OpenOffice.Org Writer Tutorial

1. OpenOffice.org Writer and Microsoft Office Word
What is OpenOffice.org Writer?
It is a word processor software as one of the component of OpenOffice.org (OOo) software package.
OOo Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Office Word. All OOo suite can be used across a
variety of platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris. OOo
suite released under GNU GPL.
Let's Get Closer with OOo Writer
The interface
The following screen shot shows us the interface of OOo Writer. If you are familiar with Microsoft
Office Word, then you must be not surprised with OOo Writer interface.
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

2. The Tools
All of the editing tools look similar with what you have in Microsoft Office Word. I will only explain
some tools which are most commonly used by users.
(a) Bold tool
You can use that button to bold your texts, while you use in Microsoft Office Word.
(b) Italic tool
You can use that button to italic your texts, while you use in Microsoft Office Word.
(c)
Underline
tool
You can use that button to underline your texts, while you use in Microsoft Office
Word.
(d) Cut, Copy and Paste tool
You can use those button to do a cut, copy and paste in your document, while you use
in Microsoft Office Word.
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

3. (e) Bullet and Numbering
You can use those button to add bullets and numbering to your texts, and to manage the indent.
The following buttons can be used to manage the bullets and numbering. You can change the
style of the bullets and numbering by using the following buttons (2 buttons from the left).
Increase/Decrease bullets&numbering indent
Off Numbering/Bullet
Edit numbering style
Edit bullets style
(f) Break
To insert a break to your document, you can go to menu Insert then choose Manual Break.
There will be a pop up window as the following.
(g) Font Color
(h) Highlighter
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

4. (i) Font Work
Work Art
(j) Language
In your bottom panel, you will find such the above panel. Just click it, then choose a language
which is appropriate for you.
(k) Crop an Image
­ double click on the image that you want to crop
­ go to “Crop” tab
all you have to do is playing with the numbers
–
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

5. (l) Export PDF
One of many advantages of using OOo Writer is you can directly export your document into
PDF.
Or you can directly click icon.
(m)Page Number
To insert page number to your document, you can go to menu Insert, then click Fields.
(n) Symbols and special character
To insert a symbol in your text, you can go to menu Insert, then Special Character.
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

6. Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008

7. Document Format
The default document format for all OOo suite is in Open Document Format (ODF). For OOo
Writer, the file type will be in “.odt” (Open Document Text).
An advantage of saving your file in .odt format is the file size will be smaller rather than if you
save it in .doc or even worse in .docx.
From the screen shot above, you can see that if you save your document in .doc the file size is
602.5KB, but if you save it in .odt, the file size will be only 502.2KB.
Ruth Marya – President Unviersity – December 10, 2008