Author: timcdana

LibreOffice has many PDF export features Microsoft Office doesn’t

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, word processors

One of the most downloaded and shared file formats is PDF. The format that was developed by Adobe in the 1990s and released as ISO 32000 in 2008, is the key format to share reports, books, and many other types of documents. It looks the same regardless of the operating system and application that it is being viewed with. The documents also cannot easily be edited.

Most office suite applications have the ability to save a document or export it as a PDF. This includes Microsoft Office and LibreOffice. Both suites allow users to control the over the exportation that is more than just low or high quality.

For Microsoft Office, the conversion options differ from application to application. Word’s options differ from Excel’s and PowerPoint’s.

For LibreOffice’s applications, the same dialog with the same settings will appear when Export as PDF is clicked in Writer, Calc, Impress, or Draw. There is one setting that is unique to Impress.

Due to the differences from Microsoft application to application, this article will compare Word’s PDF option dialog to LibreOffice’s dialog. Microsoft Office has a PDFMaker add in that enhances its PDF-making capabilities. If you purchase Acrobat Standard or Pro, you will have PDFMaker.

Without PDFMaker, Microsoft Office does not have as many PDF export features as LibreOffice. This article compares the out-of-box versions.

Continue reading “LibreOffice has many PDF export features Microsoft Office doesn’t” →

LibreOffice makes Linux distros viable alternatives to Windows

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, legacy documents, LibreOffice, Microsoft formats, Microsoft Office

You leave work for a short lunch break. You don’t have time to sit and eat at a fast food restaurant or cafe, so you use the app for of one of those establishments to place an order that will be ready for you when you arrive.

It is highly likely that you interacted with a server running a Linux operating system when you placed the order. These flexible operating systems are widely used on servers, smart devices, and many other computers that people use every day. They typically use them without knowing the operating system.

However, if you had more time to spend in a restaurant and observe people sitting in it and working on their laptops, one thing that would be rare to find is one of those computers running a Linux distro and the person editing a document in LibreOffice. This would be a rare sight at any restaurant, office, or even home around the world.

Linux distros run on about 2 percent of the desktop computers worldwide. Microsoft continues to dominate the work world with its operating systems and office suite.

Continue reading “LibreOffice makes Linux distros viable alternatives to Windows” →

LibreOffice can migrate legacy graphic formats into open ones

Posted on by timcdana in File formats, legacy documents, OpenDocument Formats

Incorporating images in documents is commonplace in modern office work. Most office-suite applications can easily import an image from a hard drive into a document and integrate it into a paragraph, so the text wraps around it.

Both LibreOffice and Microsoft Office 2016 have had this capability for a long time. They can import common bitmap and vector formats. These formats can be produced by graphics creation and photo manipulation programs, such as Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

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Equality, free source-code make LibreOffice highly flexible

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Flexibility is important when it comes to technology. It is more than applications that are user-friendly. A flexible application allows the user to work where he wants and how he wants.

The two applications covered in this blog, LibreOffice and Microsoft Office, are both flexible. They are flexible in different ways, however.

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Impress needs video export option

Posted on by timcdana in Apple iWork, File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Videos are great ways to share ideas on the Web. Create one, upload it to your server or a video hosting service, like YouTube, and embed the video in a blog or other type of Web page.

NOTE: PowerPoint for Mac can export recorded slideshows to MP4 and MOV videos, but the audio may not be included in the video.

Turning a presentation into a video is a great way to share it, and if audio is included in the presentation, converting it into a video format is usually an effortless way of preserving the animation and audio of the original file. Currently, only Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows and Apple Keynote have easy ways to convert presentations to videos.

The current versions of LibreOffice Impress do not have this feature without adding a plugin. It has many of the same features as PowerPoint and several that the Microsoft application does not.

Continue reading “Impress needs video export option” →

PowerPoint, Impress enhance Websites with presentation exports

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, presentations, Web browser

Presentation applications can be run from a computer attached to a projector, and a presentation can be given in front of a room.

