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GNOME Office: Is it a viable office suite?

Jack Wallen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:43:45 +0000

When you think about office suites, two names come to mind: Microsoft Office and OpenOffice. There is a good reason for that – they are the two powerhouses in the field. Of course there are alternatives. For Windows there is Softmaker Office and Lotus Symphony. For the Mac there is iWork. For Linux there is Softmaker Office, Lotus Symphony, KOffice and GNOME Office. Although the vast majority of Linux users depend upon OpenOffice for their office needs, the alternatives should not be overlooked.

But is GNOME office and alternative that you should overlook? More than likely most readers didn’t even know there was a GNOME office. And of those that have heard rumors of this suite, many probably didn’t even know it was ready for installation. It is. But the big question…is it worth try? In this article I will highlight the tools that make up GNOME Office and help you to decide if this suite is worth your time.

Installation

The first thing I should bring up is the installation. Previous incarnations of GNOME Office required the user to install the pieces separately. That has changed and now you can open up the GNOME Software Center and follow these steps:

Search for ‘gnome office”.
Select GNOME Office.
Click the right-pointing arrow.
Click the Install button.
Enter your password.
Sit back and watch the installation happen.

What GNOME office installs is the following (some may already be installed):

Abiword: Word processor
Gnumeric: Spreadsheet
Evolution: Email, contacts, calendar
Planner: Project manager
Inkscape: Vector graphics
XSane: Scanning

There are other tools that are supposed to be included with GNOME Office, but are not installed:

Gnucash: Finances.
gLables: Label designer
Glom: Database designer.

Why the above tools are listed on the GNOME Office official site and not installed I have no clue. Of course those are simple enough to install, just by going to the Software Center and going through the same steps above.

Value of the applications

Instead of taking each piece apart and showing you how they work, I want to spend a little time on whether or not each application is a worthy usurper of your current tool. And since I do not know the tool you are using, the usurper is going to have to be pretty good.

Abiword: I have always wanted to like Abiword. And, in some instances I do. But the problem is that Abiword really stinks at document exchange. Abiword’s idea of formatting doesn’t always gel with another Office Suite’s idea. But I will say that Abiword has come a long, long way. And if you are just needing a simple word processor that is lightweight and fast, Abiword is a great alternative. Does it match the skills of OpenOffice? Not so much.

Gnumeric: Another tool that I have always wanted to like, but have been prevented from doing so because of its poor ability to work with other tools. Any spreadsheet that uses complex formulas or formatting will most likely wind up a bit of a mess in Gnumeric. But for basic spreadsheet use, Gnumeric will get the job done.

Evolution: If you are looking for a groupware suite to take the place of MS Outlook, this is where you need to go. Evolution is, without question, the best groupware suite available for Linux. It’s power, easy to use, reliable, and includes everything you need for a groupware suite. This is, by far, the best tool of the GNOME Office suite.

Planner: Because most office suites do not generally include a project management tool, planner is a surprising addition to the suite. Not only does planner bring a much needed tool to the office suite, it does so with aplomb.

Inkscape: There is only one office suite that includes a vector graphics application – OpenOffice. Inkscape brings to GNOME Office one tool that the competition can not touch. Inkscape is the best vector graphics tool for the Linux operating system. There is, however, a rather steep learning curve that comes with using Inkscape. So don’t expect to just jump into this tool without any idea of what you are doing.

XSane: You can read my article on Xscane (”Scanning in Linux with iScan and XSane.”) I think most readers will agree that XSane is an overly complex tool for a simple task. However, XSane can be made simple by simply closing all of the unnecessary windows.

The verdict

Although GNOME Office makes a valiant attempt at replacing your current office suite, it fails in too many categories to actually usurp the big dogs in this space. Now, if are in a situation where you are not having to trade documents with others and you do not need the power features of tools like Excel or Calc, and you don’t need a tool for presentations then GNOME Office might be your go-to suite of tools. Otherwise, stick with OpenOffice or MS Office.

What do you think? Is GNOME Office a worthy entry in the office suite category?

Tags: Calc, excel, MS Office, office, office suite, powerpoint, presents, word, writer

Pointofix Presentation Software

Martin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:52:42 +0000

Not every software program that is used in presentations supports onscreen aids to visualize or highlight key areas. Microsoft PowerPoint and a few others do but what if Firefox, Internet Explorer or a desktop software are used in the presentation?

