Welcome to the Ubuntu screencast on office applications in Ubuntu.
Ubuntu comes with a very popular office application called OpenOffice.org,
which consists of four big parts, the word processor, spreadsheet,
presentation and a database module.
I'm going to cover first the word processor
and then we'll do some spreadsheets.
The word processor is very familiar if you have used any popular office package.
It's the basic setup, you've got buttons across the top,
and you can type here.
By default it's a fairly business-like font
and it's pretty simple to just start typing a letter.
So I'll just type up a letter here, quickly.
So this is the basic...
just a little basic letter here.
So you'll see how it has automatic spell checking
and you've also got a lot of formatting that you can do.
Those are the buttons up at the top
and if you click on any one of these it will modify your text accordingly.
I'm just double-clicking to select the entire word.
You can do that as often as you like.
And of course there is the rudimentary copying and paste functionality.
So if you select a word and go up to Edit and Copy,
remember that the keyboard shortcut for that is Ctrl+c.
And then you can paste that same word again.
For instance if I'm trying to repeat that and I didn't want to type it over,
I could hit Ctrl+v and that would paste that word back in.
Now letters often require some kind of address field.
So if I just type a basic address field in.
And you'll notice the squiggly line under screencast,
because OpenOffice.org doesn't see the word screencast as a word that it really recognizes.
So I typically ignore that, but you can also sub the dictionary to kind of understand that.
Now if I select this whole block of text, just by clicking and dragging across it
and go up to this little ruler up at the top.
I can drag both of these by clicking on the bottom triangle.
I can click both of them over
and actually indent the entire block of text over to the far right.
Now if I'm typing, if I type the first three letters of, for instance, December,
it can kind of guess what I'm going to type
and it will fill in the word automatically for me.
And if I hit return, it will auto-complete that word.
It's a very nice feature.
So here I've added a date.
Now the other way to add dates is to simply go up to the Insert.
And there's a number of fields that you can enter,
you can enter dates, times, page numbers.
Now if I double-click on that field,
I also have a whole host of options on how I can format that field
So that's kind of a nice option, if you want to go back later
and you decide you want to format it differently.
You can just double-click on any of the fields that are gray, like that
and it will give you a little bit of feed back, a little bit of control of how it looks.
Now lets assume that I've done a lot of work on this and I want to save it.
So I'll go to File -> Save and by default it takes me to my Documents folder,
which is quite handy and that's in just my normal user folder.
And I've already got some folders here,
but I could create a new one by clicking the Create Folder button.
And I can name the folder and if I hit return,
it commits that and takes me immediately into that folder.
So keep in mind that we are still in our Documents
and then we are one folder in, in my Ubuntu Screencasts Stuff folder.
And now I'm naming the actual document itself.
So I'll call it december...
maybe december_letter.
I like to use underscores because that's pretty safe for emailing.
So now the format of the document can be a variety of different formats.
So there's .odt, which is a great format for Linux, for Ubuntu.
If you're going to be using it mainly on your own computer that's a great format to use.
If you're going to send it to someone else, you might have to use a .txt or a .doc or something like that.
So lets go in and do a little bit more formatting.
I'm just going to make this sort of a list, then I'll use,
I'll put this down there.
So now again if you select a block of text, I'll just add a little bit of text.
If you select a block of text.
That's a bit much... that's better.
A block of text,
I can now format this and the buttons up at the top give me options between,
for instance, numbers.
So it can be a be a proper outline.
And the cool thing about that, is that it's dynamic.
So that if I decide I left something out, I can add it in
and it will re-number everything for me.
Now I can also change those numbers, maybe it's not really something that needs numbers,
I could change that to, for instance, bullets.
So at this point if I want to save the document,
I can just hit that little icon up there and it will save it,
because it already know the name of the document.
If I wanted to print it, I have buttons up here for printing.
I also have a really cool feature of just exporting it as a pdf.
pdfs are a very universal document format.
Now closing the document, you can close it with this little x, up here at the top.
And then we can see in the background here,
the pdf on the desktop where I saved it.
And it looks exactly as I had typed it.
So it's really nice
and you can see that there's not a gray box around any of the fields,
like the date field or those numbers, that was just for my reference as I type it.
But the pdf maintains all of the formatting, it's kind of nice.
So we're going to go back into OpenOffice.org
and let's create a new text document.
Lots of different kinds of documents that you can create,
but we're just going to keep doing just basic letter or text documents.
One cool feature about OpenOffice.org is that you can password protect your documents.
So I'm just going to type something and I'll go into Save.
And I will just leave it out here in the main Documents folder.
And I'll call it private_note.
And now down here on the left, there is the save with password button.
So if I hit save, it asks me to enter a password.
So I can enter anything in here, I just want to make sure I never forget this, obviously.
And I will say Ok. And so now I'm going to close it.
Once again now, if you hit that little x below the main x,
it just closes the document, but it keeps OpenOffice.org open.
So I can go back into Open now,
just to show you what happens if someone tries to open this.
So here is my private_note, which I have password protected.
I'll say open and now it asks me for a password
and you can see that I don't see anything in the background,
there's now way for me to actually see the contents until I enter the password.