However, these applications can do so much more. They are designed to integrate images art, and text to create visually impacting documents. They have a lot in common with standard drawing applications.

Slides for presentations can be exported to common image formats and uploaded to a server, so the presentation can be given through a Web browser. They also can enhance a Web page or blog

Two of the most popular presentation applications are Microsoft PowerPoint for Windows and LibreOffice Impress. Both can convert presentations to various image formats so they can be seen through a browser and Website.

This article will explore the capabilities how both export slides and presentations to images so presentations can be seen through the Web.

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Calc make saving charts as stand-alone images simple

Posted on by timcdana in Charts, File formats, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Microsoft graphs and charts are easy to work with. They are created from data in an Excel spreadsheet. Then they can be inserted into a Word document or PowerPoint presentation, where they also can be edited.

This makes it easy for students and professionals to insert charts into reports and presentations as long as they are using Microsoft Office.

However, Microsoft’s charts do not work as easily outside of the suite. Many people may want to post their charts in a blog or Web page. They may want to email it to colleagues or send it to them during a chat session on Skype or a similar application.

Others may want to include a chart in a larger graphic element with professional drawing applications, such as Photoshop or Illustrator.

These require charts to be saved as images. The images are then inserted into a document or attached to a chat.

Excel requires the user to perform several steps to save a chart as an image. There are several different ways to do it.


LibreOffice Calc is different. It allows charts created from its data to be exported into several graphic and image formats with one simple step.

This article covers the steps it takes to save a chart as an image in Calc and Excel. It also covers the formats they can be saved in.

Continue reading “Calc make saving charts as stand-alone images simple” →

Calc, Excel can create customizable bar, column charts

Posted on by timcdana in Bar charts, Charts, Column charts, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Bar and column graphs are some of the most used in presentations. They are great visuals for different data in a spreadsheet. Most spreadsheet applications have them as one of the charts that can be created.

LibreOffice and Microsoft Excel for Windows are the most advanced spreadsheets on the market. They have several bar and column charts to choose from, and both allow users to edit and modify every aspect of the charts they create.

This article will compare how many bar and column charts the two applications have to offer, the options each has for stylizing the charts, and they create them.

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Excel’s sophistication makes it the best spreadsheet for chart creation

Posted on by timcdana in LibreOffice, Microsoft Office

Spreadsheets are the tools of number crunchers. Stockbrokers, financial analysts, and mathematicians are a few of the professionals who use this type of application heavily. When it comes time to share their information with others, however, they cannot rely on the rows and columns of figures to be clear to their audience.

This is why they create charts that can be inserted into presentations and word processor documents. Most spreadsheet applications have features to create charts from the data in their cells.

Like with other functions, Microsoft Excel for Windows and LibreOffice Calc, are the two most feature-rich applications for creating charts. Other popular spreadsheets, such as Google Sheets and Apple Numbers, don’t have the number of categories or the number of charts that these two have.

While the Mac version of Excel has many of the same charts as its Windows counterpart, it is still not quite as feature rich. It also doesn’t have the same number of charts as Calc.

This article will compare the number of charts available for Calc and Excel for Windows. It also will compare the user interfaces for the two.

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LibreOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel bury insert rows and columns feature

Posted on by timcdana in Apple iWork, Google Drive, LibreOffice, Microsoft Office, spreadsheets

Spreadsheet applications are not used as much as word processors, but they are used for just as diverse purposes. Grocery shoppers can use them to create lists. Financial managers use them to create charts from data showing forecasts for organizations. There are many other users and uses.

Though people from diverse walks of life use spreadsheets differently, they all typically perform some of the same functions. These include adding and deleting columns and rows.

This article compares how these are done in LibreOffice Calc to how they are done in Microsoft Excel 2016 for Windows.

While these to spreadsheet applications are considered to be the most powerful and feature-rich applications. However, they are not as user-friendly as some other popular spreadsheets, when it comes to adding or deleting rows and columns.

First the article will explain how these are performed. Continue reading “LibreOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel bury insert rows and columns feature” →