Speeding up your work

AutoText lets you automatically enter large pieces of text or even images into a document by typing a few shortcut characters. Begin by inserting the image, table or text to save as an AutoText entry into a text document. Select the text and choose Edit, AutoText and type a name for the entry - this can be anything. The Shortcut is the combination of letters you will use to enter it in future. This can be one or a series of letters - make it short but memorable. Click the AutoText button and choose New from the menu to create the entry. Click Close. Now test the entry by typing the shortcut characters and press F3 to insert the full text into the document. OpenOffice.org has a handy style tool for formatting paragraphs in a document. Using styles saves time as you can easily alter them later on by altering the style definition rather than having to alter each paragraph individually. To see the styles catalog choose Format, Styles, Catalog and a list appears. You can also use this dialog to modify a style. To apply a style, use the Apply Styles list on the toolbar. Select the text to apply the style to and then choose the style from the Apply Styles list. If you have a paragraph formatted in a particular style and want to change that style, right click it, choose Edit Paragraph Style and make your changes - these then flow through the document to all paragraphs formatted with that style.

The Calculator component also uses styles so you can apply a format to a cell or a block of cells from the style list there. Select the cells and choose Format, Stylist and then double click the style to apply. As the list of styles is pretty limited you will want to create a few styles of your own. To do this, format a cell with the characteristics you want to use for the style using Format, Cells. Then select the cell and click the New Style from Selection button in the Stylist dialog. Type a name for the style and you can now apply it to any other cell in the worksheet. The Stylist has the advantage over the Style catalog in that it stays open on the screen while you work. In the Presentation tool, choosing the Stylist opens the Presentation Styles dialog where you can choose a style to use to format a part of your presentation. You can also create styles to use to format text on your slides.