Open office for poppy wasps. How to set up a free office on MacBook? Features of all necessary Office tools

OpenOffice - is a multilingual office suiteAvailable on most modern platforms. With it, the user can create and edit text documents, presentations, work with tables, figures and mathematical formulas. The package has been developing for over twelve years and during this time has become one of the best alternatives to the popular Microsoft Office. The main advantage of OpenOffice over the brainchild of Microsoft is that the first is distributed free of charge. Moreover, it practically does not concede functionality to its “grandparent”, and in some ways even surpasses it. OpenOffice applications have a completely traditional interface for such programs. It gives users the opportunity to start working with documents, practically without mastering and not getting used to the new graphical shell. The package includes special wizards that are designed for beginners and further simplify the work with the program.

It is also important that OpenOffice allows you to work with documents in a wide variety of formats, including those created in Microsoft Office. By the way, among the important differences from the latter, the free office suite has a huge number of templates for documents and presentations. There are also tools for working with databases and creating diagrams. And the last advantage of OpenOffice, which cannot be ignored, is the low system requirements.

Key Features and Functions

• is one of the best free alternatives to Microsoft Office;
• has a nice graphical interface;
• allows you to work with text documents, tables, presentations, formulas and databases;
• includes a huge number of templates for future projects;
• it is cross-platform and multilingual.

The famous Microsoft Office, created by the Redmond company, has been considered the benchmark among office applications in the home and business segment for more than fifteen years. Unfortunately, every year the pricing policy does not become more profitable for users, and even vice versa - more expensive, and that is why it is necessary to look for alternatives. Well, let's see how convenient the unknown free analog in the face Apache openoffice.

In contact with

A bit about Office 365 and iWork

Nowadays, Microsoft's greed is starting to really upset. The last straw was the release of the latest Office 365 package, which was distributed by subscription. For users who decide to purchase Office 365 for home, it will cost "only 339 rubles per month" or 3 399 rubles per year. The package includes the ability to install all office applications on 5 PC or Mac machines and 5 mobile devicesonline versions of applications and cloud storage for documents with a capacity of 1 TB.

The quality of the software offered is really impressive, but I don’t want to give such amounts every year. Here you begin to look for budget or completely free options (oh, this soul of a Russian person).

The branded apple package iWork (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) does an excellent job only with the simplest tasks (there is also a cloud version on icloud.com that works even without installation). However, there can be no talk of any advanced functionality (perhaps iWork is enough for many features). And there is no analogue of an application for working with databases like Access or advanced programs like Visio or Publisher. A compromise between venerable competitors was the product of Apache -.

A bit of history

The development of OpenOffice in 2000 does not begin with the creation of a product from scratch, but with the study and transformation of the achievements of the German office suite StarOffice (1999), which gave rise to open, free software for working with documents.

The first public launch took place in 2002 and the package could be freely installed and used on home computers, in educational institutions and various kinds of organizations. The product gained tremendous popularity in the territory of the post-Soviet space.

In 2010, during the reorganization and creation of a new nonprofit company, The Document Foundation, a large part of the developers split up and subsequently began working on their own LibreOffice project (it is often compared with OpenOffice).

In autumn 2016, the latest current version of Apache with the index 4.1.3 was released, which we will talk about.

What does OpenOffice include?

The composition of the package is characterized by six modules for working with office documents in all directions:

— Writer - word processor and visual hTML editor (analog Microsoft Word, Pages, AbiWord and other programs);
— Calc - table processor ( Microsoft Excel, Numbers, Gnumeric and others);
— Impress - A tool for creating and editing presentations (Microsoft PowerPoint, Keynote, KPresenter);
— Base - work with DBMS (Microsoft Access, Kexi);
— Draw - graphic vector editor ( Microsoft visio, Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW);
— Math - formula editor (MathType, KFormula).

Well, the materiel is really impressive (especially if you focus on the fact that it's a free product).

Compatibility and formats

No matter how the developers declare support for all conceivable and inconceivable office formats, problems with it all the same periodically arise. The brainchild of Apache still cannot open Microsoft Office OpenXML format documents, i.e. * .docx, * .xlsx and * .pptx. If with the help of short dances with a tambourine the problem with import and export to * .docx can be solved, then nothing can be done with the other two formats.

Not quite correct work with formats is observed in other similar office suite applications. Difficult microsoft docs Office open in will have visible, and sometimes enough significant changes. Apache developers swear that they are constantly working on this problem, but the results are frankly weak so far.

