Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 4: Configuring StarOffice

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Setting the General Options


Although you can set options independently for spreadsheets, HTML files, presentations, and so on, some settings apply to all documents that you create.

These general settings are controlled by the General Options dialog box, which you can view by selecting Options from the Tools menu, and then selecting General.

The sections that follow review the most important settings in the General Options dialog box.

Reviewing Your User Data

When you installed StarOffice in Hour 1, "Installing StarOffice," you had the option of entering some personal data during the installation. This User Data is stored in StarOffice for use in template documents, in email and newsgroup postings, and so on.

If you need to review or change any of your personal information, go to the General Options dialog box (choose Options, Tools, General) and choose the User Data tab. (See Figure 4.7.)

Figure 4.7
The personal information stored in the User Data tab can be reviewed or altered as necessary.

You can click on any of the fields to enter new data. Just click the OK button when you're done to store your changes.

Caution - If you change the name or email address fields, your registration code needs to be updated, which requires a new license key from StarDivision.


Caution - Pressing Cancel in the General Options dialog box closes the dialog box without saving any updates you've entered. Pressing Reset leaves the dialog box open but resets all the information to what it was before you entered any changes.

Setting Your Save Options

The Save settings in the General Options dialog box enable you to determine how your work is protected. In general, the more protection you have against power failures, bad edits, and other oops! situations, the better off you are as you work.

Using features such as automatic save is so fast on today's PCs that you won't notice any interruption in your work; but this feature can sure save you when you think you've lost a day's worth of work.

To see your Save options, open the General Options dialog box and choose the Save tab (see Figure 4.8).

Figure 4.8
The options in the Save tab determine how your documents are protected against losing data.

Tip - Remember, the Save options described here apply to all types of documents that you create in StarOffice, from word processing documents to email messages and presentations.


The key items in the Save tab are

Tip - Backup copies are stored in the /~Office50/backup directory with the extension .bak. You can use the Open item on the File menu to browse this directory and select a backed-up document to load.


Caution - The two Save options--Always create backup copy and Automatic save every xx minutes--are turned on by default in many word processors, such as Microsoft Word. However, they are off by default in StarOffice. Turn these options on and leave them on as you work in StarOffice.


Tip - If you're working on a laptop, automatic save and backup features can use extra battery power by running the hard drive more often. Use your judgment as to whether the backup or the battery life is more important to you.

Reviewing Your StarOffice Paths

If you've worked with Linux for very long, you know that one of the greatest sources of trouble with Linux software can be determining where things are stored in the filesystem.

StarOffice is a large program, and you might want to store parts of it in nonstandard locations to fit what you're doing with the rest of your Linux system.

The Paths tab in the General Options dialog box enables you to set up the subdirectory where each part of StarOffice is stored. Most of these subdirectories are probably fine as they're set up by default. Following is a look at a couple that you might want to change.

The Path tab of the General Options dialog box is shown in Figure 4.9.

Figure 4.9
Paths (subdirectories) can be altered for most of the files used by StarOffice.

The list of paths includes most of the special directories that StarOffice uses for things such as the Explorer window's Work Folder, the Bookmarks, and the Desktop itself.

Other paths relate to things that have not been described yet, such as the subdirectory in which backup documents are saved. You might want to change a path for one of the following reasons:

Tip - The location used by default when you save any new document is determined by the Work Folder path.


To make any changes to a path, select the path that you want to edit from the list and choose the Edit button.

A file browser such as the one in Figure 4.10 appears; you can select the subdirectory that you want to apply to the path that you selected.

Figure 4.10
When you edit a path, you use a standard file browser window to choose a new subdirectory.

Setting Language Options

The language options available in StarOffice are a great help in making your writing correct and professional. Although not as advanced as some of the latest tools in Word or WordPerfect, StarOffice still provides many great language features.

To set the basic language features, open the General Options dialog box (choose Tools, Options, General) and select the Linguistic tab. The dialog box in Figure 4.11 appears.

The Check spelling box shows a few rules that are applied when you use the Spell Checker. The default options are set to

Figure 4.11
The Linguistic tab determines your spelling, hyphenation, and language options.

The Auto spellchecking feature (turned off by default) checks your spelling as you type, underlining in red any word not found in the dictionary. Figure 4.12 shows a document with a few underlined (misspelled) words caught by the auto-spellchecker. Auto spellchecking is described in more detail in Hour 12, "Using Spell-Check and the Thesaurus."

Figure 4.12
Auto spellchecking uses a wavy underline to show words that can't be identified.

The hyphenation rules define how words at the end of lines are hyphenated into two parts. Unless you're working on a report with special formatting requirements, you can probably leave these settings at their default values.

Remember, though, that the Default language shown in the lower-right of the Linguistic tab of this dialog box determines how words are hyphenated. Each language has hyphenation rules coded into a dictionary that StarOffice uses to hyphenate your documents.

The General Options dialog box includes other options beyond what you've seen here, including the capability to set view options (see the View tab), standard colors (see the Colors tab), and the program language if you have more languages than just English installed (see the Other tab).

Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours

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Hour 4: Configuring StarOffice

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