The classic work tools for the computer today are Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access which are part of the Microsoft Office suite, now in its 2007 version, and anyone knows this. Microsoft Office obviously has to be paid for and, even if, for home use, it is often cracked, it is undeniable that there are so many unpleasant drawbacks as was seen in the article on the Office product key.
In this blog, as seen in the other articles, we always look for free solutions and free programs therefore, with the release of the new version of Apache OpenOffice 4, I take this opportunity to report the second largest competitor of Microsoft Office.
The other is the free LibreOffice program, very similar to OpenOffice, based on the same code as Openoffice.org.
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First of all I want to clarify that OpenOffice, although less used and less known, is absolutely up to its Microsoft competitor : it opens, modifies and reads the same files, has the same options and functions and is lighter and faster .
OpenOffice is therefore a complete suite of software for classic computer work: word processors for writing documents, Excel spreadsheets, utilities for creating Powerpoint-like presentations and a program for manipulating and creating files in format graphics such as images and animations, tools for business graphics and Access-style database management.
OpenOffice is compatible with the most popular formats used by Microsoft Office commercial packages and allows direct saving in PDF format.
All these functions are integrated with the functionality of the extensions, the plugins, which in some cases offer absolute novelties for the office automation market.
Many defects of previous editions have been smoothed out by this version 4 and thanks to the modular approach, anyone can download and add new services and functions, obviously always all free.
OpenOffice 4.0 has a completely renewed graphic aspect, with a new start center and a new set of icons, and offers a long series of completely new functions visible in detail in pdf format on the Plio website and summarized below in this article:
Writer (word processing): display of multiple pages when editing the document, better management of the linguistic tools that are installed as extensions (double click), better management of the notes.
Calc (spreadsheet): increase in the size of the sheet to 1024 columns, new module for solving linear programming problems, new collaboration features for user groups.
Impress (presentations): possibility to insert the tables in the presentation.
Draw (drawing and graphics): increase in sheet size up to nine square meters (300cm x 300cm).
OpenOffice 4 also improves the support of extensions, which offer some completely new functions such as multilingual support, reporting for companies, the reduction of the size of presentations (including those of MS Office, megalithic in size, on which the MS Office itself allows to intervene only manually), the screen for the presenter, and finally the editing of the PDF files and the management of the hybrid PDF, or a PDF file that OpenOffice manages like a normal editable ODF file.
In May 2009, the Italian version 4 was released which presents more efficient support for grammar checkers and the increase in the number of terms managed by personal dictionaries.
OpenOffice 4.0 can be downloaded for free both for Windows, for Linux and for Mac OS X, in Italian, on this page: Download Apache Openoffice or in other 90 languages
For other resources, the links to:
Models in Italian
Extensions for AOo
Italian dictionary
The best extensions and plugins for OpenOffice.
Open Office for children and beginners is described on another page.
The software uses the Open Document Format file format (ISO / IEC 26300 standard), reads and writes the most popular among the proprietary formats, and is available for the main operating systems in about 100 languages and dialects, so much so that it can be used in the own mother tongue from more than 90% of the world's population. OpenOffice comes with the GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License) or GPL (General Public License) and can be used for free for any purpose, both private and commercial.
In another article the best Office Online.
