What is OpenOffice.org?

Writer is a feature-rich tool for creating letters, books, reports, newsletters, brochures, and other documents. You can insert graphics and objects from other components into Writer documents. Writer can export files to HTML, XHTML, XML, Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF), and several versions of Microsoft Word files. It also connects to your email client.

Calc has all of the advanced analysis, charting and decision-making features expected from a high-end spreadsheet. It includes over 300 functions for financial, statistical and mathematical operations among others. The Scenario Manager provides “what if” analyses. Calc generates 2-D and 3-D charts, which can be integrated into other OOo documents. You can also open and work with Microsoft Excel workbooks and save them in Excel format. Calc can export spreadsheets to Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) and to HTML.

Impress provides all the common multi-media presentation tools, such as special effects, animation, and drawing tools. It is integrated with the advanced graphics capabilities of the Draw and Math components. Slideshows can be further enhanced with Fontwork’s special effects text, as well as sound and video clips. Impress is compatible with Microsoft’s PowerPoint file format, and can save your work in numerous graphics formats including Macromedia Flash (SWF).

Draw is a vector drawing tool that can produce everything from simple diagrams or flowcharts to 3-D artwork. Its Smart Connectors feature allows you to define your own connection points. You can use Draw to create drawings for use in any of OOo’s other components, and you can create your own clipart and add it to the Gallery. Draw can import graphics from many common formats and save them in over 20 formats including PNG, HTML, PDF and Flash.

Base offers tools for day-to-day database work within a simple interface. It can create and edit forms, reports, queries, tables, views and relations, so managing a connected database is much the same as in other popular database applications. Base provides many new features, such as the ability to analyze and edit relationships from a diagram view. Base incorporates HSQLDB as its default relational database engine. It can also use dBASE, Microsoft Access, MySQL or Oracle, or any ODBC or JDBC compliant database. Base also provides support for a subset of ANSI-92 SQL.

Math is OOo’s formula or equation editor. You can use it to create complex equations that include symbols or characters not available in standard font sets. While it is most commonly used to create formulas in other documents, such as Writer and Impress files, Math can also work as a stand-alone tool. You can save formulas in the standard Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) format for inclusion in web pages and other documents not created by OOo.