Category: Tools (Page 2 of 5)

The OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension imports documents from Google Docs and Spreadsheets to OpenOffice.org and exports from OO.org to GDocs so you can work with your docs both online and offline. Works onWindows/Mac/Linux. Also it is a simple way to backup your local documents to the internet.

The OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension is free, works anywhere you’ve installed OpenOffice.org. Web site DocSyncer is looking to do similar things for your Microsoft Office docs, but right now it’s in an invite-only beta. Needs Java 6 to work.

Whether on Windows, Mac, or Linux, the Writer’s Tools extension adds a useful new menu to the popular, open source office suite OpenOffice.org that bakes convenient tools like Google Translate, an online dictionary lookup tool, email backup, remote backup to an FTP server and more directly into the OpenOffice.org free software suite.

If you’re using OpenOffice.org as your main word processor, the Writer’s Tools extension is a must-have. Writer’s Tools is free, works wherever OpenOffice.org does.

Another valuable to is OxygenOffice, also for Windows/Mac/Linux. It adds clip art, advanced PDF functions, and in-editor Wikipedia searching to OpenOffice.org. Along with adding roughly 3,400 clip art files and templates, OxygenOffice’s extensions also add support for Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications in the Calc spreadsheet program and conversion tools for the Office Open XML format used in Office 2007. Combined with the Writer’s Tools package, this gives OpenOffice.org a number of exclusive features.

Here are some helpful shortcuts for those of you using Writely to compose your works.
FROM THE EDITOR MENU:

• Ctrl S to Save
• Ctrl K to Insert Link
• Ctrl M to Insert Comment

FROM THE BROWSER:

• Ctrl B to Bold
• Ctrl I to Italicize
• Ctrl-Z to Undo
• Ctrl-Y to Redo
• Ctrl A to Select All
• Ctrl C to Copy
• Ctrl V to Paste
• Ctrl X to Cut
• Ctrl Home to go to the top of the document
• Ctrl End to go to the end of the document
• Ctrl Alt-? to select the next word
• Ctrl Alt-? to select the previous word

OTHER TIPS:

Need some help creating some character names? Check out these useful sites that have very interesting tools to generate names and do research on names:

• 20000-names.com
• seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php
• lowchensaustralia.com/names/generators.htm
• rinkworks.com/namegen

Trying to recall a magical quote from your favorite book? Wondering who else has used the character name ‘John Hoggins’? Google’s new Book Search feature allows you to do this and more.

Try it out at Google Book Search