Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

I'm coming from MS Word iMac to OpenOffice Mac Mini. Big change.
First: is there a beginners tutorial?
Second: How do you make the columns narrower in a spread sheet? In MS Word I would just grab the line of the column at the top of the spread sheet and just drag it left off right.
Third: How do you type in the cells of columns?
I went to support and find it's very difficult to get the correct answers. It seems you have to type in the exact wording
to get answers which is tricky.
So, a tutorial would probably be the best way to get acquainted with Apache.

Thanks for any help.

Greetings and welcome to the community forum!

creationx wrote: ...
First: is there a beginners tutorial?

Not really.

I suspect that the software simply covers too much for there to be an effective tutorial. You have to narrow your focus to some specific task or aspect of the suite.

There are "User's guides" and a "Getting Started Guide" available through the support/documentation area of the OO website:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wik ... ser_Guides

And you're always welcome to come here and ask any level of question--we all started out as beginners!

By the way, are you working in Writer (text document) or Calc (spreadsheet)? I'm assuming that you're using the spreadsheet, but you mention "MS Word" which is similar to OO Writer.

Second: How do you make the columns narrower in a spread sheet? In MS Word I would just grab the line of the column at the top of the spread sheet and just drag it left off right.

Same in OO. Hover the mouse over the column boundary, it should change to a double arrow; press and drag left or right.

Third: How do you type in the cells of columns?

Double-click on the cell to type directly into it.

Or, click on a cell and then type the value in the box just above the cell grid. When you press Enter, the typed data will be entered into the current cell.

I went to support and find it's very difficult to get the correct answers. ...

Where exactly were you looking? At the main web site, http://www.openoffice.org? Or maybe the online help built-in to the software?

Again, everyone is welcome to ask anything here; it's ok to ask how to get started with some specific task.

Edit: PS:

There are lots of nicely organized tutorials here (among other sites): http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org

creationx wrote:First: is there a beginners tutorial?

Even if a bit "succinct", the draft for AOO 4.0 Writer guide is quite complete now, just some holes here and there, and the general UI description have everything you need to start using any AOO component, including a description of the new Sidebar.

Other chapters are not so complete (Calc, Impress and Base guides are completely missing because there are no writers for those topics yet). If you try the guides and find something that it is not clear enough, please drop a line to the documentation mailing list.

acknac and RGB, thanks for the quick reply and kind welcoming words. There must be something that I have to change because in my spreadsheet, when I put the cursor over the column boundary nothing happens. If I click on the line the whole column gets highlighted. If I click a little above the column a message window opens saying "Document opened in Read Only mode."

When I click on a cell nothing happens and sometimes the same message comes on.

I was looking at the online help for help.

The information that both of you guys wrote sound very good and I will check them out. I do get a little impatient with trying to figure things out that's why I prefer posting here.

Thanks again.

creationx wrote:... If I click a little above the column a message window opens saying "Document opened in Read Only mode." ...

Ok, so that's why you can't change the column width: you can't change a read-only document.

I can only guess why the document is read-only, but you should be able to make it editable by clicking the "edit file" button on the main toolbar. OO will ask if you want to save a copy, confirm and choose a suitable location on your system (My Documents or the like). Once you've saved the writable copy, you should be able to make changes.

You nailed it. I'm now free to do the few minor changes that need to be done.
Thanks again and I'm sure I'll be asking more questions.