[Solved] New to Mac and to OpenOffice

[Frank143]

Good day...new to Mac and also new to OpenOffice.
Downloaded OO 4 onto my iMac. Icon on desktop is a disk image that when selected, launches the OO app. Wondering if there is a way to place the OO icons (Text, Draw, etc...) in the tray similar to MS Office for Mac so a specific program may be selected.
Thanks to all,
Frank
Virginia, USA

[MrProgrammer]

Wondering if there is a way to place the OO icons (Text, Draw, etc...) in the tray similar to MS Office for Mac so a specific program may be selected.

Why would you want to do that? What is the point in opening an application without any data to process?
• If the intent is to open an existing document, use Finder or Spotlight to do that.
• If the intent is to create a new document, use Finder or Spotlight to open the template of interest.

Books at your library will tell you how use Finder and Spotlight. In either case the corresponding OpenOffice component will start automatically. Here I have typed "status" and Spotlight found "My Status Report" so I just need to press Enter to open this document. The ODT extension tells Mac OS X to use OpenOffice to open that document, and OpenOffice knows to use Writer for ODT files.

The only reason to open an OpenOffice component with no data would be to create a template. Read about templates in the Help, in this forum, or in the Wiki (link below). You can create a template which contains default formatting, for example font or page margins, for your work. You use templates when you want to begin a new Writer, Calc, … document.

If you already have a word processing document open and you use File → Open in the Writer component to specify a spreadsheet document, Calc will start and open it. In the Window menu you'll see you have two documents now open, one for Writer and one for Calc. Writer and Calc are not separate applications on a Mac. It's one application, OpenOffice, which has multiple components. You can switch between them anytime you like using the Window menu.

new to Mac

Go to your local library and borrow an "Introduction to Mac" or "Switching to Mac" type of book. They probably have several. Perhaps choose a fairly recent one. Even if it was written for an older operating system than Yosemite (Mavericks, Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, …) procedures haven't change much in a dozen years. Reading this book will save you many, many hours of time and may prevent frustrating mistakes.

new to OpenOffice

The Apache OpenOffice Documentation Project

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