Top 5 OpenOffice.org Extensions
OpenOffice has been offering extensions for a little while now, and while their extensions site is no where as near as comprehensive as Firefox’s and while not all are free or open source, there are still a few to enhance your openoffice experience.
Also don’t forget to check out the following tutorial: Speed Up Start Time for OpenOffice.org
Extensions are packaged as zip files, and are small enough that they can be quickly downloaded.
To add an extension,
- start OpenOffice.org and select Tools > Package Manager.
The Package Manager window shows two tree views:
My Packages for extensions added only for the current user account, and OpenOffice.org Packages for extensions added by the root user for all accounts. Select one of these trees, then click the Add button and navigate to a downloaded extension.
If the extension is added to the current user account, it is copied to ~/.openoffice.org2/user/uno_packages in the account’s home directory. If the extension is added to all accounts, it is unpacked to ~/share/uno_packages in the base OpenOffice.org installation, which is generally in /opt, but may be elsewhere in other distributions.
In Debian, for example, it’s in /usr/lib/openoffice. Regardless of the location, once the extension is unpacked, it is listed in the Package Manager window and you can delete the downloaded zip file.
Note: Extensions should also be disabled before they are removed.
1. GoogleDocs (location) Price: Free
Now Tux Training.com has already covered my favorite, the Google Docs Import/Export plugin The tool does exactly what it says and allows you to manually upload and download documents to and from your Google Docs account.
2. LanguageTool (location) Price: Free
One of the major gaps in OpenOffice.org Writer is a grammar checker. Although many point out that, if you know enough to use a grammar checker without being lured into even more errors, then you don’t need one, the demand for one remains high on the User list. LanguageTool is a first effort to provide a grammar checker for English, German, and Polish. The English configuration checks by default for over 70 common grammatical errors and typos on either the entire document or selected text. While the response time is a little slow, in general LanguageTool performs about as well as any grammar checker — that is, it catches small errors quickly, and can sometimes frustrate you with irrelevant queries. Its only drawback is that it requires Java 1.5.0, which free software supporters may not want to install.
3. OOo Blogger (location) Price: $10
Supports a number of Blog platforms, including Roller, WordPress, Generic ATOM and Generic MetaWeblog. These days, every word processor and text editor seems to be adding blog posting tools, and OpenOffice.org is no exception. OOo Blogger adds a Blog menu for posting new entries and editing old ones, with fields for entering the user name, password, and URL.
4. OOo Wikipedia (location) Price: Free
Not included in OpenOffice.org’s extension repository, OOo Wikipedia is OpenOffice.org’s answer to MS Word’s link to Encarta. OOo Wikipedia consists of two toolbar buttons, one of which opens your desktop’s default web browser in an article on the nearest word to the cursor in the language of your choice, and one of which does the same for a selected word. For researchers, OOo Wikipedia is invaluable, especially if you are doing an on-line article and need a link for readers who may need some background. It’s such a handy tool that Debian includes it by default in its OpenOffice.org packages. The one problem is that, when LanguageTool is enabled, OOo Wikipedia becomes non-functional, so you can’t use both at once.
5. Sun Presentation Minimizer (location) Price: Free
The Sun Presentation Minimizer is used to reduce the file size of the current presentation. Images will be compressed, and data that is no longer needed will be removed. The Sun Presentation Minimizer can optimize the image quality size. Presentations designed for screen or projector do not require the same high quality as presentations designed for print.
If you got some favorites, maybe a powerful rare one not hosted on the official extensions site, let us know.
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Tags: extensions, openoffice.org