Linux users benefit from one of the best office suites, Open Office, which makes short work of word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

Open Office works on Linux, Windows and the Apple Mac.

Open Office a good free alternative to paid-for office suites and supports an open document format that is managed by the International Organisation for Standards, better known as ISO.

In this article we’ll show you how to create and save documents, and how to cope with Microsoft Office formats when sending and receiving documents by email. Click the link to catch up with the previous three parts of our open source academy.

Installing Open Office
It is likely that Open Office was installed with Mandriva Linux. If not, click the KMenu and choose System, then Configuration, then Configure your Computer.

Go into Software Management, search for ‘openoffice’, check the openoffice.org office suite, and click Apply to install it. Allow Mandriva to install any dependencies – software and drivers the program needs to run. Alternatively, download the program from www.openoffice.org, but using the version included with Mandriva is recommended for a smooth and easy installation.

Starting Open Office
Open Office installs shortcuts into the Office section of the KMenu. These include Writer under Wordprocessors, Base and Calc under Spreadsheets, Impress under Presentations, Draw under Drawing, and Writer/Web under Other. Note that Base is really a database manager, not a spreadsheet, and that to use it, Java must be installed. See our boxout on Java on page 40. Writer/Web is for creating web pages.

Finally, there is a link to Openoffice.org in the top level of the Office menu. Despite its name, this does not lead to a website, but rather to a us er-friendly wizard for starting any kind of document. This is a great place to start for those using Open Office for the first time. Double-click Text Document to run Open Office Writer.

This is not the place for a full word-processing tutorial, but here are a few tips for Writer, the equivalent of Microsoft Word.

Styles are a great way to ensure consistent formatting. Press the F11 key to show the available styles in a floating window. Double-clicking a style in the list applies its formatting to the current paragraph. A floating window gets in the way, so click the title bar and drag it to one edge. When it gets near the edge, a grey outline border indicates that it can be docked – stuck onto the side of the existing window. Release the mouse button to dock the window.

Similar instructions apply to other tools, such as the Navigator that shows an outline view of the document with one-click navigation. The Draw toolbar gives access to a set of shapes and drawing tools. Other tools include spell checking, thesaurus, footnotes, mail-merge, cross-references, indexes and tables. Do not be fooled by the fact that it is free: this is an advanced word-processing application.