Download it now, use it now.

http://glabels.sourceforge.net/

This is a beautiful program, a well-balanced combination of power, simplicity, good design, and ease of use. Thanks to Keith for pointing it out to me.

There's no Windows or Mac version, sadly.

Among the things you can do are:
- automatically (no effort on your party) suppress empty address lines
- do bar codes
- point straight to a CSV or similar format file to bring in records
- deselect records you don't want to print
- add graphics and drawing shapes
- apply formatting
- easily preview the whole sheet

Here's a screen shot with a summary of what you do. I'll do more detailed instructions later but here's the quick info. I love it.

 

Would you like to create:

• A travel request form that your users fill out, then print or save and submit?
• A public records form that residents of your city or county need to fill out, that you can just post on your government web site?
• Any other form that people use that could contain check boxes, radio buttons, dropdown list, date entry fields, regular data entry fields, etc.?

Then use this PDF to learn how. It's a step-by-step guide to creating various types of fields using the Writer form tools. The PDF is for use by anyone for personal or professional use, but not for republication or other reuse in another form; if you'd like to reference it, please link back here.

There are a lot of very nice prefab shapes in Draw. (And available in Writer and Calc too; just choose View > Toolbars > Drawing.)

You can apply one color or other fill to each of them. If you draw a smiley face you either make it blue, or red, or with a rose fill, or whatever. (Let's leave out for now the issue of line color.)

But let's say you want to make each point of the sun a different color, or the eyes in the smiley face a dfiferent color. You can't. Well, not by default.

Here's what you do. Right-click on the shape and choose Convert > To Curve.

After that, right-click on the object again and choose  Ungroup.

You'll get something like this, depending on what the shape is.

And then you can select different parts of the shape and apply different formatting, plus drag parts of it out.

Once you're done formatting it, you should probably re-group. Select all the components, right-click, and choose Group.

The easiest way to select a bunch of small items is to "draw" around them with the arrow tool, the normal default selection tool. In this illustration, all the items for the split-apart octagon would be selected, but nothing from the smiley or star because you have to go ALL the way around an object to select it.

For all you spreadsheet users: here's something kind of cool.

Let's say that you have a set of data. You have a list of items, and for every item that there is a unique item number, category number, and packaging type.

Or you have been getting your home entertainment organized and you have a perfect system for throwing parties: for every main dish there is a specific drink, appetizer, dessert, and game.

Having the data isn't the trick. What the data lets you do is that elsewhere in your spreadsheet, you can type or select the first item from a list, and have one or more of the other associated pieces of data pop into the cells next to it. You use =VLOOKUP() OR =HLOOKUP to do this.

Here's an example. I have this data. There are several columns but here are the first two.

Here's one thing about the data. Be sure to sort it. Sort it by the first column, alphabetically or numerically. Select all the data, choose Data > Sort, and sort as usual.

At another spot in the spreadsheet I can set this up so that when I type "Beans and rice" in cell C19, the formula here.....

will automatically display the right type of drink for beans and rice (that I have set up in the data set).

 

How does the formula work?

($C19;$A$10:$D$15;2)

The first part $C19 (the $ is just an absolute reference) is the cell containing the value that I want to look for in the FIRST column in the data set. In case the type of food such as beans and rice.

The second part is the range of data.

The third part is the column containing the data I want. I type 2 for the drink; 3 if I want to display the column containing appetizer information.

You can keep on going by adding more columns. Use the same formula but set it up so that the last argument (the column) is 3, 4, and 5 respectively.

 

and that's how this looks.

If you're thinking that typing the names of the dishes is a lot of work, especially if instead of six main dishes you had 122 part names or numbers, you're right. Ideally you'd set up a dropdown list.

Click in the cell where you want to display the first piece of data, the main dish. (You probably wouldn't make the lists and VLOOKUP positioned right next to the original data set; I'm just showing them side by side because it's simpler, and it's frankly easier to get screen shots this way. ;> )

1. Choose Data > Validity.

2. From the type list select Cell Range, then type an absolute range (with $row$column format) as shown, around the column of labels.

 

2. Click OK.

Then click the little tiny black handle in the lower right corner of that cell where you made the list, and drag it down to put in a list in other cells too.

Now you can just select something from the list, and all the corresponding info, from the data set, will appear in the cells where you've also put the VLOOKUP formula.

(HLOOKUP is the same, but rotated 90 degrees.)

Hi,

With Google mail and apps and documents being more widely used in a business environment, does anyone know of a way to use the File > Send > Document as Email (etc.) features in OpenOffice.org, with gmail? Or any other webmail interface like Yahoo?

