Chapter 17. Enhancing Your Work with More OpenOffice.org Features

IN THIS CHAPTER:

127 About OpenOffice.org Macros

128 Create and Use a Macro

129 About Master Documents

130 Create a Master Document

131 About Sharing OpenOffice.org Files with Other Applications

132 Associating OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office Files

133 Upgrade OpenOffice.org to a New Version

This chapter concludes the jam-packed, task-heavy OpenOffice.org book you have in your hands. By mastering most of the tasks in this book, you not only have a great overview of OpenOffice.org's features, you truly know the ins and outs of OpenOffice.org and can create outstanding documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings.

KEY TERM

Master documents ” A repository of documents, called subdocuments , each of which might be a chapter or document worked on by several people, as you might find in corporate reports submitted by multiple departments.

In this final chapter, you'll get a taste of some of OpenOffice.org's more advanced features, such as the automation of certain OpenOffice.org tasks. If you find yourself repeating the same series of keystrokes or menu selections over and over, you can automate those steps to speed the work in the future. In addition, you'll learn how to manage more extensive Writer documents, such as you'll use when writing complete books with Writer. Maintaining chapters and all the elements that go into such a large, multipart document is not a chore when you learn how to leverage the concept of master documents .

The integration of OpenOffice.org's programs is crucial to OpenOffice.org's success and use. Being able to insert Calc spreadsheets into Writer documents and being able to insert Draw's drawings into your Impress presentations means that you can complete all your work within OpenOffice.org's consistent interface, and you have to learn far fewer commands and menus than you'd have to learn if you needed additional programs to do your job.

Of course, to be honest, OpenOffice.org's true integrated power shines in its support for loading and saving Microsoft Office documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. You can load, edit, and save virtually all Microsoft Office files within OpenOffice.org. You can set up OpenOffice.org to work even more closely with Microsoft Office documents, such as changing your program links to make Writer open any document you select that has Word's .doc filename extension. Many OpenOffice.org users are users because they did not want to pay what they perceived to be a very high upgrade cost to upgrade once again to Microsoft Office. These users are thrilled that OpenOffice.org opens, edits, and saves all the work they previously created with Microsoft Office.