Openoffice tools

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Open Office by Sun Version 3.0 to 3.2
Open Office is presently acquired by Apache

You must have been working on Microsoft word for your job work . Thers is another office productivity tool called OpenOffice.org, and often called OpenOffice or Ooo. It is an open-source office productivity software suite whose main components are for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations,graphics, and databases. OpenOffice originated as StarOffice, a proprietary office suite developed by German company StarDivision. In August 1999, StarDivision was acquired by Sun Microsystems which released it as open source software under the name of Open Office. Sun in 2010, was acquired by Oracle Corporation briefly continued developing OpenOffice.org which it renamed Oracle Open Office, but in 2011 the firm stopped supporting commercial development and contributed the suite to the Apache Incubator to become a project of the Apache Software Foundation. As of December 2011, the project is officially known as Apache OpenOffice.It is now managed by Apache. OpenOffice is available for a number of different computer operating systems. It supports the ISO/IEC standardOpenDocument Format (ODF) for data interchange as its default file format, as well as Microsoft Office formats among others. 

Features of OpenOffice Suite:

  • It is an Free and Open Source Software. You can free to use, distribute, copy, and modify the software as much as you wish, in accordance with either of OpenOffice’s Open Source licenses. Many features that are available as 'extra cost add-ins' in other office suites (like PDF export) are free with OpenOffice
  • You can use it across multiple Platform. Supported platforms include Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, BSD, OpenVMS, OS/2 IRIX. Recent versions also support Mac OS X. OpenOffice runs on several hardware architectures
  • Extensive Language Support. As of June 2011, OpenOffice.org supports over 120 languages. OpenOffice’s user interface is available in over 40 different languages, and the OOo project provides spelling, hyphenation, and thesaurus dictionaries in over 70 languages and dialects. OpenOffice also provides support for both Complex Text Layout (CTL) and Right to Left (RTL) layout languages (such as Urdu, Hebrew, and Arabic).
  • You will find Consistent User Interface in all the components of OpenOffice Suite. Thus a similar “look and feel,” across all components thus making it easy to use as office tools.
  • Integration. The components of OpenOffice are well integrated with one another. All the components share a common spelling checker and other tools, which are used consistently across the suite. For example, the drawing tools available in Writer are also found in Calc, with similar but enhanced versions in Impress and Draw. You do not need to know which application was used to create a particular file. For example, you can open a Draw file from Writer.
  • You can export or save file in a wide range of file formats. There is an inherent File Compatibility in the Open Odfice. In addition to its native OpenDocument formats, OpenOffice includes PDF and Flash export capabilities, as well as support for many common file formats including Microsoft Office, HTML, XML, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3.

Applications in Open Office-

Module Notes
OOoWriter.svg Writer Writer is the word processor component of the OpenOffice Suite. It is similar to Microsoft Word And is used for creating document such as letters, books, reports. It has all the features of a word processor such as spelling check, thesaurus, hyphenation, autocorrect, find and replace. Writer can export files to HTML, XHTML, XML, Portable Document Format (PDF), and several versions of Microsoft Word files. can function as a basic WYSIWYGeditor for creating and editing web pages..
OOoCalc.svg Calc Calc is the spreadsheet component of the OpenOffice Suite similar to Microsoft Excel. Calc has more advanceed analysis features than Microsoft Excel. It enables charting, and decision-making features expected from a high-end spreadsheet. It includes over 300 functions for financial, statistical, and mathematical operations, among others. The Scenario Manager provides “what if” analysis. It also supports export to MS Excel version.As in the writer, Calc can also export spreadsheets to PDF and HTML..
OOoImpress.svg Impress Impress is the tool similar to Microsoft PowerPoint ,to create presentation in OpenOffice. It provides all the common multimedia presentation tools, such as special effects, animation, and drawing tools. As with all the Open office tols it is compatible with Microsoft’s PowerPoint file format. It also supports exporting the file as PDF, SWF (Macromedia Flash) and numerous graphics formats.
OOoBase.svg Base Base is the database management program of the OpenOffice Suitesimilar to Microsoft Access. It provides tools for day-to-day database work within a simple interface. It can create and edit forms, reports, queries, tables, views, and relations, so that managing a connected database is much the same as in other popular database applications. You can also use dBASE, Microsoft Access, MySQL, or Oracle, or any ODBC-compliant or JDBC-compliant database in Base.
OOoDraw.svg Draw A vector graphics editor comparable in features to early versions of CorelDRAW. It features versatile "connectors" between shapes, which are available in a range of line styles and facilitate building drawings such as flowcharts. It has similar features to desktop-publishing software such as Scribus and Microsoft Publisher. Draw can also export its creations to the PDF format.
OOoMath.svg Math Math is tool for editing formula or equation , similar to Microsoft Equation Editor. You can use it to create complex equations that include symbols or characters as it supports multiple fonts. You can embed the formulae inside other OpenOffice documents like Writer, Impress. You can also export it as PDF.

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