That’s where Pointofix comes into play. The portable software program provides access to onscreen tools that can aid during presentations. It will display a small always on top window with a start button. A click on that button will display the controls of the presentation software that can be used to paint various forms, symbols and colors on the screen.

The program should work with every software program as long as it is not been started in full screen (games for example are not working but a maximized Internet Explorer window is). Available onscreen presentation tools include drawing arrows, lines, rectangles and other objects on the screen. It is furthermore possible to add checkmarks and text, change the color of the onscreen items and magnify or zoom to highlight key areas further.

Pointofix is a German software. International users need to download the language pack that is offered on the website of the developers. This language pack will change the interface language from German to other languages such as English, French, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Hungarian or Swedish. All that needs to be done is to rename the desired language file to pointofix_translation.ini and move it into the directory of the presentation software.

Pointofix is compatible with most Windows operating system. The software is also provided with an installer for users who prefer to install their software programs.

Tags: pointofix, powerpoint, presentation software, presentation tools, presentations

How To Join The Microsoft Office Web Apps Technical Preview Right Now

Martin — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 08:29:42 +0000

Office Web Apps could be Microsoft’s answer to Google Docs. Their intention is to offer the most popular Office applications like Word, Excel and PowerPoint, for free online as web applications giving users the chance to work with new and old documents on the Internet without the need for an Office installation on the computer system they are currently working with.

A limited technical preview of Office Web Apps was announced yesterday. Interested users could apply to become part of the technical preview but there was no instant way to get access to Office Web Apps at that time.

Instead of having to wait days, week or even months before they get accepted users can do the following to get instant access to Microsoft’s Office Web Apps preview.

It starts by logging into Windows Live Skydrive. Users who do not use English as their main language might need to change the language to English first before they can continue with the process.

Upload at least one Office document. The following screen should appear after uploading that document:

A sentence with a link to join the preview program should be visible above the uploaded document. A click on that link will open a license agreement page. Accepting the license will automatically enable the Office Web Apps Technical Preview for that account.

A new menu entry will be displayed in the header afterwards called new. A click on that opens a submenu with options to create a new Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, Microsoft Word document, Microsoft Excel workbook or Microsoft OneNote notebook.

Only Excel workbooks and PowerPoint presentations are available at this moment in time. It is also possible to edit Excel and PowerPoint files that have been uploaded. Files that can be edited will have an Edit option in the top menu indicating that. via Liveside

Tags: excel, live skydrive, microsoft-office, office, office web apps, onenote, powerpoint, technical preview, word

Office Web Apps (to be) Included Free In Windows Live

Martin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:24:49 +0000

Office Web Apps is basically a version of Microsoft Office on the Internet. While it is likely that the initial release will not provide access to the complete functionality of the various Office products like Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint it will offer the most commonly used functionality. Best of all, completely free for all Windows Live users. Microsoft began sending out invitations to the beta of Office Web Apps to Windows Live Skydrive users and after the beta tests have finished will become available to all 500 million Windows Live user.

Probably the two most interesting aspects of the announcement of Office Web Apps is that it will be completely free and compatible with browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. Microsoft has not been very specific about the requirements but Brian Hall mentioned Firefox and Safari in the announcement. It is likely that additional web browsers will be supported as well. There have also been no information regarding access from other operating systems like Linux or Mac at this point.

Office Web Apps can be interesting for many users who sometimes work on computer systems where Microsoft Office is not installed. It would allow them to work with their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents online. This would get rid of formatting problems and other difficulties when editing these documents in Office alternatives.

Interested users can apply to become a part of the Office Web Apps beta test.

Tags: excel, microsoft-office, office, office online, office web apps, powerpoint, windows live, word

Microsoft Office Live Workspace Add-in

Martin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:59:48 +0000

Microsoft Office add-ins add a wide variety of features to Microsoft’s Office. Most are designed to add functionality to specific programs like Microsoft Word, Excel or Outlook. The Office Live Workspace add-in is an official add-in that is being developed by Microsoft. It provides Microsoft Office users with the ability to upload their documents to the Microsoft Office Live Workspace on the Internet.