Design and functionality

The design of the software package stopped at the level of Microsoft Office 2003. To the ergonomics and visibility of at least the 2007th “office” is far. Otherwise, there is a typical arrangement of tools and a fairly extensive functionality that allows you to cope with the daily tasks of both the home user and the person working in the enterprise.

The latest current version 4.1.3 received many small changes, and it is worth noting the accelerated loading of the program and the optimized work with multimedia files and diagrams.

The entire office suite works stably, with the exception of the database tool. There are sometimes crashes and even non-launches on some Macs (more about older machines).

Output

Located between a rock and a hard place in the face of paid Office 365 and free iWork. The Redmond product has no flaws except for the indecently large price tag. The brainchild of Apple is rapidly developing and gaining popularity, but still orientation is still for ordinary users, rather than clerks. necessary improvements. It’s worth starting small: adding support for new formats, creating a modern interface and integrating cloud technologies in a quality manner is impossible without them today. About mobile versions and there is no speech yet.

Openoffice this is a project that came to poppy from the world of OpenSource (open source) Originally created for Linux, it gradually migrated to other platforms. OpenOffice, like all OpenSource projects, is free and created as an alternative to commercial programs, primarily Microsoft products. In fact, we can say that the developers set the task to create a complete analogue of Microsoft Office, but only free, and in general they succeeded. The functions, interface, menu structure are almost the same as Microsoft Office. OpenOffice allows you to open and save Microsoft files, but it also has its own document saving formats.
The version of OpenOffice for Mac OS X has a significant feature that can be called a drawback. From a programming point of view, this is a non-native program for Mac OS X, and requires the X11 environment, which is included with Mac OS X, starting from version 10.3 to work. X11 is a special runtime for programs originally written for UNIX and ported to Mac OS X, so to speak partially. This means that such programs do not use the Aqua graphics libraries that are part of Mac OS X, but use their own from the UNIX world. Apple designed X11 specifically so that a huge number of popular programs created for different UNIX systems could run on poppies without much effort on the part of developers. X11 in many ways resembles the Classic environment, that is, programs run in a separate runtime environment and look like not typical for Mac OS X, but for operating systemunder which they were originally written. If you wish, you can put X11 into full-screen mode, and then your poppy will visually turn into UNIX. OpenOffice is one of such programs and therefore has an appropriate interface (see the figure), and also importantly, keyboard shortcuts are accepted in the PC world. That is, roughly speaking, the Command key (bullseye) does not work, since in a pc-oriented world, there is simply no such key. Because of this, you may have a problem switching the language, and note that all the usual key combinations start with cntrl, not Command. But judging by the functionality, OpenOffice is a powerful package that can completely replace MS Office. It does not consist of separate programs, but how Apple Works switches to different modes, depending on the type of document, word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation creation.

Innovations in Openoffice 3.0:
- New control (slider) to support multiple pages at once during editing (Writer)
- Improved work with notes (Writer)
- Added ability to edit wiki documents (Writer)
- The number of columns increased to 1024 (Calc)
- Added feature teamwork multiple users (Calc)
- increased maximum size supported document up to 3 square meters (Draw)
- Added a full-featured table designer right inside the presentation (Impress)

An office suite can rightfully be considered the essential tool on any computer. We are all well aware of products such as iWork or Microsoft Officebut do you know what exists for them completely free alternative? It is called Apache openoffice and in no way inferior to these two wonderful programs.

Six programs in one package is all you need

Apache openoffice consists of six independent programssolving different tasks in one package. These utilities give everything you need to create documents, ranging from texts to vector graphics, and comfortable design makes the application very easy to use.

Six tools Apache openoffice

• Writer: word processor that supports a large number of formats, including those related to Word. It includes various dictionaries and allows you to export any created document to PDF.
• Calc: program Apache openoffice to work with spreadsheets, compatible with document formats created in Excel. It can not only create individual tables, but also includes collaboration tools.
• Draw: a tool with which you can create both technical drawings and art drawings using vector graphics.
• Base: besides simple database management, with this tool you can organize and manage any type of data.
• Impress: powerPoint compatible software is a slide show application using all kinds of editable templates. Finished slide shows can save in HTML or Flash formats.
• Math: tool for performing all kinds of mathematical calculations.

OpenOffice proves that even free software can be very high quality. Download office suite Apache openoffice from Apache for Mac, as it is a serious and effective alternative to more common office suites.