Look for what you know

If you're moving across from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org, look for the tools you're familiar with using in Office. You might be surprised at how many of them are there, although they may not always appear on the same menus you're used to using. For example, in the Presentations tool you will find many options that you'll be familiar with from PowerPoint such as transitions and the ability to create a custom slide show using a subset of slides from the current show - both options are available from the Slide Show menu. The slide layout options are also similar and you will see these when you choose Insert, Slide from the menus. To choose from the available slide designs, choose Format, Styles, Slide Design and click the Load button to view the available options. Choose one to use and, if you want to apply it to just the current slide click OK. To apply it to all the slides in the slide show, check the Exchange Background page checkbox and then click Ok.

One feature you won't be familiar with in Office but which is built into OpenOffice.org is the ability to export a document as a .pdf file. Save a copy of the file in the OpenOffice.org format before you do this, in case you need to edit the document later on (you can't open a .pdf file to edit it), then choose File, Export as PDF to export it. You can do this from the spreadsheet and presentations tools as well as from the text document application.

Another feature you will be unfamiliar with is the concept of layers in presentations. The slides in a presentation can contain multiple layers and this feature lets you draw various elements on separate layers and then stack these on top of each other. To see the layers in the slide, click the Layer view button in the bottom left of the screen when a slide is visible.

You will find that OpenOffice.org is a surprisingly good suite. With its ability to save documents in common Microsoft Office formats, you could nab yourself a great home or small business productivity tool with a built in HTML editor, and set aside for a rainy day what you would have spent on one of the big name suites .