This does mean that an account at Microsoft Office Live Workspace is required before the add-in can be used. The service is free on the other hand and it takes only a few seconds to signup for it. Windows Live account users can use their account to signup for Microsoft Office Live Workspace. The service is currently in beta and provides access to 5 Gigabytes of storage space for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that can also be edited on the website.

Office 2007 users find the option to upload their documents to the Microsoft Office Live Workspace and to open documents from the online storage space under the Microsoft Office button in Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Office 2003 and XP users get a new Office Live toolbar that provides access to three buttons that offer the functionality to open documents that are stored at Microsoft Office Live Workspace, save documents so that they are stored online and to open the Office Live Workspace website.

The Office Live Add-in itself is compatible with Microsoft Office 2007, Office 2003 and Office XP.

Tags: excel, microsoft excel, microsoft powerpoint, microsoft word, microsoft-office, office 2003, office 2007, office live, office live workspace, office workspace, office xp, powerpoint, word

Apply To Become A Microsoft Office 2010 Tester (US Only)

Martin — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:23:31 +0000

Microsoft Office 2010 will be the next installment of Microsoft’s popular Office suite. We already mentioned Outlook 2010 or more specifically the user protest that Microsoft’s decision to use the Word rendering engine for HTML emails sparked yesterday. Microsoft is looking for participants for the Microsoft’s Office 2010 Real Life Stories program.

Eligible are families, students and small businesses that own 5 PCs or less from the United States. Each selected participant will receive a preview copy of Microsoft Office 2010, access to web versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint plus dedicated support by a program manager and various other sources.

Participants specifically get:

Microsoft Office 2010 pre-installed on a “loaner” laptop PC – before it ships!
24-hour unlimited e-mail support Monday – Friday, with phone support for escalations
Monthly webcast training and Q&A sessions
Community site access, so you can connect with other participants and easily use resources like feature videos and announcements
FREE copy of Microsoft Office 2010 (when available)

This does come at a price. The loaner laptop and Microsoft Office 2010 have to be used on a daily basis and Microsoft expects participants to take part in surveys, trainings and calls with the chance to be invited to share the story on an even broader level by being featured in case studies and videos.

The Microsoft Office 2010 Real Life Stories program is available to US citizens only at this point in time. They can submit an application at the official website until June 30.

Tags: excel, microsoft, microsoft office 2010, office 2010, outlook 2010, powerpoint, real life stories, word

5 Tips To Reduce The Size Of Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations

Martin — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:03:15 +0000

Microsoft PowerPoint presentations can take up lots of hard drive space. The size of the presentations depends largely on the multimedia content – that is pictures, videos and audio – that has been added to the presentation by its creator. While this usually is not a big problem for presentations that do not have to be distributed it could become one if the document has to be distributed to other users. The following five tips will help uses to reduce the size of their Microsoft PowerPoint presentations so that their distribution does not put as much weight on the network infrastructure than before which saves costs and time.

1. Use the new pptx format instead of ppt where possible. Saving a blank Microsoft PowerPoint presentation as pptx instead of ppt decreases the size of the presentation by about 70 Kilobytes. The new PowerPoint format handles multimedia content – especially pictures and photos – much better than the old format. Dragging a 1.2 Megabyte image into the blank PowerPoint presentation resulted in a pptx file size of 1.25 Megabytes instead of 5.62 Megabytes which the old ppt format occupied.

2. The biggest size reductions can be achieved by optimizing multimedia content in PowerPoint presentations. It usually comes down to images that have been added to the presentation but also other forms like videos or audio content.

You can compress all pictures that have been added to Microsoft PowerPoint by clicking on Format > Compress Pictures in PowerPoint 2007.

Selecting Screen or Email in the advanced options will reduce the size of the PowerPoint presentation further. It might however degrade the quality of the picture.

3. Please note that it is sometimes not possible to compress an image further especially if it already has been in a compressed picture format. It might however help to decrease the size of the image to reduce the overall size of the PowerPoint presentation. Many users add images that are to large to the PowerPoint presentation instead of reducing the height and width before adding it. It is always a good idea to optimize images in height and width before adding them to the PowerPoint presentation.

4. Use hyperlinks to multimedia content if possible. Not all video and audio content has to be embedded into the PowerPoint presentation. It sometimes make more sense to upload the content to a server (for example Ovi)on the Internet instead of embedding it directly. This will reduce the size of the presentation so that it becomes easier to distribute.

