In today's meetings, we downloaded, installed, and worked with Open Office. The FREE altnernative to Microsoft Office. To read why the software is free, read this information from their web site [1] .

OpenOffice programs are completely compatible with Microsoft Office programs and allows you to read, edit, and create Office documents without owning the Microsoft Office suite. Here is a list of the programs and their functions in Open Office:

First, you need to download the product by clicking here [2] . You will be asked if you want to donate to the project...this is completely voluntary, and you can simply click "Continue to Download" if you don't want to donate. After the download finishes (less than 15 minutes for cable users, about 30-40 minutes for DSL users, and more than 5 hours for dial-up users), you will see the following icon on your Desktop or wherever you chose to save the file:

1. Double-click on the file you just downloaded, wait for the installation to start then:
2. Click Next
3. Click Unpack
4. Wait a few moments
5. Click Next
6. Click the "I accept" button
7. Click Next
8. Type your name in the "Name" box
9. Click Next
10. Click Next if you want to install ALL programs (OR click Custom, then Next if you want to choose which programs to install)
11. On the screen presented below, check all the boxes IF you don't currently have Microsoft Office installed OR you want to make OpenOffice your default word processor, spreadsheet and presentation manager.
    
12. Click Next
13. Click Install
14. Wait a few moments
15. Click Finish

The install is finished, the first time you open any of the OpenOffice.org programs, you will need to answer a few more questions...again, this is one time only:

1. When the Welcome screen appears, click Next
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the license agreement to make the Next button clickable, then click Accept
3. Type your Name and Initials if they don't appear already
4. Click Next
5. Choose whether or not you want to register (it's not necessary)
6. Click Finish

You are now ready to start using Open Office!!

One quick tip for the Word Processor and Spreadsheet programs, when you open them the first time Click Tools ---> Options from the menus, then:

1. Click the the "+" next to Load/Save
2. Click the "Always Save As" box and choose the "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP " option
3. Click OK (these settings are illustrated below)

Setting this option allows you to save all your documents as Microsoft Word documents so that it is easier to share them. Do the same thing in the OpenOffice Spreadsheet (Calc) and change the save option to Excel.

One other tip we pointed out in the group today is that OpenOffice has a built-in function to create an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) file out of any document you create in OpenOffice.

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