Tag Archives: OpenOffice.org

Pivot Tables in Excel and OpenOffice.org Calc

One of the features I find useful in Excel is the ability to create “pivot” tables. Essentially pivot tables let you summarize big tables of data in different ways, using different variables to “pivot” your data around (hence the name, I guess). Pivot tables are most easily understood through an example, so here’s one done [...]
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Making an A6 booklet in OpenOffice.org the easy way

Tutorial level: Elementary I recently had to create an A6 booklet for an event that was being hosted by DHAN Foundation/Tata-Dhan Academy. At first, I thought it would be a nightmare to design and print it—particularly because I only had one day to do the layout for a 60+ page book—but it turns out that [...]
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Am I inconsistent?

I won’t pretend that I don’t have any illegal software installed on my computers, but here are a couple of scenarios that have occurred at work recently. A student came to me with his new laptop and asked me “Can I have a copy of Office 2007?” I thought for a minute and said, “Um, [...]
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Drop caps with OpenOffice.org Writer

Tutorial Level: Elementary From time to time, I like some minor embellishments in my design, and one such embellishment I use is the drop cap that you commonly find in magazines and so on. In OpenOffice.org (OOo) it is pretty easy to do this throughout a document. As with the last tutorial, this one is [...]
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Automation with OpenOffice.org Writer

Tutorial Level: Intermediate At the Tata-Dhan Academy where I work, with each new batch of students, we try to promote the adoption of freeware or open-source software instead of promoting the already ridiculous levels of piracy that goes on around here. So, during our orientation, we introduce the students to OpenOffice.org—something which, unfortunately, causes many [...]
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