So I'll try to fake my way through it.
And see I didn't type anything in, so it won't let me any further than that.
So now I'll type in the correct password and I'll say Ok.
And there's my message.
So it's quite neat to be able to password protect your stuff like that.
There's a lot of different tools in OpenOffice.org,
There's actually even some page layout functionality, which is kind of nice.
So if I click on this Show Drawing Tools button,
down at the bottom I have all kinds of different shapes
and objects that I can create.
And I can drag them around the page.
I could bring in pictures, for instance,
if I was doing something like a news letter or a flyer.
Lots of different shapes to choose from
Everything from decorative shapes to technical spreadsheet
or rather flow chart shapes.
So now I'm going to make this text a lot larger,
Put it in a different font and and I'll just start typing right over it
and it replaces it.
Now if I want to center this I can use the center button up at the top
and now it's centered text.
You have to keep in mind that centering and justification,
whether it's hugging the right margin or the left margin or the center of the page,
is specific to the line that you create that on.
So now I've just moved that whole line to the far right
and since I'm hitting return from that line it inherits the right justification.
So now when doing page layout you have to kind of understand that there are layers of objects.
So all of this text is on the very back layer.
And this box that I've drawn is essentially on top of that.
And there is an arrangement function in the format menu.
Which is not highlighted right now because I forgot to click on the box.
So I'm clicking on the box and now I'm going to go up to Format and there's the Arrange.
And you see I can bring things forwards or backwards.
But no matter how hard you try to bring, for instance, this box to the very back,
it's now as far back as it's going to go.
It's not going to go behind that text because that text kind of exists on the page itself.
So in order to get something in front of this box,
we need to create a new layer essentially,
that will exist on top of the box.
So to do that I use this little text box.
Now I can draw a box on top of the box.
And if I type...
Just type some text.
All the different Ubuntu variants.
Make it centered.
Click right outside and see now it's on top of the box.
So you have to keep in mind just kind of the layer structure of what you are doing,
when you are doing fancier, kind of page layout things.
So you can see as you move things around you start to reveal the other layers that exist
So since that's not really going to be of much use, we'll get rid of that.
But we can place the box.
Since these are all free floating objects, they're not like text that are kind of bound to the page.
You can move them around in pretty much any way you want.
So that's a very powerful kind of tool, if you're going to be doing something more
decorative than just a plain letter, for instance.
Now one of the things about text boxes is that
you can really structure the overall look of the page.
So if you draw a text box,
you're only going to be able to type within that text box.
But the nice thing is, well you can make your own little paragraphs this way,
especially if it's one of those fold up brochures or flyers, that's very handy.
But the nice thing about text boxes is that you can then adjust the text box
and the text will go along with it.
So in this case I've drawn a little bit of a square.
But then if I change my mind about the layout, maybe I want to change the look of this.
Then I can later grab on to the text box and modify it.
You can see here how the flyers was misspelled.
So now I can correct it on the fly because it's telling me that it's misspelled.
So now that I have clicked outside of this box, I get my little handles
and I can re-adjust the length of it, the size of it
and move it around, so it's quite nice.
A lot more flexible, obviously than simply going in and typing out text.
There's quite a bit of other tools that you can use,
which, really, I could go on for ever about all the different tools that OpenOffice,org has.
It's a really robust program, it's a pleasure to use.
I'm going to go ahead and just discard this, I think... Yes.
And it's definitely something that you can get a lot done in.
It's a very good office program.
There are also Wizards.
So if you have something that you are trying to create specifically,
that you just need to kind of get out quickly.
You don't want to have to think about it too much.
You can go into the Wizards and kind of have it help you.
There's also a labels functionality.
So if you're doing address labels, you can go into that.
You can use a database if you have a whole database of names that you need to import.
Or if you have a spreadsheet of names you can use the names out of that.
You can define what format of labels you're going to be printing onto.
So there's a couple of different brands of label makers out there.
And a couple of different serial numbers that they'll use,
that you can simply find in the drop-down menu
and it will auto-format the whole page and help you print labels.
So that they actually line up and print correctly.
So in this case I'll do sort of a return address label, for instance.
And what you'll want to do for that is enter the information in the left box,
decide on what kind of address label you want.
Click Ok and it fills it in as many times as it will fit on that page
according to the template that you've decided upon.
And now you can print this and it would line up perfectly with your label paper.
It's quite a handy tool.
And you can decorate these as well.
And you can bring in a picture or you can add color to it.
There's a lot you can do in OpenOffice.org.
Another thing in OpenOffice.org,
let me get rid of this pdf,
is the spread sheet application, which is just as robust.
And it's handy for, for instance, home budgets
or for budgeting projects, for charting things out.
And there's a lot of really neat tools in it.
that you can really help yourself keep track of things.
So I'm going to come up with a quick little example budget.
So let's say that I have got rent, car payment, food, computer and school expenses.
And we will just chart that for three months.
So now I'm going to just, I'm just arrowing over to each tab.
I'm just hitting the right arrow key.
And then down and left, I like to navigate just with the arrow keys.
It's kind of faster that way.
So I'm just entering fairly random numbers here.
