As the main concurent of Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org 3 (or the OO3, as it is also known) is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers, with different operating systems. It stores all your data in an international open standard format, it can also read and write files from other common office software packages. As the most important thing, besides its performance, Open Office can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

The entire OpenOffice.org suite is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence and it can be used across a variety of platforms including Linux, FreeBSD, Irix, Solaris and Microsoft Windows.

History

To better undstand the usage of the OO 3 you need some knowledge about its history, how the software was developed.

OpenOffice.org original name was StarOffice, an office suite developed by StarDivision in C++ and Java and acquired by Sun Microsystems in August 1999. Its source code was released in July 2000 with the aim of providing a free and open alternative to Microsoft Office. Oracle Corporation acquired Sun Microsystems in 2010 and stopped supporting commercial development, in June 2011 the company contribuited to suite to Apache Incubater to become a project of Apache Software Foundation. In December 2011 the foundation annouced that the project's name would become Apache OpenOffice.

The components

The component from the Open Office suite are: writer, calc, impress, draw, base, math. Components that does not run separatly: basic, quickstarter, chart, gallery and media player, help.

Open Office Writer

Open Office Writer is a word processor similar with WordPerfect and Microsoft Word. It works as a basic WYSIWYG editor and can export the texts into various formats, besides its own: word documents, web pages, portable document format (pdf) files (including bookmarks). It provides a number of features not present in Word, including a word completion mechanism for predictive writing.

Other tools of Writer are: templates and styles, embedding or linking of graphics, spreadsheets, and other objects (from other components of the Open Office suite), built-in drawing tools, change tracking during revisions, page-layout methods, including frames, columns, and tables, master documents (to group a collection of documents into a single document), database integration (including a bibliography database), mail merge, equation editor (from the component OpenOffice.org Math), scriptable and remote controllable, indexing, AutoCorrect and AutoComplete.

Open Office Calc

Open Office Calc is a spreadsheet creator similar to Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Excel. Calc can export spreadsheets to PDF files and provides features not present in MS Excel, including a system that defines series for graphing based on the layout of the user's data.

The default file format can be set to Open Office standard format (.ODF files), as well MS Excel's native file format. It can also support a number of formats for opening and saving, such as CSV, HTML, SXC, DBF, DIF, UOF, SLK, SDC.

It also supports a large number of functions as financial and statistical function and imaginary numbers. Additional capabilities can be added as extensions.

Open Office Impress

Open Office Impress is a presentation program similar to Apple Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint, it can export the presentations to Adobe Flash files (swf format), allowing them to be played over the internet, embeded in the websites or on any computer with the Flash player installed. It can read ppf files (Microsoft Power Point files) and create PDF files.

The Impress users can install the Open Clip Art Library which adds a large gallery of images for general presentation and drawing projects. Linux distributions Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva and Gentoo have provided the ready-to-use openclipart package for download and install from their online software repositories.

Open Office Base

Open Office Base is a database management program used to create and manipulate databases, to build forms and reports to provide easy access to data for end users. It's similar to Microsoft Access and it can also function as a front-end to a number of different database systems, including MS Access databases (JET), ODBC data sources and MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle through ODBC and JDBC drivers.

Base became a part of Open Office suite starting with the version 2.0. As of 2010, it builds on the HSQLDB database engine written in Java.

Open Office Draw

Open Office Draw is a graphics editor comparable to early versions of Corel Draw and Microsoft Visio, it has similar features to desktop publishing software as Scribus and Microsoft Publisher. Its features of versatile "connectors" between shapes are availabe in a range of line styles. Using this tool users can build drawings such flowcharts and can export them to PDF files.

The users can also install the Open Clip Art Library which adds an extensive gallery of flags, logos, icons and banners for general presentation and drawing projects. Linux distributions Debian and Ubuntu have provided ready-to-use openclipart packages for easy download and install from their online software repositories.

Open Office Math

Open Office Math is a tool for creating and editing mathematical formulas and it's similar to Microsoft Equation Editor. Using this tool the users can embed formulae inside the documents (such of those created by the Calc and Writer). Math supports multiple fonts and can export the document to PDF files.

Open Office QuickStarter

Open Office QuickStarter is a small program for Linux and Microsoft Windows that runs when the computer starts for the first time. It is designed to load the core files and libraries for Open Office suite during computer startup and allows the applications to start more quickly when selected later.

Open Office macro recorder

Open Office macro recorder can record user actions and replay them later to help with automating tasks using Open Office Basic

Open Office Basic

Open Office Basic is a programming language based on Star Office Basic (the first version of what became Open Office), but similar to Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The Novell edition of Open Office have its own macros and support for MS VBA macros version 2,0. Open Office Basic is availabe in Writer and Calc and it is witten in function called macros or subroutines that perform differents task (each macro performs its own task).