Good things about OpenOffice / LibreOffice

OpenOffice / LibreOffice is good for these things:

1. No need to pay for it.
2. No need to pay a monthly fee or yearly fee.
3. No activation key is necessary. 
4. No need to register. No personal details such as email addresses are required.
5. No need to buy a license for a computer or a number of computers.
6. Unlimited number of installation / reinstallation on the same computer is allowed. 
7. You are allowed to copy OpenOffice / LibreOffice and give it to your friend via a USB drive, etc.
8. Support for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, Android and Linux.
9. Support for many kinds of language around the world.
10. Community support in the form of forum, mailing list and manual.
11. Its own file format is reliable enough to be used every day. (As long as you don't do complex things.)
12. The user interface consists of menus. It is easy to ask for help and to help your friend, e.g. "File-> Save" is easily understood, instead of graphical icons. When you ask, "How do I do this?" Your friend can reply, "Please do 'File-> Save'," and there is no "icon confusion".
13. It can open many Microsoft Office files. (Even different versions of Microsoft Office can open the same file differently.) 
14. You may choose to submit (or not to submit) a report for the developers to fix problems.
15. If you are a programmer, you can try to fix problems you found or fix those the other people found.

Why doesn't OpenOffice / LibreOffice win in the office suite competition?

People are more familiar with MS Office (Microsoft Office). They don't want to change. Being reluctant to change may explain parts of the human nature. Okay, someone likes the Ribbon UI MS Office promotes. Someone doesn't like this UI but she or he becomes familiar with it.

Secondly, people expect OpenOffice / LibreOffice to be a Microsoft clone. Whatever MS Office can do, OpenOffice / LibreOffice should be able to. People expect the resulting documents to be the same. Unfortunately, it is not possible to achieve the same format because of a lot of legal issues probably only lawyers can understand.

Thirdly, insufficient advertising is available and advertising is costly. OpenOffice / LibreOffice's advertisements are not as frequent and cannot be as frequent as those of MS Office. MS Office is supported by a huge company. OpenOffice / LibreOffice is supported by donations only. OpenOffice / LibreOffice cannot afford to pay the advertising costs. Not every influential individual knows what OpenOffice / LibreOffice can do for her or him. Decision makers and government officials might not want to bear the responsibility for favouring the use of one office suite product. What would happen if people complained about the policy, for example, some technical formats not displaying consistently?

Moreover, it would take a lot of valuable time spent on training people to use OpenOffice / LibreOffice. OpenOffice / LibreOffice is not for everyone. Some people might think that they would stop training themselves. Some people tend to give up more easily than the others in using the computer software. There are situations when people rush to complete their tasks. They are in a hurry.

Not wanting to change, expecting a clone, insufficient advertising and busy people are the reasons why OpenOffice / LibreOffice doesn't win in the office suite competition.

Large amount of data? Use database

If you add data every fifteen seconds or so, please use a database.

Common computer hardware such as 4GB of RAM and common CPUs (general CPUs, not for supercomputing) cannot process the data quickly.

You should use a database if you imagine you will frequently record data until you may have a huge amount of data.

If you expect that you need to enter some data every fifteen seconds, you should consider using a database.

Microsoft Excel and LibreOffice cannot handle a very large amount of data. I am talking about general purpose computing. I just have a common Intel CPU. I just have 4GB of RAM.

If you imagine you will need to save a large amount of data, no office productivity suites can handle this situation.

Only use a database. A database can handle a large amount of data.

Common databases are MySQL and PostgreSQL. If you decide to use either one, it will be tricky to migrate from one to another. Please decide with your wisdom.

In my experience, different versions of MySQL were or are incompatible, meaning that upgrading from one version to another might or may cause data loss. For PostgreSQL, upgrading did not cause any data loss in my case.

Remove default LibreOffice on Debian 7.5

This is the way to remove the default version of LibreOffice on Debian 7.5.

# aptitude purge libreoffice         \
libreoffice-base         \
libreoffice-base-core         \
libreoffice-calc         \
libreoffice-common         \
libreoffice-core         \
libreoffice-draw         \
libreoffice-emailmerge         \
libreoffice-evolution         \
libreoffice-filter-binfilter         \
libreoffice-filter-mobiledev         \
libreoffice-gnome         \
libreoffice-gtk         \
libreoffice-help-en-us         \
libreoffice-impress         \
libreoffice-java-common         \
libreoffice-math         \
libreoffice-report-builder-bin         \
libreoffice-style-galaxy         \
libreoffice-style-tango         \
libreoffice-writer        

Use a simple table to separate words

Here is what I think about using tables:

1. Use a table but don't draw a line to separate some words. 
2. As far as possible, use a simple table. Complex tables may not work all the time. Beautiful borders may not work.

