Working with Open Office

In nearly every corporate environment, you will need to read and write Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel files. Although only Microsoft Office can handle all of these formats perfectly, Ubuntu includes http://www.OpenOffice.org 2.0-a set of open source tools that can read, write, and modify Microsoft Office documents. The http://www.OpenOffice.org main tools consist of a word processor, presentation system, and spreadsheet application. Each of these are available under the Applications Office menu.

Using the Word Processor

The http://www.OpenOffice.org word processor (oowriter) is an open source alternative to Microsoft Word (see Figure 6-1). Using this program, you can access most DOC files. This word processor has a number of benefits over Microsoft Word.

• PDF-Under Microsoft Word, an additional plug-in is required to save documents as PDF files. Normally this wouldn't be too big of a hassle, but the official PDF plug-in from Adobe is a resource-intensive application that can take a while to start up and frequently checks for updates. In contrast, every document in http://www.OpenOffice.org can be immediately exported to PDF by selecting File Export as PDF from the menu. This same menu option is available under all http://www.OpenOffice.org tools.

• Security-Microsoft Word embeds lots of unnecessary information in documents. This includes information about the author as well as deleted or edited text. The simple act of adding a character, deleting the character, and resaving the document can make the file larger. http://www.OpenOffice.org enables you to remove personal information and deleted text from saved documents. You can configure this option under the Tools Options http://www.OpenOffice.org Security settings (see Figure 6-2). The option is labeled Remove personal information on saving.

  
  Figure 6-1: http://www.OpenOffice.org word processor

  
  Figure 6-2: http://www.OpenOffice.org Options for security

  Note 

  With Microsoft Office 2003 and later, you do have the option to exclude personal information- on a file-by-file basis. Under http://www.OpenOffice.org, this option is a default configuration that impacts all documents.

• OpenDocument Standard-Microsoft uses a proprietary format for storing documents. In contrast, http://www.OpenOffice.org defaults to the OpenDocument standard. On the one hand, OpenDocument is much more portable. On the other hand, it is not supported by most versions of Microsoft Office. For compatibility, you will need to explicitly export the document for Microsoft Office. Alternatively, you can go to Tools Options Load/Save General and change the default file format.

As powerful as http://www.OpenOffice.org's word processor is, there are still some limitations.

• Formatting-Although it can view most Microsoft Office documents, the proprietary file format was reverse-engineered. As a result, complex formatting may look odd and may not save correctly. If the document has extremely complex formatting, it can actually crash the word processor.

• Bullets, Numbers, and Headings-This is a weakness in http://www.OpenOffice.org. If you just want a bulleted list, numbered list, or section heading, it can do it. If you want special formatting or characters, then you are better off initially creating the formats in Microsoft Office. http://www.OpenOffice.org can use formats included in a document, but cannot be easily used to create them. Although I expect this to change in later revisions, this is what you have to use today.

• Macros-As with formatting, http://www.OpenOffice.org does not handle Microsoft Word macros very well.

• Annoying Pop-ups-Whenever you go to save a document in the Microsoft Word format, http://www.OpenOffice.org may generate a pop-up warning you about the potential to lose formatting information. This would not be so bad if it did not appear every fifteen minutes due to the auto-save setting.

Making Presentations

Either you love Microsoft Office PowerPoint or you hate it. Personally, it is one of my favorite presentation tools. The http://www.OpenOffice.org equivalent is called Impress (ooimpress). This presentation tool can read and write PowerPoint (PPT) documents. While the general look and feel of Impress is similar to PowerPoint (see Figure 6-3), there are some distinct differences.

• Complexity-As with the http://www.OpenOffice.org word processor, Impress may not display formatting correctly and can even crash if the PPT file is too complicated.

• Animation-Animated graphics, slides, and slide transitions do not always display properly.

• Connectors-These are my favorite drawing items; they consists of a line with anchors that can attach to objects so they move as you move objects. If you reflow a connector (by moving the red square that appears in the middle of the line), Impress will forget the reflowed direction.

• Compatibility-Some PPT files exported from Impress do not load under PowerPoint. I have not seen this happen consistently, but it always happens when you need it most.

Figure 6-3: http://www.OpenOffice.org Impress-a presentation tool similar to Microsoft PowerPoint

My general rule of thumb when working on presentations is to not change presentation tools. If the talk will be given using PowerPoint, then stick with real PowerPoint. If the talk will use Impress, then stick with Impress. Although Impress from http://www.OpenOffice.org 2.0 is useful for viewing PPT files, the compatibility with PowerPoint is not complete enough for real collaboration.