So maybe I spent $250 on computers.
$150 and $148 in March.
And to type into these you don't have to be anywhere specific.
As long as you're on the cell, you can just start typing.
Now in theory this number bar up at the top,
this formula bar is the same as the cell.
So you can type into either place.
I find it easiest to simply start typing and it appears in the cell automatically.
Now obviously with most budgets you're going to want to create some kind of total amount.
So to do that, the sum button is really the easiest way to do it.
So you click the sum button and you click the column of the numbers that you want it to add up
and you hit return.
And it totals the amount for you.
Now the cool thing about the spread sheet is that it will actually,
it knows that if you were to copy this formula, from this column,
And move it over to the next column.
So I'm going to hit copy.
And I move it over one column and I will paste it in.
It actually knows that you are no longer wanting to add the January expenses up,
that you now want to add the February expenses.
And I'll paste it again and it now it knows that I want to do the March expenses.
So it's really fairly intelligent,
in terms of how it will change the formula for you as you move along.
So a lot of times in this program you'll only have to do something once
and then just continually paste it places.
Now one thing about these numbers is that they're just showing up as plain numbers.
So I'm going to go up to Format and hit Cells.
And now I'll select the tab of Numbers,
and I can define what kind of number I am entering.
So it's not just a number, it's actually currency.
I can choose a variety of different currencies.
In my case I'll use the USA English and decimal places,
how I want my negative numbers to appear and I say Ok.
And there's the Dollar signs.
So you don't have to do that row by row,
again if I click and drag over two rows and do the same thing,
it will apply to all those number in the two columns.
Again that's just in Format -> Cells and in the Numbers tab.
And click Ok.
And that promptly corrects it for you.
It's very nice.
Now there's a lot of formatting that you can do in this program as well.
So sometimes a blank, boring sheet doesn't really help you organize your data.
So if you go in to the Format for cells again, if I've selected the whole row.
I can go into the Background and choose a background color.
Maybe green for money.
And I'll say Ok.
And now it's green.
So now I'll click just on the column heading and it selects the whole column.
And so I go up to format again.
Format again, Cells...
So I'm still in the Background tab.
I'll choose the same shade of green.
Say Ok and now that whole column is green.
And that just helps you visually organize your data better.
Now the cool thing about these formulas too is that they are also dynamic.
So if I change a number here...
then it updates the total automatically.
So for budgeting this really really helps,
because you can simply do one thing and and just keep changing it and entering it.
Now you can also do the typical word processing kind of formatting.
You know, you can make you things centered, you can make them bold.
You can justify them to the right.
Whatever you want to do.
Maybe I'll make this one italic.
Now one the the really neat functions are the chart functions.
So if I select an area, not that, the area of my spread sheet that I want to chart.
All I have to do to render an actual chart is hit the chart button.
It automatically detects what kind of data I'm trying to chart.
And it actually give me a chart.
So you can see that it picks up the labels, January, February, March.
It gives me the numbers on the left side.
And it actually charts it out for me
then I can choose what kind of chart might suit my needs best.
So here a couple of different charts they've got.
You might want the line charts,
3d lines charts where it has actual depth to it.
And you can see how it has inherited all the different column headings and the row headings.
You can do it in a variety of different ways, just whatever suits your data best,
you can do that.
You can also choose the shape of some of the 3D objects.
And the realism, whether they have the lines outside of it
or whether they are just kind of shaded.
I can change the shape of the columns.
So I'll finish that, but in reality the chart is never really finished.
It's a live object as well.
So I'm just going to drag it out of the way a little bit.
So it's again a kind of floating object,
kind of like what we were doing with the page layout program.
Click outside of it, now if I update,
you can see if I update some of the numbers over here.
For instance, if I make this zero, watch the chart,
see how one of them just disappeared,
because now I didn't have any expenditure that time.
I'll do it again,
So you can see how all the orange columns are disappearing.
So it's actually updating the data in the chart as I make changes to my spread sheet.
So it's very dynamic, it's a really really easy way to chart out data,
and to keep track of things.
Very very nice.
So we'll close this out.
Maybe we'll save this at first so we can come back to it later.
I'm saving it in my Documents folder.
So I'll just create a new folder for it, call it budgets.
maybe call this first quarter budget.
And again you have a lot of different formats.
So the one I typically use is the .ods,
which is the native Open Document spread sheet format of this program.
But if you were going to send it to a friend with Excel or some other spread sheet program,
you might have to choose a different format.
But the .ods is really nice and it will maintain all of the formatting and the live chart,
things like that really well, without any kinds of problems.
So that's really very handy.
There's all kinds of different formatting you could do.
Again I could go on forever about this program, it has so many different things you could do.
You can draw graphics on to this spread sheet,
You can arrange them just like we did in the page layout.
You can define styles and formatting.
If you have specific styles that you've established that you really really like,
you can save them as styles, so that you can always access them quickly later on.
So it's a very powerful program.
Lots of different things that you can do on it.
Don't hesitate to play around with it and see what happens
It's quite handy.
This has been office productivity screencast
You can watch and request and share more screencasts at screencasts.ubuntu.com
and thank you for watching.