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Chapter
Getting Started Guide
Chapter
2
2
Starting OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice.org Copyright
This document is Copyright © 20052008 by its contributors as listed in the section titled Authors.
You may distribute it and/or modify it under the terms of either the GNU General Public License,
version 3 or later (
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
), or the Creative Commons Attribution
License, version 3.0 (
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
) or later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.
Authors
Carol Roberts
Daniel Carrera
Jean Hollis Weber
Laurent Duperval
Feedback
Maintainer: Jean Hollis Weber
Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to:
authors@user-faq.openoffice.org
Publication date and software version
Published 17 April 2008. Based on OpenOffice.org 2.3.
You can download an editable version of this document from
http://oooauthors.org/en/authors/userguide2/published/ Contents
Contents
Copyright
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Authors
....................................................................................................................................................i
Feedback
.................................................................................................................................................i
Publication date and software version
.....................................................................................................i
Starting OOo from the system menu
...........................................................................................................1
Windows
.................................................................................................................................................1
Linux/GNOME
.......................................................................................................................................2
Linux/KDE
.............................................................................................................................................3
Mac OS X
...............................................................................................................................................4
Starting from an existing document
.............................................................................................................5
For Windows users
.................................................................................................................................5
Using the Quickstarter under Windows
.......................................................................................................5
Using the Quickstarter icon
....................................................................................................................5
Disabling the Quickstarter
......................................................................................................................6
Reactivating the Quickstarter
.................................................................................................................6
Using the Quickstarter under Linux
............................................................................................................6
Preloading OOo under Linux/KDE
.............................................................................................................6
Starting from the command line
..................................................................................................................6
Starting OpenOffice.org
i
Starting OOo from the system menu
Starting OOo from the system menu
Using the system menu is the most common way to launch OpenOffice.org. The system menu is the
standard menu from which most applications are started. On Windows, it is called the Start menu.
On GNOME, it is called the Applications menu. On KDE it is identified by the KDE logo. On Mac
OS X, it is the Applications menu.
When OpenOffice.org was installed, a menu entry was added to your system menu. The exact name
and location of this menu entry depends on the graphical user interface. This chapter looks at
Windows, GNOME and KDE on Linux, and Mac OS X. The concepts should easily be applicable to
another operating system.
Windows
On Windows, the OpenOffice.org menu is located in Programs > OpenOffice.org 2.x, where 2.x
corresponds to the version number of OpenOffice.org. Figure 1 shows a typical setup on Windows
XP. Select OpenOffice.org Writer to start Writer with a blank document.
Figure 1: Starting OOo from the Windows XP Start menu
Starting OpenOffice.org
1 Starting OOo from the system menu
Linux/GNOME
GNOME installations differ from one distribution to the next. Most modern distributions come with
OpenOffice.org already installed. You will find OpenOffice.org under Applications > Office. See
Figure 2.
Figure 2: Starting OOo from the GNOME Applications menu
Fedora/Red Hat Enterprise Linux comes with OpenOffice.org installed. On the GNOME desktop,
OOo can be found under Main Menu > Office. If you have installed a newer version of OOo, you
will find it under Main Menu > Office > More Office Applications.
If OOo was downloaded from the
http://www.openoffice.org
website, OOo is under Applications >
Other.
Starting OpenOffice.org
2 Starting OOo from the system menu
Linux/KDE
On KDE, OpenOffice.org is installed in its own menu, called Office (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Starting OOo from the KDE start menu
Some Linux distributions install OpenOffice.org in the Office submenu. Mandrake is such a
distribution. In this case, to launch Math (for example), choose Office > Word processors >
OpenOffice.org Math. Figure 4 illustrates this.
Figure 4: Starting OOo from Mandrake's KDE menu
Starting OpenOffice.org
3 Starting OOo from the system menu
Mac OS X
Go to the folder where you installed OpenOffice.org. You should see its icon in the Applications
folder (Figure 5). To start OpenOffice.org, double-click its icon. This opens a text document in
Writer.
Figure 5: Starting OOo from the Applications folder on Mac OS X
To open the other components (Draw, Calc, Impress, Base), go to the File menu of the Writer
window and select the component you want. See Figure 6.
Figure 6: Opening different OOo components on the Mac
Starting OpenOffice.org
4 Starting from an existing document
Starting from an existing document
You can start OOo automatically by double-clicking the filename of an OOo document in a file
manager such as Windows Explorer. The appropriate component of OOo will start and the document
will be loaded.
For Windows users
File associations are used to open certain types of files automatically with OpenOffice.org. When
installing OOo, you could choose to associate Microsoft Office file types with OOo. If you chose to
do this, then when you double-click on a .doc (Word) file, it opens in Writer; a .xls (Excel) file opens
in Calc, and a .ppt (Powerpoint) file opens in Impress.
If you did not associate the file types, then when you double-click on a Microsoft Word document, it
opens in Microsoft Word (if Word is installed on your computer), Excel files open in Excel, and
Powerpoint files open in Powerpoint.
You can use another method to open .doc files in OOo and save in the .doc format from OOo. See
Chapter 3 (File Management in OpenOffice.org) for more information.
Using the Quickstarter under Windows
The Quickstarter is an icon that is placed in the Windows system tray during system startup. It
indicates that OpenOffice.org has been loaded and is ready to use. (The Quickstarter loads library
.DLL files required by OOo, thus shortening the startup time for OOo components by about half.) If
the Quickstarter is disabled, see Reactivating the Quickstarter if you want to enable it.
Using the Quickstarter icon
Right-click the Quickstarter icon in the system tray to open a pop-up menu from which you can
open a new document, open the Templates and Documents dialog, or choose an existing document to
open. (See Figure 7.) You can also double-click the Quickstarter icon to display the Templates and
Documents dialog.
Figure 7: Quickstarter popup menu
Starting OpenOffice.org
5 Using the Quickstarter under Windows
Disabling the Quickstarter
To close the Quickstarter, right-click on the icon in the system tray, and then click Exit Quickstarter
on the pop-up menu. The next time the computer is restarted, the Quickstarter will be loaded again.
To prevent OpenOffice.org from loading during system startup, deselect the Load OpenOffice.org
during system start-up item on the pop-up menu. You might want to do this if your computer has
insufficient memory, for example.
Reactivating the Quickstarter
If the Quickstarter has been disabled, you can reactivate it by selecting the Load OpenOffice.org
during system start-up checkbox in Tools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Memory.
Using the Quickstarter under Linux
Some installations of OpenOffice.org under Linux have a Quickstarter that looks and acts like the
one described above for Windows (the checkbox on the Memory page is labeled Enable systray
quickstarter).
Preloading OOo under L