This will all change with OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is bringing in Microsoft Office-style display of notes. However, until then, here's some good stuff to know. You can insert a note, aka a comment, by clicking in the text and choosing... solveigh

I like to fiddle around with Draw. In the 2.0 release I need to do it less because of all the great prefab shapes. However, sometimes you just need to create your own shapes. Make a shape vaguely like a... solveigh

If you haven't read it, or haven't listened to it, I recommend it. It's the annual highlight of my day. In part due to the well reasoned and well written document; in part due to the excellent reading and music; and in part due to the irony.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92108861

http://www.npr.org/documents/2006/jul/declaration.pdf

http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

If you haven't read it, or haven't listened to it, I recommend it. It's the annual highlight of my day. In part due to the well reasoned and well written document; in part due to the excellent reading and music;... solveigh

When it comes to cells, I like my content to look either like the first cell, or the second cell. If there's enough room for all the content; great. If there isn't, I like a nice wrap. To wrap content... solveigh

This will all change with OpenOffice.org 3.0, which is bringing in Microsoft Office-style display of notes. However, until then, here's some good stuff to know.

You can insert a note, aka a comment, by clicking in the text and choosing Insert > Note. You get this box; you type; you click OK.

You then see the note indicator. It's a small yellow box. Move your mouse over the box and you'll see the note.

It's not big and not obvious. One thing you might consider doing is to choose Tools > Options > Openoffice.org > Appearance and choose a different color for your notes.

It doesn't make it bigger but if the color is more obvious to you, then that's good.

Here's something else to know. The note display is affected  by whether nonprinting characters are on. Choose View > Nonprinting Characters to toggle back and forth.

Not showing

Showing

Now, as you can see the same two notes are shown regardless of whether nonprinting characters are showing, at this point. The document is in .odt format, normal format. BUT if you save the document as Word format, AND someone adds comments/notes using Word, AND then you open up the document again in OpenOffice, you won't see the notes they added.

UNLESS you have nonprinting characters turned ON.

So here I am editing one comment, and adding another comment, in Word.
 

Here I am opening up the document again, the .doc format document, in Writer. Nonprinting characters are OFF so you don't see the comment that was added in Word.

 

Choose View > Nonprinting Characters, and it appears. Look at the end of the paragraph.

 

Here's another way to more easily see all your comments, without having to look for the little yellow or green or magenta marker. Press F5 to open the Navigator, scroll down, and find the Notes item. Click the + to expand it and you'll see all your comments. Double-click one to go to the place where the comment was inserted. See that even though nonprinting characters aren't showing, all three comments are shown in the Navigator.

It takes a while to load, but should run fine once it gets going. (Optimization is one of the things I'm working on as I create more of these.) It's about how to create cross-references in Writer, and what they... solveigh

I've written an article for TechTarget that's not really about using OpenOffice.org per se. It's more about good document construction and formatting. The thing is, though, when you do the formatting correctly, lots of nice things happen. The document looks... solveigh

I've been blogging about sorting for a while: Easy sorting Standard, more powerful sorting Sorting by a custom sort order There's just one more thing to mention: creating your own custom sort order. Existing sort orders are things like Monday... solveigh

Here's what you can create. The original picture is first, and the effect (in one of many possible colors, i.e. infinite colors) is second. Thanks to Kristin from Howard County Library for pointing this out.

In any part of OpenOffice.org (well, except Base) you can choose insert a picture. Insert > Picture > From File or drag in a picture from the Gallery (Tools > Gallery).

Click on it, and you get the shown toolbar.

From where it says Default, select Grayscale.

Click the Color icon in the middle and you'll get the options for coloring the now-grayscale picture. If you type anything from 0 to 100 in the Red, Green, or Blue fields, you'll get dualtone color.

 

Combine values for two or more colors and you can get nearly any color combination. If you know or can check the RGB for the color you want, just pop it into the fields.

 

You can also apply effects of Brightness, Contrast, and Gamma for other effects.

It's a video of a presentation from one of google's Tech Talks. Check it out.

It's a video of a presentation from one of google's Tech Talks. Check it out. solveigh

If you want your handouts to look like this, with lines: Then right-click on the following lines graphic and choose to download it. Put it somewhere you'll find it like your desktop or user directory. Then when you want lines... solveigh

Back in the good old days of 1.x, you could draw a line, then draw an object, and make the object move along whatever line that was. It was great. Then the lovely redesign of Impress came, and that user-defined... solveigh

If you want your handouts to look like this, with lines:

Then right-click on the following lines graphic and choose to download it. Put it somewhere you'll find it like your desktop or user directory.

Then when you want lines in your handouts, choose the three-per-page handout. Drag the little boxes representing the slides to the left side of the page. Then choose Insert > Picture > From File, find the graphic (linesgraphic_forhandouts.png or whatever you named it) and put in where you want  it in the handouts.

The graphic will look like this. If you don't see all the lines, don't worry. They're there; they just aren't always displayed because of some sort of pixel graphic thing. ;>

To print handouts, choose to print, then click Options. Select the Handouts checkbox, unmark Drawing, and click OK.

Then pick your printer and click OK.