5. Save the PowerPoint presentation in a different format. Saving the same PowerPoint presentation (that uses 1.25 Megabytes of space in pptx format) as pdf reduces the file size to 352 Kilobytes. While it is not always feasible to distribute a presentation as pdf (or flash) it might be the optimal in most cases

Tags: microsoft powerpoint, microsoft-office, powerpoint, powerpoint files, powerpoint presentations, powerpoint tips

Microsoft Office Add-ins Manager

Martin — Sun, 10 May 2009 12:36:04 +0000

Add-ins are a great way of increasing the functionality of Microsoft Office. Some add-ins are compatible with all Microsoft Office programs while others only work in specific applications such as the email client Microsoft Outlook or the presentation software Microsoft PowerPoint. Microsoft Office does not however provide an easily accessible interface to manage all add-ins that are currently installed which is why Topalt’s EnableDisable, a startup manager for Microsoft Office add-ins, might come in handy. Not all add-ins are needed all the time and some even slow down the startup or performance of Microsoft Office programs.

The Office add-in startup manager provides the means to disable Microsoft Office add-ins comfortably. The program will display all add-ins, enabled or disabled, that are currently installed in Microsoft Office. It sorts the add-ins in tabs that refer to the Microsoft Office program that they are installed in. Displayed are tabs for Microsoft Access, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Word.

The listings contain checkboxes, the startup type of the individual add-in, its name and description. The Office add-in will be loaded if the checkbox is checked. All it takes to disable an add-in is to uncheck it in the program.

EnableDisable might also come in handy to permanently disable add-ins in Microsoft Office in case they are not needed at all. All in all a very straightforward comfortable tool to manage Microsoft Office add-ins.

Tags: access, enabledisable, excel, microsoft-office, office, office add-ins, outlook, powerpoint, word

DemoHelper Aids During Presentations

Martin — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:59:05 +0000

DemoHelper is a lightweight portable software for Microsoft Windows operating systems that will aid the user during presentations. It adds two new possibilities to the computer system. The first is to zoom in and move around on the computer screen while the second allows to draw on the computer monitor.

Both functions can be triggered by pressing hotkeys, namely the combination [CTRL SHIFT 1] for zooming ing and [CTRL SHIFT 2] for drawing on the screen. It has to be noted that it is possible to draw on the screen after zooming in at least once without having to press the drawing hotkey first.

Both hotkeys can be changed in the program’s options. The only other parameters that can be changed in the options are to define a time in seconds after which drawings on the screen will disappear automatically and if the mouse cursor should be captured.

The software program uses less than 3 Megabytes while running on the computer system which together with its tiny size of just 76 Kilobytes makes it an ideal companion for a portable device or presentation disk. It is compatible with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and will probably also run on Windows Server and Windows 7.

DemoHelper is definitely not the first software program review of a software that helps spice up presentations. Other applications that offer similar features are Computer Whiteboard or Zoom It.

Tags: computer whiteboard, demohelper, portable software, powerpoint, powerpoint presentation, presentation, presentations, windows software, zoom it

Merge Microsoft PowerPoint Presentations

Martin — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:08:46 +0000

There is no obvious way to merge several Microsoft PowerPoint presentations and while many users probably could not think of a reason why someone would want to merge PowerPoint presentations some might find that it can improve the manageability of a set of presentations. Say you received several presentations during a meeting and instead of storing them independently you might find it easier to maintain and access if they all were saved in one file.

PowerPoint Join (via Friedbeef) is a small HTML Application (HTA) that can merge several PowerPoint documents into one. The use is not overly complicated but it requires some work on part of the user. The Microsoft PowerPoint presentations that should be joined have to be in the same folder. The user needs to create a text document that lists the names of all PowerPoint files that should be merged which also has to be in the same directory.

That text document is then loaded in the HTML application. A click on the link here in step 2 of the process will merge the PowerPoint documents and display a blank PowerPoint window afterwards.

That window can be closed. Step 3 will display links to the combined file directly and to the folder were it has been created. The name of the file is combined.ppt. It contains all slides of all PowerPoint presentations that have been merged in the order selected by the user. (All slides of file 1, then file 2 and so on.)

