Taming OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice

OpenOffice.org (OOo) and LibreOffice (LO) are suites of programs for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, and drawings. They are free to download, use, and distribute. They are available in many languages and run on Linux, Mac, Windows, and (OOo) other operating systems. Their native file formats are OpenDocument (*.ODT, *.ODS, *.ODP, etc.), but they can open and save to many other formats, including Microsoft Office formats (*.DOC, *.XLS, *.PPT, etc.).

The programs are very similar, being based on the same code. A few features differ, so your choice might depend on your needs. For most people, there is no significant difference between the two programs. To get one, go to the OpenOffice.org website or the LibreOffice website. You can install both programs on the same computer and switch between them.

Good introductions are Introducing OpenOffice.org (PDF) and Introducing LibreOffice.

Note (December 2011): Future versions of OpenOffice.org will be produced under the name “Apache OpenOffice” (AOO).

Scroll down to see recent posts in this blog.

What’s on this site?

Comments, tips, and pointers to articles written by other people about the various components of OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. Click on the links in the navigation bar at the top of any page, or search the blog.

Note: Some of the material on this site may be out of date. Some of it was originally written for OpenOffice.org 1.1.3 and has not been updated for OOo 2 or OOo 3. Some details have changed, but the general information is still relevant. I am updating the pages as I find time.

Books on OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice

In addition to the books listed in the sidebar, others may be given on this page; I haven’t updated the book list for some time, other than adding those published by ODFAuthors and the LibreOffice teams.

Now that the OpenOffice.org product and trademark are owned by Apache, the community has recently voted to change the name of future releases to “Apache OpenOffice” (dropping the “.org”). The transition of the website, wiki, forums, issue tracker, and other assets from Oracle to Apache is nearly complete, and work is well underway for the first release of Apache OpenOffice.

See also this post.

According to the announcement I saw, this free application displays Open Document Format (ODF) contents on iOS (iPAD/iPhone/iTouch) and Android phones and tablets. The viewer can display text documents, presentations, and spreadsheets (files in ODF version 1.2 format with .odp, .odt and .ods extensions) created by Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice, or other applications that support ODF. Note that it is a viewer only; documents can not be edited or saved.

You can browse files loaded to your devices and open files directly from a web link. You can also connect the viewer to a projector or monitor to display the content if you have a video-out connector.

I haven’t tried this yet (I’ve just downloaded it now), so I can’t say anything about it from personal experience, but it certainly looks potentially very useful for some of what I do.

During the LibreOffice Conference, The Document Foundation announced two advanced development projects which will become products sometimes in late 2012 or early 2013:

• LibreOffice Online Prototype (demo video).
• LibreOffice port project to Android and iOS.

The press release, with more details, is here.

Printed copies of OpenOffice.org Draw and Math guides are now available from Lulu.com:

OpenOffice.org 3.3 Draw Guide

OpenOffice.org 3.3 Math Guide

Printed copies of the LibreOffice Math, Impress, and Draw guides are now available from Lulu.com:

• LibreOffice Math Guide
• LibreOffice Impress Guide
• LibreOffice Draw Guide

The full Draw Guide (for the vector graphics component of LibreOffice) and Impress Guide (for the presentations or slide shows component) are now available in PDF and ODT on the Documentation page of the LibreOffice website.

Printed copies are coming soon.

As many readers of this blog probably know, Oracle has given OpenOffice.org to The Apache Software Foundation. The project has been in transition since early-mid June. A lot of legal, technical and other details are still being worked out. The project is in what Apache calls the “incubator” stage.

If you are interested in keeping up with developments, and especially if you would like to be involved, I encourage you to join the ooo-dev list at Apache and contribute to the discussions there, or at least browse through the archives.

To subscribe to the list, send an email to ooo-dev-subscribe@incubator.apache.org

The archives are here.

The Apache OpenOffice.org incubator website is here.

I recommend this slideshow on Apache OpenOffice.org by Ross Gardler, Vice President of
Community Development, The Apache Software Foundation.

There is also a video of this presentation.

Chapters in two more books have been published by the LibreOffice Documentation team:

LibreOffice 3 Impress Guide

LibreOffice 3 Draw Guide

PDFs and ODTs of the individual chapters are available from this page. Full books will be available soon.

Individual chapters of the OpenOffice.org 3.3 Draw Guide have been published. PDFs of the full book and of the individual chapters are available from this wiki page. The full book is coming soon.