Office applications Toolkit

Ten add-ons to boost the power of OpenOffice

Jack Wallen Tech Republic

Published: 12 Jun 2009 12:11 BST

Ten add-ons to boost the power of OpenOffice

OpenOffice's capabilities can be significantly improved by carefully choosing the right extensions, says Jack Wallen.

If you use OpenOffice 3, you might have considered adding extensions to expand its capabilities. But if you have looked through the OpenOffice.org website, you will know there are many. Wading through them is time-consuming, so here is a list of some of the more business-friendly add-ons for the productivity suite.

1. Alternative find and replace

This outstanding addition to the standard search and replace includes the following valuable features:

Search/replace text can contain one or more paragraphs
Multiple search/replace in one instance
Searching end notes and footnotes
Object searches according to name
Hexadecimal and decimal searches
Preset regular and extended expressions
Batch mode searching
Built-in help
Multi-language support

This new search feature is found on the Tools menu under the Add-ons sub-menu. When it opens, you will instantly see the expanded features. If you work with a lot of large, complex documents, this extension is exactly what you need to make your job easier.

2. Barcode

If you have to manage a lot of hardware, you know how barcodes can make system management much easier. With this OpenOffice Draw extension, you can create different types of barcodes — EAN-13, ISBN-13, ISBN-13 from ISBN-10, UPC-A, IAN, EAN-8 and UPC-E — and you can add a checksum digit.

This extension is simple to use. Go to the Insert menu and click on Barcode. A small window will open, where you select the type and enter the value.

3. eFax

This extension integrates a full-featured fax into OpenOffice. With this feature, you can send and receive faxes through the eFax service. Once installed, you will notice a new menu entry titled eFax. It is worth noting that this extension works only with the Windows version of OpenOffice.

4. FastMailMerge

If you have to do mail merges, you know that modern packages usually rely on a database for addresses. This approach is fine if you have employees who can create databases. But for those who do not have staff with database skills and need mail merge capabilities, FastMailMerge may be the answer.

This extension allows the use of spreadsheet data instead of databases. With this extension, you can select a range of data in a spreadsheet and run the macro.