Readers Preference Reviews

Beginning OpenOffice 3 walks the reader through using the most common features of OpenOffice, arguably one of the most powerful and complete office suite available.  And best of all, it is free!  Many companies and individuals are discovering it for the first time as they deal with the need to exchange files with others who are using the newest version of Microsoft Office. Given the choice of upgrading all their systems to the newest version or simply downloading OpenOffice 3, many are examining it as a viable option.  OpenOffice 3 can open and edit files created with the newest version of Word and save them in a format the Microsoft Office can open and use.

This brings us to the purpose of this book.  How do you find out how to use the features to achieve the results you want?  One of the best things about this book is the approach the author uses.  The entire book is project oriented so you learn by creating projects and solving problems in a real world scenario.  The book covers all the different software components - word processing, spreadsheet, database, illustration, and presentation software.  The author does an excellent job of focusing on and detailing the most common needs of a typical office.  You can literally start from no knowledge of office suite software at all and learn how to become a proficient user in relatively short order.  

The chapter on the word processing module starts from the very basics of opening a file or creating a new one.  From there the author leads the reader through formatting, creating and using templates, paragraph styles and other common needs.  Then he moves the reader through creating a newsletter, inserting graphics, word wrap, changing styles in a page and other advanced topics.  This section ends with understanding how to automatically create footnotes, endnotes, table of contents and style sheets.

The section on the spreadsheet module covers creating a spreadsheet, adding formulas, linking formulas to other cells, and multiple other common tasks.  In addition it covers creating charts and graphs and making them easy to understand.   The chapters on the presentation and illustration programs are much shorter but the programs are much less complex by design.  Presentation software needs to be able to create a slide show, change slides on a predetermined time scale, and add bulleted points and other basic actions needed to provide a solid presentation.  The illustration module also is designed to create or edit items for inclusion in newsletters or other publishing needs.  It is basically somewhat more powerful than paint but much less than Adobe or similar illustration packages.  

The database module is covered well with enough detail to learn how to use it but not so much as to get the reader lost in multiple foreign key linking and the like.  The author does a very good job of explaining the use of multiple tables and linking them for efficient database creation.  He also covers the creation of input forms, queries, and reports and other functional requirements of database management.  

Once you have a basic understanding of the different modules the second section of the book involves putting them all together to share content by building a web page with a database, ability to input information over the web and create queries and reports via the web browser.

The writing is concise while still being detailed enough to provide highly functional information.  Using it I was able to create a complete web based database for the processing of financial information for grant requests for a local foundation.  Granted I already had an extensive understanding of most of these areas but it was quick and easy to build it based on information supplied in the book.  

Beginning OpenOffice 3 is highly recommended to anyone interested in learning how to use this powerful office suite.

Author:  Andy Channelle

Publisher:  Apress

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219

Berkeley, CA 94710

Copyright: 2009

ISBN:  9781430215905

Pages:  451 plus appendix and index

Price:  $39.99