Tags: html application, microsoft powerpoint, ms powerpoint, powerpoing document, powerpoing join, powerpoint, powerpoint merge, windows software

PowerPoint Joiner

Martin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:57:24 +0000

If you have ever felt the need to join multiple Powerpoint documents then you might want to take a closer look at PowerPoint Joiner which is currently available as version 0.2 from the Google Code website. Using PowerPoint Joiner can be useful if a series of charts or documents are available that are used to create presentations regularly. In other words, if charts are picked regularly that cannot be put into order because their order changes depending on the presentation at hand.

It might also be useful if a user wants to merge several PowerPoint presentations into one which is beneficial for keeping an overview of the presentations on the computer.

PowerPoint Joiner provides an interface that requires almost no interaction. It works by using a text document that lists the PowerPoint document that should be combined. The use of the text file for that purpose seems superfluous as there is not really any added benefit of using the text document. It would have been easier if the user could add PowerPoint documents to a list, sort them the way he wants them and let the application do the joining.

PowerPoint Joiner is a portable application that was tested fine on Windows XP Service Pack 3 and should be compatible to most other Microsoft operating systems.

Tags: microsoft powerpoint, microsoft-office, powerpoint, powerpoint charts, PowerPoint Joiner, windows software

Microsoft pptPlex Plugin For Powerpoint

Martin — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:16:08 +0000

Microsoft Powerpoint is one of the most popular tools for creating presentations. The only flaw, if you would call it that, is its linear approach. Each slide has an exact position in the presentation which makes it problematic, but not impossible, to present different aspects of the topic.

Microsoft pptPlex is a plugin for Microsoft Powerpoint coming right out of the Microsoft Office Labs. What it does is that it provides an alternative way of presenting slides by offering a tour through a zoomable canvas instead of the default linear approach

Microsoft pptPlex currently works with Powerpoint 2007 running on Windows XP or Windows Vista. The official website contains several tutorial videos that explain the basic concepts of the Powerpoint plugin and are recommended to watch before installing the plugin.

Installation is pretty straightforward. Just download and install pptPlex, open a new presentation in PowerPoint and click on the pptPlex tab at the top to display all pptPlex buttons. A click on the Insert new Section button adds a new section while Canvas Background allows for background selection. Using pptPlex is not overly complicated.

Tags: microsoft, microsoft plex, office labs, powerpoint, powerpoint 2007, pptplex

Sendshield Prevents Private Data Leaks When Sending Office Documents

Martin — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:42:17 +0000

Experienced users know that Microsoft Office documents can contain hidden information that can be revealed after enabling functions to see them in Microsoft Office products. This can include hidden rows and data in Excel spreadsheets, embedded information in Powerpoint presentations or revision histories in Microsoft Word documents.

Hidden data can have severe consequences for the sender or his company. Sendshield provides examples of companies who forgot to remove hidden data and the consequences that it had. You find examples for companies like Google, Merck, Microsoft (oh the irony) and the United Nations.

Sendshield acts as a proxy that analyzes every Office document, Word, Excel or Powerpoint, that is attached in Microsoft Outlook. It warns the user that the document contains hidden data and provides a convenient way to remove the data.

A red warning sign and a line appear beneath the attachments of that email which opens a new window that is displaying in depth information about the hidden data in the document(s). The user has the option to remove the data on a individual entry basis or all at once.

This process does not change the original document in any way which is a benefit of using Sendshield instead of manually editing the document.

Tags: microsoft excel, microsoft word, microsoft-office, outlook, powerpoint, sendshield, spreadsheet

Default To Doc in Word 2007

Martin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:22:51 +0000

It seems that Lifehacker is having Ghacks week which I personally do not mind but the amount of articles that they referred to is stunning. I found reference to another blog that had a tutorial on how to change the default save format in Word 2007 from Docx to Doc.

I had some problems in the past when I saved documents in Word 2007 in docx format only to get cries for help of users who could not open the document because they were using a previous version of Word. I had the option to explain to them how they could open it (convert online or download the compatibility pack) or convert it to doc and send it to them again.

This happened several times and I finally decided to look for an option to change the default save format in Word. The article at Technix Update reminded me of that and I thought it would be nice to post the quick tutorial as well.

All that needs to be done is to open Word 2007. Once open a click on the Office icon on top and a selection of Word Options loads the menu where the default format can be changed. Just select Save in the left pane and pick Word 97-2003 Documents instead of the default Word Document.