Accessing Spreadsheets

Although ooimpress is an acceptable presentation tool and oowriter is a good word processor, Calc (oocalc) is an excellent spreadsheet application. Calc has a very similar look to Microsoft Excel and supports all of the standard functions and layouts (see Figure 6-4). There is virtually no learning curve between Excel and Calc. The only limitation I could find was in macro support; Calc won't run most Excel macros and does not support programmed shortcuts. For example, I have a large Excel spreadsheet where I mapped Ctrl+G to a specific macro. Under Calc, Ctrl+G does nothing and running the macro (Tools Macros Run Macros) generates errors about a missing parenthesis that is not missing.

Figure 6-4: The http://www.OpenOffice.org Calc spreadsheet application

Selecting Alternate Office Tools

http://www.OpenOffice.org 2.0 includes many other useful tools. For example, oobase is the Open Office version of Microsoft Access, oomath is a powerful equation editor and oodraw is a very simple drawing tool for when you do not need the complexities of Gimp. http://www.OpenOffice.org even includes a database connection application for managing remote databases. These tools will help you be productive, even if they are not fully compatible with Microsoft equivalent applications. Unlike word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation tools, lacking perfect compatibility between database interface front-ends, equation editors, and drawing tools usually does not impact collaboration efforts.

Although http://www.OpenOffice.org provides the flagship office tools for Ubuntu, they are not the only office tools available to Ubuntu. I believe that the best tool should be used for the task at hand, and that does not mean always using a word processor for viewing a Word document.

Alternate Document Viewers

One tool that I frequently use is antiword (sudo apt-get install antiword). This program converts a Microsoft Word document to plain text. This is so much easier than loading up a document and using File Save As to convert the format. It also comes in handy when you don't have a graphical login-you can use antiword to quickly see the text inside a Word file, even if fonts and graphics are excluded.

There is one other useful feature in antiword. As mentioned earlier, Microsoft Word documents can include hidden comments. Using antiword -s, you can see the hidden text. If you ever wondered what information you were leaking, or what might be hidden inside a document, this tool will show you. To see what text was hidden in a document (for example, file.doc), I use these commands:

 antiword file.doc > plain.text antiword -s file.doc > hidden.text sdiff plain.text hidden.text 

The sdiff command shows the line-by-line, side-by-side differences between two files. Every line with a difference is flagged so you can immediately see where changes occur.

Another powerful tool is wv (formerly called WordView-sudo apt-get install wv). This program includes a suite of conversion tools like wvPDF to convert Word documents to PDF and wvRTF to convert to RTF. This suite also contains forensic tools like wvVersion and wvMime for displaying a document's version and metadata information.

Other alternatives, such as catdoc, are also available for converting Word documents to text. In general, if you want to convert a Word document to any other format-especially text-you do not need the overhead of a full word processor.

If you need a full word processor and not a file converter, consider Abiword (sudo apt-get install abiword). This program can read and write Microsoft Word documents including style formats and embedded images. It does have a few limitations, including display problems with embedded math equations, custom bullet formats, and no support for Word macros. However, Abiword offers similar functionality to OpenOffice without the massive overhead and slow startup time of oowriter.

Alternate Presentation Viewers

Although there are not many alternatives for presentation tools, there is ppthtml (sudo apt-get install ppthtml). This is a primitive program for extracting text from PPT slides and displaying them as HTML.

Alternate Spreadsheet Viewers

Besides http://www.OpenOffice.org's Calc, there is Gnumeric (sudo apt-get install gnumeric). At first glance, Gnumeric looks just like Calc and Excel. The difference is in the functionality: Gnumeric has many numerical analysis settings under the Tools Statistical Analysis menu (see Figure 6-5). If you need a spreadsheet that makes numerical analysis easy, Gnumeric is a good choice. It is not that Gnumeric has functionality that is missing from Calc and Excel, but rather Gnumeric makes it easy to access. Gnumeric also has a much faster startup time- Calc and Excel usually takes seconds to start up, and large spreadsheets can take a noticeably long time; Gnumeric usually starts up instantly, and large XLS files only take a few seconds.

Figure 6-5: The Gnumeric spreadsheet application

Gnumeric is not perfect-it completely lacks programmable macro support, and cannot display images and diagrams. But for spreadsheets that don't require these features, I find Gnumeric a better option than Calc or Excel.