Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Reviewing the Menus


The menus in StarOffice will be very familiar to you if you've used other office suite software. The items are arranged in a similar pattern that is easy to learn.

The catch is that StarOffice, unlike MS Office, isn't composed of several components such as MS Word and MS Excel. Instead, everything is part of one program: StarOffice.

Therefore, the menus don't have to change much between different document types. In fact, most of the menu items remain the same for any document that you're working on. This makes it easy to find the command that you need on the menus.

When you work with different types of documents, you'll see that the following menus remain constant most of the time:

On the other hand, some of the menus change quite a bit. For example, the formatting options for a spreadsheet and a word processing document require different commands, so the items listed on the Format menu change according to what you're working on.

Using Keyboard Shortcuts

Computer users seem to fall into two camps. The first prefers to use a mouse, feeling that typing is for content and not for controlling a computer program. The second type prefers the keyboard, and only touches the mouse as a last resort.

Graphical programs make it easy to learn a new application, but they require you to use the mouse. Most graphical programs in Windows and Macintosh also have keyboard shortcuts to accommodate users who prefer using the keyboard. These shortcuts are a great way to quickly perform tasks without using the mouse. Most Linux programs don't have these shortcuts, but StarOffice for Linux does!

Two kinds of keyboard shortcuts are provided in StarOffice. The first uses the Alt key to open a menu and regular keystrokes (letters, arrows, and the Tab key) to select an option.

The second type of shortcut is called an Accelerator key. By pressing the Ctrl key in combination with other keys, you can immediately execute an action such as saving or printing a file, or bolding a block of selected text.

Following is an example of using the Alt key to perform a task--opening a new StarCalc spreadsheet:

1. While holding down the Alt key, press the f key (this is usually written as Press Alt+F). The File menu appears.

2. Press the n key. The New item is selected, and the New submenu appears.

3. Press the s key. The Spreadsheet item is selected, and a new spreadsheet document appears on your screen.

4. Looking back at the menus that you selected using the keyboard, notice how can you tell which keys to use for these shortcuts: each one is underlined (see Figure 3.13).

Figure 3.13
Menu shortcut keys are underlined.

To open a menu, hold down the Alt key and press the underlined key; to select an item within the menu, just press the underlined key.

Accelerator keys are even quicker. Look again at the File menu (see Figure 3.14). Anytime you press Ctrl+O, the Open File dialog appears as if you had selected Open from the File menu (using Alt+F and O, or by using the mouse).

Figure 3.14
The Accelerator keys are always listed on the right side of a menu item.

How can you tell what the Accelerator keys are for a task? Just look at the right side of a menu item to see whether a key combination is shown there.

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 3: Using the Explorer and the Desktop

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