. I tried to remove both the provider-plug-in and my calendar accounts from Lightning and then installed it again. The funny thing was, that I couldn't remove the Provider thing . I gave up after about an hour and started to plan how to reinstall GCALDaemon.

Then today, when I started my computer, I got some weird warnings from Thunderbird. I found that my calendar accounts had reappeared and I could actually see my appointments ....for about five seconds.

I tried to remove that Provider thing again. No luck. After restarting Thunderbird, Provider was still there. Double arrgh.

Then I came to remember, that Thunderbird has an irritating problem, that when you close the program, it actually continues to run as a hidden service. Yes, Thunderbird was still running, even after I closed it. Kill Thunderbird. Start Thunderbird again. The provider thing was removed. Yes !

I installed Provider again and now I could see all my accounts and appointments. I can create appointments in Lightning and they are synchronized to Google. Fantastic.

Morale: Remember to close the application and kill the process in the process window. Closing and starting is not always a complete restart. Maybe some of the Mozilla guys could look into this problem one day ? Okay, I know that I'm a part of the problem, because I'm running Microsoft Windows. Bare with me.

Anyway, I must say that the Mozilla guys has done a great job this time. Bidirectional sync works fine and the layout has got a huge improvement. And now i can print my weekly and monthly calendar and put it on the refrigerator door together with the rest of my family plans.

I have been working with calendaring in Lotus applications for about ten years now. And I know how difficult it can be to visualize a calendar on a computer screen. Do you remember Organizer ? One of the first applications, that tried to visualize a calendar by copying the design from a manual calendar. I still think that concept could win awards today.

But still, the hard thing is to keep the environment running. I remember one of my customers, who wanted to keep half the staff on Lotus Notes and the other half on Microsoft Exchange. Imagine the question: Can we get an overview of all employee calendars ? Will it be possible to invite to a meeting across the applications ?

Converters and integration ended up being a nightmare. When we solved one problem, another fire new problems occurred. That was about four years ago.

Open standards could solve the problem today. With iCal and WebDAW it would be quite easy to establish a common platform for both Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange calendars.

Solveig Haugland on the new Chart module

Solveig has made a brief introduction to the upcoming new chart module in Clac spreadsheet. Look at this blogpost. Remember to see the reference she made on this occation.

I'll put a mark in my diary today

Today I can put a mark in my calendar. It has been a good day.

Why today in particular ?

Because: now I can sync that mark with Google Calendar. Thats why !

Thanks to Dmitri Popov and his article on Linux.com, Syncing magic with GCALDaemon

This has for a long time been a problem to lots of people around the world. And I have tried to find a solution to this problem for more than a year now. And who else than Dmitri could do this ? I have seen a lot of good and inspiring articles from Dmitri over the years. Always very accurate but at the same time not too technical. Keep it up, Dmitri.

Today it took about 30 minutes from I first found the article untill I was able to sync my Lightning calendar with Google Calendar. Tomorrow I will use another 30 minutes or so and sync my local address book too.



I'm looking forward to the next article from Dmitri Popov.

Start OpenOffice.org faster

Have you ever considered wondered why OpenOffice.org is so slow at starting up ?
You actually have several options to reduce the start-up time.

1) Preload OpenOffice.org
You can preload parts of OpenOffice.org together with your computer. This options is only available for some operating systems.

Select Tools Options OpenOffice.org Memory. Check the last field Load OpenOffice.org During System Start-Up. Next time you start your computer you can see a small icon in the system tray.

Be ware that this option takes some memory from your computer before you even start OpenOffice.org. If you have enough memory or if you are using OpenOffice.org most of the time, this option will be a good idea.


2) Load OpenOffice.org with parameter
You can create an icon to load OpenOffice.org without the splash screen. "C:\Programmer\OpenOffice.org 2.1\program\swriter.exe" -nologo . The parameter -nologo will improve startup time.


3) Edit soffice.ini
Find the file C:\Programmer\OpenOffice.org 2.1\program\soffice.ini and open it with a text editor e.g. notepad. Find the line Logo=1 and change it to Logo=0. Then save the file.

It's a good idea to create a backup copy of the file before you make changes to the ini file.

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Easy use of OpenClipart.org

I'm often using cliparts from OpenClipart.org in my Writer documents. I don't want to download the whole package from the site; and for several reasons:

• It takes up a lot of space on my harddisk and most of it i'll never use anyway
• New cliparts is added every day

When I need to use a clipart I'll find it on the site directly. Usually I find it by browsing the archives.
When I'we found the clipart that I'll like to use in my document, I open it with the browser. Then I can copy the URL-address to the clipboard.
In Writer; I can insert an object (Insert > OLE-object > From file) and paste the URL into the field and hit Enter