I love OpenOffice because it’s a very powerful and FREE open source office application. Its lack of enterprise-level mail program (like Outlook) is its only shortcoming. Otherwise it’s (at least) as good as its Microsoft counterparts Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.
However you need to be careful if you have downloaded the Mac version of OpenOffice to your Macbook or any other Mac machine because Macs run OpenOffice through an outer shell program called X11. You first download X11 and then OpenOffice will work.
It works but not thew ay you are used to when it comes to Copying and Pasting text between OpenOffice and a non-OpenOffice application, like Safari or Firefox browser, for example.
Here is a must tip for copying and pasting text between your OpenOffice word processor and your email window. It’s a MUST because if you don’t know this you cannot copy and paste your text.
When you are in OpenOffice COPY by pressing CRTL+C.
But when it comes to PASTING it in your email window, use APPLE BUTTON + V.
No other combination will work since within the X11 shell, you can access your clipboard through the CTRL button only. However, when you are in the mail screen, you are no more in X11 but in Apple environment. Therefore you can reach the clipboard only through an Apple command, which is accomplished by switching to the APPLE BUTTON.
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4 comments:
Actually you can enable apple + c or v to copy and past by going in to the X11 preferences and making sure that "Enable keyboard shortcuts under X11" has a tick beside it.
The Aqua version of OpenOffice.org will not have this problem. There will be another development snapshot available in about a months time.
Shaun, thanks. I appreciate you taking the time for your useful comment.
But even with that check-box ticked in the X11 Preferences dialog box it sometimes does not work.
However, my son noticed that if you deselect the selected text and then re-select it, then Apple + C and Apple + V pastes the selection into the email window successfully.
In other words, there is something unsystematic and chancy about it. I still could not figure it out when and why it works and when and why it doesn't. I hope the Aqua version will solve this issue because I really love both my Mac and the OpenOffice. I hope one day not too distant into the future these two will start working well together.
Ugur
UPDATE:
I've installed NEOOFFICE and copy+paste works great because I think it does not need X11.
Yes,
NeoOffice does integrate into the native Mac OS X UI with a Java interface. So it does not need the X11.
However, OpenOffice is finally working (as mentioned above) on its own version that integrates into the native Mac OS X UI (Cocoa). Expect a stable version aprox. end of the year.
K<o>
Busy, supporting non technical users of Open Office and NeoOffice
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