OpenOffice 4.0 has been updated with a single installer to choose which components to install. It includes Writer, Calc, Impress, Math, Base and Draw, which are similar to older versions of Microsoft Office programs. The interfaces include toolbars, menus and a sidebar for common tools, but some feel it could include more OpenOffice tools. The update aims to better preserve document fidelity when opening files between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office formats.

1. OpenOffice has been updated after a
pretty long time. Once the major open
source competition for MS Office,it
started lagging behind.

5. 
Unlike the earlier iteration, OpenOffice 4.0 has
one installer to add the components that you
require. A wizard lets you set it as the default
software for Excel, Word and PowerPoint
documents. You can decide on the programs to
be installed, just like in any other current
software package.

6. 
There are five main programs in OpenOffice
4.0: The Calc spreadsheet, Writer, Impress
presentation software, plus Math (for editing
formulae) and Base and Draw. They are more
or less similar to their MS Office counterparts
of some time ago, and also have some pretty
useful business tools. Writer has
comments, DTP tools and tables, Calc has pivot
tables and macros, and Impress has some neat
presentation tools.

7. 
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It would have been great however, to also see best
chart suggestions and searching images and
directly adding them into your presentation , like
is available in Excel and PowerPoint.
While the interfaces are somewhat cluttered with
many toolbars and menus and the new sidebar,
they still take up less space on the screen in
comparison to the Office 2013 programs’ expanded
ribbon. A context sensitive panel on the screen’s
right displays the properties of the selected item,
enabling quick editing like panel resizing,
unlocking, dragging to change position, and even
reducing it to an icon bar.

8. 
On the sidebar reside the most used panels like
Calc’s function pane, image gallery, master
pages, styles and formatting pane, document
navigator that shows your document’s map
location and the Impress animation and
transition panes. These again are a little like the
Photoshop panels or Office 2003 task panes.

9. 
The sidebar remains open by default which
you can close if you wish to. It does not display
all the editable properties, for example,for an
auto updating date field, the option for
changing date format is not displayed, just the
text and paragraph options. A toolbar pops up
additionally at times, displaying identical tools
as the sidebar. An example would be the
Picture toolbar for changing a picture’s colour
which can be done from the sidebar; flipping
its orientation cannot be accessed from the
sidebar.

10. 
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In that sense, it helps you access common tools
difficult to see in toolbars and menus, though I
leaves you wanting for more OpenOffice tools to
be displayed.
The interface has some improvements like the
colour palette with a wider choice and clear
arrangement, and more useful colour gradients.
The Print Preview is pretty similar to what you can
get on paper, and this is especially true for
graphics. Pasting and drawing bitmap graphics are
also improved, and has gotten rid of jagged lines.

11. 

OpenOffice has been basically compatible with
MS Office formats and the new version better
preserves the fidelity of your documents for
lists, content tables, coloured
backgrounds, outlines, 3D shapes, embedded
text in images, charts, and other hitherto
problem areas.
A major bug fix is that now you can easily open
a file in Office that was password protected in
OpenOffice.