I have used different versions of LibreOffice Writer. I could not be sure if a shape I drew would be displayed in exactly the same way.

To me, it is not the best practice to draw a line among words to separate them.

The best practice is to draw a table.

Shapes may move to different positions when you open the file in another version of LibreOffice.

To play safe, use a table.

In LibreOffice, press

Table -> Insert -> Table

This is also an issue in Microsoft Office Word. The same shape may not be in the same place. In Word, press

Insert -> Table

It is more likely that people using future versions of the word processing software can view the same table.

Count the number of words in LibreOffice Writer

How do I count the number of words in LibreOffice Writer?

There are two ways.

1.
Tools -> Word Count



2.
Look at the word count field in the Status bar.
Double-clicking on the word count field.

PDF in LibreOffice

How do I make a PDF file in LibreOffice?


There are two ways.

1.
File -> Export as PDF... -> Export

2.
Export Directly as PDF on the Standard toolbar

Let's see how to change the page orientation

Let's see how to change the page orientation.

http://youtu.be/yq2Pcy4Cb-g


Reference:

http://mindmapapp.blogspot.com/2012/12/orientation-of-page-in-libreoffice-on.html

Save with a password

Sometimes, there are sensitive documents, for example, documents I don't want the others to see.

An option in LibreOffice can create a password-protected document.

Increase the font size in a document

I would like to increase the font size of the text in a document. To do so, I select the text and choose a desired font size.

Increase row height in a spreadsheet

First of all, I would like the text in a cell to change lines (start a new line automatically). To do so, I click on:

Last used cell in a spreadsheet

I have a spreadsheet. The last used cell is E13. I would like to jump to that last used cell.

To do so, hold down Ctrl. Press End.

It is useful especially when a lot of cells are used.

Save button

Certainly, this is the "save" button in LibreOffice. You click on it to save the data.

For the new computer users, they probably don't know that this button resembles the shape of a floppy disk.

A floppy disk stores 1.44MB of data only. It cannot help you if you want to store large files such as video files.


Amazon's website shows some floppy disk drives capable of reading the data on a floppy disk. I don't know if these drives will exist after a few years.

It will be hard for the new computer users to figure out why this is the "save" button.

Handling a mark sheet with LibreOffice

Here is a useful mark sheet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ZD8gM2F8i_UkRIOC1FQnVfMGc/edit?usp=sharing

1. It gives the average marks, highest marks, number of passes and so on.
2. It also ranks the marks and puts the fails in brackets. 
3. Type the marks in the yellow cells.
4. Please change the "% of passing marks / max. marks" if necessary.

License of this mark sheet / Summary of License (5 Feb 2014)

Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Present photos in LibreOffice

To present photos easily, consider the steps below:

1. Start LibreOffice Impress.
2. Insert
3. Image
4. Photo Album
5. Add
6. Hold down "Shift" and use the mouse to click on the images
7. Open
8. Insert Slides

Backups of LibreOffice files

Here are the backups of LibreOffice 4.2:

(LibreOffice 4.2 is similar to Microsoft Office Word, Excel and PowerPoint.)


Windows users:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ZD8gM2F8i_c2JRODdRMWstd2c/edit?usp=sharing


Technical info:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ZD8gM2F8i_YXAzYjJXVkMzRms/edit?usp=sharing

Using LibreOffice 4.2 on Debian Linux

I installed LibreOffice 4.1 (L. O.  4.1). I am going to remove it first.

I am going to install LibreOffice 4.2.


Removing

If you are interested in removing L. O.  4.1, please visit:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Po8EekWCZVRISl3vCu0cvtLrVkxcI8-5j5fOr0JQnM4/edit?usp=sharing


Configurations of LibreOffice

It is a good idea to remove the old settings or configurations of LibreOffice, use:

    user1@debianMachine1:$ cd ~/.config
    user1@debianMachine1:$ rm -r ./libreoffice/

This step helps me to avoid any confusion. LibreOffice will start with a brand new user profile.

Conditional formatting in LibreOffice 4 on Debian Linux

A video has been made to demonstrate how to apply conditional formatting:
http://youtu.be/zXQnBGMIZnY



Captions:

0:00:00.490,0:00:08.430
>> LibreOffice How-To:
Conditional formatting in LibreOffice 4

0:00:08.490,0:00:15.430
>> Here are some screenshots

Fill in the blanks in LibreOffice 4 on Debian Linux

Captions

0:00:00.490,0:00:04.430
>> LibreOffice How-To:
Fill in the blanks in LibreOffice 4

0:00:04.490,0:00:07.430
>> Download LibreOffice
The link is www dot libreoffice dot org

Install and uninstall LibreOffice 4 on Debian Linux

Commands:


#!/bin/bash
# Part 1: Install
tar xf LibreOffice\
_4.0.0_Linux\
_x86_deb.tar.gz \
> /dev/null