43
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Chapter 6 Working With OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office
DRAFT
That said, how do you deal with specific issues between OpenOffice.org and
Microsoft? That’s what this chapter is all about.
Overall Formatting Solutions
This is the section with all the formatting solutions. I’ve grouped them into
general guidelines, specific fixes, and setup.
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Fiddle with the margins. Different margins can drastically change how text flows
on a page. Also fiddle with the font, and font size to make them match the
Microsoft documents. See Changing Margins on page169 and Making Text Look
How You Want It: Basic Formatting on page132.
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Change the default fonts used for new documents to match the fonts used in the
Microsoft documents you’re opening. See Setting up Default Fonts for New
Writer Documents on page71.
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Change your default template to match the main characteristics of the Microsoft
documents. See Specifying a Template as the Default Template for File > New >
Spreadsheet on page69.
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Change the default tabs slightly; increase them a little or decrease them a little nd
see what happens. See Setting up Default Tabs on page155.
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Change hyphenation, text flow, and other items in the Text Flow tab of the
Paragraph Formatting window. See Reference to Paragraph Formatting Features
on page145. (Use this approach only if you’re familiar with these advanced
features.)
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Sometimes the document you bring from Microsoft Office into OpenOffice.org
just wasn’t formatted well in the first place. Carriage returns and tabs instead of
wrapping the text can be one issue. Show the tabs and carriage returns, and other
typographical marks. See Viewing Carriage Returns and Other Formatting
Markups on page160 to understand these marks. You’ll probably just want to
delete any tabs or carriage returns in the middle of a paragraph. This will help a
lot.
Solving Problems With Specific Pieces of Text
or Graphics
Occasionally you’ll just have formatting problems with a few pieces of text rather
than the flow of a whole document. Here’s how to fix those.
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If text formatting is decidedly odd, select the text and choose Format > Default.