A document that is simply saved will from now on have the file extension doc and not docx. I have not checked but I assume similar options are available for Excel and Powerpoint.

Tags: doc, docx, excel, microsoft-office, office tip, powerpoint, word

Google Docs Templates

joshua — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:11:48 +0000

Everyone likes to bang on about how Google Docs is going to be the end of Microsoft Office, but people say that sort of thing all the time… 2008 is going to be the year of the desktop Linux apparently, or was that 2009?

Anyway I don’t actually mean to right off Google Docs, I use it myself all the time, however for very different purposes then what I use MS Office for.

Google rolls out new features every few months or so, and the latest is a welcome addition to the online office suite… templates.

I’ve actually wanted this feature for quite some time and although there has been the ability to style documents with CSS, I can’t be bothered with that, I wanted some templates like Office.

Now when you click New in the Docs menu you can select “From Template” and choose from hundreds of spreadsheet, presentations and document templates.

The document selection is actually very good and there is a lot of great professional looking templates as well as the usual letter/resume style personal documents. The Presentation templates are a bit simpler then what you could find in Powerpoint, but good enough. Lastly the spreadsheet templates are very useful and there are a whole lot of invoice/financial ones.

It will be interesting to see what Google rolls out next. Office Live, Microsoft’s answer, is just too slow for me to use at the moment, but Google Docs is not good enough to use all the time.

Tags: docs, Google, google docs, microsoft, microsoft-office, office, powerpoint

Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP

Martin — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:20:48 +0000

Much like images that have been created with digital cameras Word documents contain hidden meta data that contain information about the author of the document. It can also contain additional information like comments and remarks, previous authors or revisions. While that is normally not a problem for the author because most recipients do not care or know that those information are available it can become a problem in some cases.

The most notable is that it is a privacy issue for the author of the document. I would not feel comfortable if I had to publish a document on the Internet that would contain information about me. The information could also be used by someone else to find out if you are the real author of the document.

Microsoft’s Remove Hidden Data tool for Office 2003 and Office XP is an add-in that provides the user with an option to remove that meta data from the documents. The application that created the document has to be installed to make this work though. I’m not sure if it is backwards compatible but it seems to be logical that it should be.

The application can be controlled from within the applications of Microsoft Office or from the command line. The following information can be removed with the Office tool:

Comments.
Previous authors and editors.
User name.
Personal summary information.
Revision marks. The tool accepts all revisions specified in the document. As a result, the contents of the document will correspond to the Final Showing Markup view on the Reviewing toolbar.
Deleted text. This data is removed automatically.
Versions.
VB Macros. Descriptions and comments are removed from the modules.
The ID number used to identify your document for the purpose of merging changes back into the original document.
Routing slips.
E-mail headers.
Scenario comments.
Unique identifiers (Office 97 documents only).

Restrictions prevent it from removing those information from the following types of documents:

Documents using rights-management permissions
Protected documents
Digitally signed documents
Shared workbooks

It does work pretty well. Users of Office 2007 on the other hand do not need to install this tool because the feature to remove the hidden data was build into that application. More on that later.

Tags: excel, hidden data, microsoft-office, office, office 2003, office xp, powerpoint, word

Go-OO Open Office Fork

Martin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:30:59 +0000

Go-OO (found at Neowin), which probably stands for Go Open Office, is a fork of the original Open Office software that adds a multitude of features and optimizations to Open Office. The developers created a page on their website that details the improvements that Go-OO offers over the original Open Office client.

It starts with additional build in file support for Microsoft Office 2007 file types like docx, pptx and xlsx which can be imported without difficulties. Other import additions include SVG and Microsoft Works support as well as a filter to import WordPerfect Graphics. Then we have improved Excel interoperability, VBA macro support, improved EMF rendering, text Grid rendering and rich fields support which might be interesting to some users.

Linux users will probably like the build in 3D transitions in presentations, the Unix systray quick-starter and GStreamer integration.

Best of all it still feels and looks like Open Office which means that transition from Open Office to Go-OO should be fluid. The only aspect that I find a bit troublesome is that the application cannot be installed if a newer version of Open Office was found on the computer. I had Open Office 3 installed and I was only able to install Go-OO after uninstalling that client.

