OpenOffice Writer Tools – Text Snippets, Word Lookup, and More
OpenOffice.org has an extension system just like the Firefox browser. One of the recently released extensions is for the Writer component of the office suite, and it adds a new menu option with some useful tools.
It’s cleverly called Writer Tools, and the installation process couldn’t be any simpler. You just have to download the ZIP file from Google Code, extract the contents, and double-click on the WriterTools.oxt file that it contains. This will automatically begin the installation process in OpenOffice.org, and after it’s done just restart Writer.
Writer Tools contains all of the options you see pictured to the right, and here’s some details on what each of them does:
- Lookup Tool – defines a word in your default browser using Cambridge Dictionaries, WordNet, or Google Define.
- Google Translate – translate selected text fragments using Google Translate service.
- Show on the Map – select a city, a street name, or a postal code and map it using the Multimap service.
- Email Backup – send a backup copy of the currently opened document to an email address.
- Multi-format Backup – macro saves the currently opened Writer document in the Word, RTF, and TXT formats. The backup files are stored in a separate folder with a date stamp.
- Remote Backup – save a backup copy of the current document on a FTP server.
- Wikify Word – links a selected word or text fragment in the current document to a created on the fly Writer document. For example, if the word “Monkey” is selected, the macro automatically links it to the created
Monkey.odtdocument. - Start/Stop Timer – keep tabs on time spent on the currently opened document and save the time data (the document name, used time, and date).
- Word Hunt Game – guess the word randomly picked by Writer.
- Word of the Day – picks and displays a random word and its definition from the from the accompanying WriterDB database.
- Add to Basket – text snippets, links, and notes to the supplied database. You can also categorize and tag the added entries.
This also comes with a template extension for Writer, but it’s a bit disappointing. If you plan on writing a book it might be useful, but other than that you’ll probably never use the templates that it comes with.
Source: Lifehacker
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Tags: Freeware, Newly Released, Software, Downloads, OpenOffice
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Thank you Ryan!
I’m just starting out with OpenOffice Writer and this is a wonderful assistant!
-Daniel
No problem Daniel. If you’re just starting out with it I would love to hear your initial impressions sometime.
I’ve installed this and will take a look in the next day. I tend to do my writings on my weekend (Friday/Saturday).
this is very useful indeed. all is lacking is automatic backup to a removable drive/disk on key of some kind.
i wish word would have this also (till i make the move to openoffice anyway), cause they should have an automatic saving in doc and docx at same time.
My initial impressions?
1. Didn’t know that there were extensions for OO.
2. There’s no info. in the OO help about Wikifying (have to test the extension on this yet).
3. The backuping to email option i must look into. It will definitely come in handy!
4. If only i could find some good Video tutorials that show more than just how to download/install OO.
BTW, i’ve set a Gravatar image yesterday and it still doesn’t show up in my profile. Any other options?
-I don’t know if this should go into a forum somewhere but i tried to use email backup and it’s not working.
-OO is configured with an valid email account. I’ve even opened up OE to setup a Hotmail account so that a default Windows Addressbook be operative (seems OO needs this for some reason). Email backup requests an email address every time (wish there were a default address).
Yet every tentative is negative. Zilch! Nada!
That would be nice to schedule an automatic backup to a secondary drive.
Are you using the same email address in your comments that you setup with Gravatar? I’m pretty sure that’s what it uses to pull in the image. If you are I’ll go ahead and look into it.
And you setup your email account in the extension correctly? Maybe you should try setting up a Gmail account and see if that works. You can always have Gmail forward any of the documents onto your Hotmail.
Just looked into the Gravatar issues and it was a bug in my code. Your Gravatar now shows up just fine.
Ryan,
Just so happened that Gravatar moved over to some other company today. Guess that opens the door to possible delay situation as well.
Did a GMail setup, config tested okay.
Went to perform email backup. For some reason the Corel settings are not being respected (addressbook). Error message still comes up.
Hope i’m doing things properly here:
Tools/Star Office Writer/Mail Merge E-mail
That’s the place to setup email config right?
Gravatar just got bought by WordPress today, which is what powers our blog. I’m pretty excited about that, and I think it will be good for the company.
I looked into the Email Backup thing a little closer, and apparently all it does is open your default email application (such as Outlook) and attach the document to an email for you to send. If you don’t have an account setup with an application it is not going to work. Sorry about that, I wasn’t completely sure with how it worked. And unfortunately it defeats its usefulness a bit since you have to go through so many hurdles just to get the email sent.
Hi Ryan,
In fact, i have even setup a Hotmail along with my default email account within OE (don’t have Outlook), even had the mail program open side by side with OO and i still had the Corel settings window popup and same error messages.
Did however send an email to the author. Hope his English is better than mine!
DivShare.com (although a bit slow right now) may be the most viable option. With IE and Firefox plugins, it’s really simple to upload files and share them through links to whatever email address you please.
DivShare doesn’t have plugins for the browsers, do they?