Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

Welcome beginner. What is your question or comment?
Please try to briefly and clearly tell us: What you want, What you tried, and What happened.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi I have never used open office and have not yet downloaded a copy. I have my own business selling d.i.y wedding invitation kits. I need to be able to set up standard invitation, place card, rsvp and thankyou card templates with no graphics for my customers. They need to be able to do open these templates on their computer and print them from their computer. Will customers need to have a copy of open office on their computer? How will this work?

Will customers need to have a copy of open office on their computer? How will this work?

Yes--the customer will have to have some kind of software to manipulate the generic template documents you provide.

The only alternative I can think of is some kind of online setup, where the customer chooses a design and simply enters the information. In that case, the user doesn't need to change the formatting, so there would be no software required other than a web browser.

You could also design your materials to work with the free web apps, e.g. Google Apps.

There's no restriction on using OOo this way, but it's likely to be a big hurdle for most people, for downloading it, installing it and using it.

I guess you could export your templates to PDF format. Then most computers would have the software needed to open, fill in and print the documents. You will need to set up form controls, which can be a bit cumbersome, and the "mail merge" functionality for producing a full set from a list of names will not be available.

Your best option may be the "Open Office portable" software, that can run from a CD without installing it first. Copy that to a folder. Do your modifications and create your templates etc, then copy that back to a new CD. Then the user can run the application without installing anything first. I haven't used the portable version, though, so I can't say for sure that this is a viable route.

If they don't need to edit the documents before printing them then I would go with the suggestion for the PDF format.

You can do all the manipulation and mail merging and so on that is required in OOo and save to a file instead of printing. Then open the file in OOo and export to PDF. Distribute the PDFs. That way anyone can open and print them, using nothing more than their existing PDF viewer.

TheGurkha wrote:If they don't need to edit the documents before printing them then I would go with the suggestion for the PDF format.

You can do all the manipulation and mail merging and so on that is required in OOo and save to a file instead of printing. Then open the file in OOo and export to PDF. Distribute the PDFs. That way anyone can open and print them, using nothing more than their existing PDF viewer.

Very helpful!
I did this and was able to get files out to my club in PDF
-Tay