Tags: excel, office, open-office, powerpoint, word

Add a Youtube Video to Your PowerPoint Presentation

Cheryl — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 08:10:35 +0000

Almost everyone has used PowerPoint for presentations at some time or the other. Even if you’ve moved on to apps at GoogleDocs or the Zoho suite, PowerPoint is still a handy tool to use.

Most of the time, you’re limited to basic slides with bullet points and a couple of images or tables thrown in. At least those were the standards of all the presentations I’ve witnessed. At times, someone would throw in a sound clip of two to spice it up. But I’ve rarely seen presentations with video clips in them. It’s a shame because a picture really is worth a thousand words.

A simple reason for the lack of video is that unless you had the clip on your computer, you could not really do anything. Nowadays though, all you need to do is hunt around in any online video-sharing site and 9 times out of 10 you will find a clip that meets your requirements. I’ll use Youtube as an example since it’s one of the most popular sites.

The major part is getting your clip onto your machine, in a format you can use. This is important because the ‘flv’ format is not particularly media player friendly. I usually use MediaCoder when I convert files but a good online alternative is Vixy. Just copy the url of your video file, select your desired file format and click ‘Start’. The most common file format is ‘avi’ so it’s a good idea to select that one. Vixy will do all the work for you and at the end will give you a link to the converted file. You can download this file to your computer.

Adding the video to your presentation is easy. Save the video in the same folder as your presentation since you’ll need to take it along with you if you’re transferring the presentation to a portable device. To place the video in a slide, navigate to the slide you want. Then, go to the menu and select Insert > Movies & Sounds > Movie from file. Choose the movie you saved and click OK. All that’s left is to choose whether you want the video to start automatically or only when you click on it.

How often do you add videos to your presentations? Can you do this with any of the online presentation applications?

Via [DigitalAlchemy.tv]

Tags: powerpoint, presentations, vixy, youtube

Create Web based Powerpoint Presentations

Martin — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 11:20:47 +0000

Microsoft PowerPoint has one huge disadvantage. It only supports local presentations and offers no way to show a presentation to users of a conference that take part from different offices. Most companies send the presentation by email to those users but this is not the best solution in my opinion.

Slide Presenter offers a better one. It is a php based script that can run on any server that supports PHP. The administrator can create new presentations by adding images of the slides to it. Users can then connect to the website to see the current slide. The administrator manages the progression and decides which slide is currently seen on the website, much like a local presentation but with the major advantage that people from all over the world can connect and view the PowerPoint presentation online.

The presentation that has been created in Microsoft PowerPoint has to be saved as image slides which can be done directly in Powerpoint using the File > Save As menu. Just select a different format, jpg for instance, before saving the presentation. PowerPoint will then ask if you want to save the current slide or all slides. Select all slides which has the result that all slides of the presentation are saved as images.

Tags: powerpoint, script, slideshows

Preezo: Create Powerpoint Presentations Online

Martin — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:48:38 +0000

Preezo is a fast powerpoint maker on the web. Like most of the web 2.0 apps it uses Ajax to power its site. To use the application you need to register and log in. The first thing I notice is there is no lag at all using the different features. It is very responsive. Even with Google Docs there is some lag while adding stuff. I would happily use this on my browser.

There is a choice of six template layout. Although, that is too little compared to powerpoint, I feel it is enough for normal usage. You can change your font (20 font types to choose from), change background color or even use a image as a background. Speaking about images; There is a option for you to load a picture from your desktop. I have seen too many web 2.0 sites that require you to load the picture/photo from a url which is very inconvenient.

You can view your slides in the normal view (powerpoint view) or the slide sorter view (see above). Within the slide sorter view, you can drag and drop the slides to change the order. Nice for a web app.
Slide show

You are able to view your slide show directly as you do your presentations by going to “view show”. The other 3 options are

1. Email Show – share you presentation through email
2. Publish Show – Publish your presentation for live viewing
3. Embed Show – Embed a presentation on your blog, like I have done below (only 3 slides for testing)

There are even cool slide transitions for you to play with. Good Stuff.

My main gripe with Preezo is that it cannot open existing powerpoint from your desktop. But to create a presentation from scratch, I totally recommended it. I think I will use this from now on.

This has been an entry from Yeong who runs his own blog Blogmunch.

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Preezo

Tags: ajax, microsoft, office, powerpoint, preezo, web 2.0

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