OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) is a multiplatform and multilingual
office productivity suite that is quickly becoming the main competitor
of Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice consists of the key desktop applications you can find in
other office automation suites: a word processor, a spreadsheet, a
presentation manager, a drawing program and a database.
Writer
A word processor program offering almost all the features available in
MS Word. It can open MS Word and Wordperfect files and directly create
documents in HTML and PDF format. Other Writer's notable features are
document templates, extremely useful when you need to create
standardized documents (such as business letters or faxes) and the
Stylist panel that allows you to change the style of an element (for
example paragraph headings) within your whole document with a click of
the mouse.
Calc
A powerful spreadsheet that can open MS Excel files and follows almost
the same model for formulas making the migration of spreadsheets made
with the popular Microsoft application an easy task.
Calc supports complex cell formatting functions and reusable data sheet styles through templates.
Other important features are an advanced DataPilot technology through
which raw data extracted from corporate databases can be used to feed a
spreadsheet for further analysis and presentation, and a powerful tool
for analysis of 'what if' scenarios.
Impress
Impress is a presentation program and offers all the typical features
of this kind of software: an integrated text editor to format text with
support of multiple fonts, colors and styles, an image manager to
include clip arts and other graphic images in your presentations and a
shlide show creator to order and display (with support of several
transition effects) the various slides that are part of a presentation.
Presentations can be printed to a PDF file, saved as MS Powerpoint
files and exported in various other formats including SWF (Flash)
files, XHTML and many graphic file formats. In addition the HTML Export
wizard will allow you to make your presentation visible on the Web.
Draw
A complete vector graphics editor capable to create complex diagrams,
flowcharts, organisation charts and graphics including 3D objects.
Smart connectors greatly simplify the creation of diagrams. You can
attach a connector to an object and when you move the object the
connector will follow it.
Draw includes an extensive gallery of pre-made clip-arts and graphics that can be extended by adding your own work to it.
The result of your work can be saved in OpenDocument format and
exported in all common graphic formats (bmp, png, gif, jpeg, tiff, wmf)
and Flash files.
Base
BASE is a full featured database manager. With BASE you can create,
query and manage databases built with HSQL, BASE native database
engine. Some external databases such as ADO, Microsoft Access and MySQL
are natively supported while other database engines can be utilized
through ODBC and JDBC drivers.
With simple visual tools even inexperienced users can easily perform
all the typical database management operations: creating tables and
indexes, establishing relations between tables, adding, editing and
deleting records, creating and executing database queries.
Other useful tools are the Report Wizard that greatly simplifies the
creation of reports from data and the Form Wizard to easily create
database applications.
Licensing
OpenOffice is an open source product and can be utilized for personal
and business use without paying any licensing fee. This is particular
important for users of similar commercial applications who are consider
a migration to this office productivity suite, as a fully functional
version of any OpenOffice application can be extensively tested before
taking a definitive decision.
OpenOffice is a mature product constantly developed and supported by an
ever growing community of users. It deserves a serious consideration by
individuals and business owners in need of a low cost software solution
to enhance their personal or company's productivity.