PC Magazine - 2009 04.pdf - Libertad Zero - Blog

SPacE InvadErS In a SPrEadShEET OpenOffice’s Calc
gives you the satisfaction of destroying alien invaders when you
can’t bear to look at your financial planning worksheet.
used to have a secret game built in before
Redmond lost its sense of humor. Open-
Office.org’s Calc spreadsheet program still
includes a 1990s-era shoot-’em-up Space
Invaders game. Open the Calc app, and in
any cell enter
=GAME(“StarWars”)
Make sure to copy the capitalization
shown here. Calc will open a StarWars
game in which you shoot down a fleet of evil
alien ships. The explanatory text is in German
(the original version of OpenOffice.
org was written in Germany), but you don’t
need to know German (or even English) to
play the game. Calc has a slightly Teutonic
attitude toward fun-and-games, however:
After you quit the game, you’ll need to shut
down Calc and start it up again before you
can play a second time.
5. Save files in Office formats by
default.
By default OpenOffice.org saves files in its
own format, which most Microsoft Office
users can’t open. You can save individual
files in Office format by using OpenOffice
.org’s File | Save as… menu and selecting a
Word format from the Save as Type dropdown.
But you can tell OpenOffice to save
in Office formats by default by choosing
Tools | Options, then find the Load/Save
category, and the General subcategory. In
the Document Type drop-down, choose
Text Document, and in the Always Save
As drop-down, choose Microsoft Word
97/2000/XP. Then, in the Document Type
drop-down, choose Spreadsheet, and in the
Always Save As drop-down, choose Microsoft
Excel 97/2000/XP. These choices will
create files that can be read by any modern
word processor or spreadsheet.
6. automate actions easily.
Many advanced Microsoft Office users
take advantage of macros that run automatically
when you open, print, or close a
file, but Office’s interface doesn’t provide
built-in clues for creating an AutoClose
macro that will run whenever you close
a document. OpenOffice.org goes Office
one better by providing a menu-driven
interface that lists all the actions that
can automatically trigger macros—and
these include a wider range of actions
than the ones that can be automated easily
in Office. For example, you can create
a macro that is triggered every time the
number of pages in a document increases
bUIldIng macrOS Tools | Customize brings you to this dialog,
where you can attach any macro to an action, such as saving or
printing a file. Make sure to record your macros first, and then
come back to this dialog.
and that inserts a header with a page number
if the number goes above, say, 2.
Other actions that can automatically
trigger macros include saving a document
under a different name and running a
mail merge. To use this feature, record the
macros you want to use, then go to Tools |
Customize | Events and assign your chosen
macro to specific events.
7. Fix those single quotes.
By default, OpenOffice.org Writer creates
good-looking, curly “typographic” double-quotation
marks as you type, but for
some reason, when you type a single quotation
mark (or an apostrophe) it uses a
vertical line, as if you were still using your
grandfather’s manual typewriter. You can
fix this by going to Tools | AutoCorrect…,
then going to the Custom Quotes tab and,
under Single Quotes, adding a check mark
next to Replace.
FIxIng qUOTES Use
Tools | AutoCorrect…
to open this dialog,
and add the check
mark next to Replace
near the top. If you
click the button to the
left of Default, you get
the dialog shown here,
where you can make
sure that the program
has chosen the correct
quotation mark.
APRIL 2009 PC MAGAZINE DIGITAL EDITION 45