In this final part of our series on laying out a book with OpenOffice.org, you will learn how to position illustrations in your book, how to use paragraph styles, and how to export in different formats. What you will take away from this is one method that has worked for me and many other people. At the end of this post, I will provide links for further study on the subject.

Illustrations

To insert an image in OpenOffice Writer, simply click “Insert->Picture->From File“.  Then, select the image that you want, and click OK.

By default, the text will wrap around  your picture. If you do not want this or want a different type of wrapping, right click on the picture and choose the appropriate wrap method from the wrap menu.

In the first part of this series, I explained how to prepare an OpenOffice.org document for book layout. In this second part, I am going to highlight some key points raised by some of our readers and also how to properly align page numbers and format paragraphs.

There are a couple of things you should consider before proceeding:

1. If you are submitting your book to a publisher, they normally do not expect you to format the book or do any typesetting. That is their job. They just want the raw manuscript. In some cases, they may even insist that you use a particular generic font and not change default margins. Make sure you read their submission guidelines.

2. One of our readers mentioned that he usually formats his books after he finishes writing. This is undoubtedly the best method in most cases. What we created in Part 1 was a basic template that you can use without any further formatting needed before you start writing. Furthermore, if you are working for the publisher or are the publisher, the author might be someone else. In that case, you will take his or her text and prepare it.

It is all in your head: the plot, the characters, the locations, and even the scenes, but for some reason, staring at the blank page and blinking cursor makes you freeze. You like the idea of writing a book but cannot imagine actually completing it. If that feeling sounds familiar, then this might be the right article for you.  Even if you have written a book and have it all ready to go, you may intend to self-publish it, start your own publishing company, send it to an editor, or just layout your book so you can see how it looks.

There is a long list of reasons why you might need to prepare an OpenOffice.org document in book form, and once you have learned how to do it, you will have a useful skill that you or people you know may need in the future. You can use this method for both print publications and e-books.

I have been using OpenOffice for the past few years and on the whole, I am very happy with it. If there is anything that is causing me frustration, it has to be the splash screen that forcefully take over your desktop when you load an OpenOffice application.

If you are feeling the same frustration as me, here is the way to remove the splash screen. It works for StarOffice and NeoOffice as well, since they are basically a branch out of OpenOffice.

Using clients like twhirl or twitterfox, you can post tweets to twitter from your desktop and Firefox browser. However, if you spend a lot of time on Open Office, you may want a quicker way to get your twitter updated, without having to leave Open Office.

OOoTwitter is a simple Open Office extension that allows you to post to Twitter. Once installed, it will load an input field where you can submit your message to Twitter. It is very easy to use and it is unobstructive and can be loaded from the menu Tools -> Add-ons -> Post to twitter.

While everyone is looking forward to the launch of OpenOffice 2.4, I am already looking at the latest development project: OpenOffice 3.0, that promises better usability, Web 2.0 collaboration and enhanced interoperability with other office suites and format.

OpenOffice 3.0 is still in development stage and there are plenty of bugs yet to be solved (over 2000 issues, and counting), but if you are keen to test out the beta release, you can download the Ooo-Dev_DEV300_m3 from the OpenOffice ftp mirror.

Being an open source software, OpenOffice has made it very easy for Microsoft Office users to migrate over. Not only is it highly versatile and has almost the same user interface as Microsoft Office, it also contains tons of great features that put other paid office-suites to shame.

The following are some of the useful OpenOffice tips and tricks unknown to many.

Other than being a free complete office suite, OpenOffice allows users to install extensions to improve its functionality and enhance the user experience. Here is a list of useful extensions for you.

If you have encountered situation where your Openoffice icons are lost and were replaced with texts, here is what you can do:

Go to Tools -> Options. Under OpenOffice.org -> Views, look for the section Menu and make sure that the Show icons in menu box is checked.

If the icons are still lost after you have checked the show icons box, your openoffice could be missing the icon set for your desktop theme.

There are two ways that you can solve this issue

1) Install the icon set

If you are using tango theme, in your terminal, type

sudo apt-get install openoffice.org-style-tango

or look for “openoffice.org-style-tango” in your Synaptic Package Manager. If you don’t like tango theme, you can also choose from a selection of icon theme. Currently, open office supports the following theme: Andromec, crystal, default, hicontrast, human (installed by default), industrial, tango.

2) Switch the openoffice icon theme to human

Your Openoffice installed the human theme by default. In your Openoffice, go to Tools -> Options. Under OpenOffice.org -> View, look for the section Icon sizes and styles. On the right dropdown box, select Human and press OK.

You can see that your icon is now back on your Openoffice.

Cheers.