My organization is new to Libre. Looking for cheat sheets

users
#1

Hi all.

We are brand new to Libre. We are used to MS office. Is there a "cheat
sheet" that says "If you do this in office these here the steps you need to
take to do the same thing in Libre?" Also we have noticed that when we
import documents especially those with tables the formatting is altered.
any advice?

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
The proper guides/manuals/books are here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
(they are available elsewhere too but that wiki-page is the most up-to-date
and even has chapters before the full book has been completed for
publication). The proper guides are great at giving a strong overview to
help anticipate how everything works.

If you scroll further down that page (or click on the table-of-contents)
then you get to some quick-reference cards
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#Desktop_Reference_Cards
these can be useful to have printed out but they might be a little
out-of-date now and thus miss a lot of new features, or screen-shots might
look a bit archaic or show things looking rough that are really smoooth
now. Even so they are excellent for "at a glance" help. Handy to have on
a wall easy to read from a desk or few.

There is an FAQ (=frequently asked question) at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq
to dip into to look-up things quickly.

The in-built help is useful. In the top icon-bar just click on the little
blue question mark. Sometimes the English one is a bit geeky or might be
misleading or inaccurate in places because Office (i mean LibreOffice but i
often just use Office for short because i use it so much) develops so fast
that it's not possible to keep up all the time. Not that things keep
changing around just that Murphy's Law suggests that the 1 thing you need
to look-up turns out ot be a new feature. It's usually pretty good for
quickly looking things up.

There are a few videos and other things listed here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Other_Documentation_and_Resources
Buried somewhere in there is an excellent book on how to program macros to
do some really useful stuff. Also here;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros
Often people use Extensions/Add-ons
http://extensions.libreoffice.org/
but being able to program in your own stuff can be quite rewarding.

There is an online training resource at;
http://www.spoken-tutorial.org/
for example on Writer, in English;
http://www.spoken-tutorial.org/tutorial-search/?foss=LibreOffice+Suite+Writer&language=English

There is a comparison betweeen LIbreOffice and MS Office
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Feature_Comparison:LibreOffice-_Microsoft_Office
but again it's already out-of-date, or maybe perpetually out-of-date due to
the rapid development of LibreOffice. Mostly you'll notice that
LibreOffice really is cross-platform and even on platforms or niche markets
where LibreOfrfice itself doesn't have a presence there is inevitable
something else in the same eco-system that does work well with LibreOffice
files

Of course MS Office seems to try hard to be incompatible with everything
else because that way people are kinda forced into buying MS Office.
However, most of the problems you find are also problems if files are
opened with a different version of MS Office than the version the file was
created with. For example a table created in MS Office 2007 might well not
work in MS Office 2010 or 2013. Files created in anything other than MS
Office almost never have a problem when opened in LibreOffice regardless of
version.

Hopefully some of these links prove useful and most will point to other
links and to other resources.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Paul Auger wrote:

Hi all.

We are brand new to Libre. We are used to MS office. Is there a "cheat
sheet" that says "If you do this in office these here the steps you need to
take to do the same thing in Libre?"

Not sure about that; hopefully others can help there.

I've always found LibreOffice very similar to MS Office (at least up to MS Office 2003, before they introduced those "ribbon" toolbars). About the only thing that kept catching me out was that Format > Page in LibreOffice was at File > Page Setup in MS Office. Opposite way round to you though - having got used to LibreOffice, I always had to think about where to find the page formatting options in MS Office! (and it never did make sense that page formatting was on the File menu when character and paragraph formatting were on a Format menu...)

Also we have noticed that when we
import documents especially those with tables the formatting is altered.
any advice?

For various reasons, the older MS Office .doc, .xls and .ppt formats generally import into LibreOffice better than the newer .docx, .xlsx and .pptx formats. So if your files are in those newer formats, try using MS Office to save them into the older format (File > Save As and choose the older format, probably called something like "Microsoft Office 2003", for the "Save as type" option). Then import that older-format file into LibreOffice.

It does mean you need MS Office to do the conversion, but a medium or large organisation would probably want to keep a couple of MS Office licenses anyway, to ensure they can access historical files, even once the majority of the organisation has transitioned to LibreOffice. One of the benefits of the Open Document Format used by LibreOffice (and other open source office applications) is that you're not reliant on one company's product to be able to access your old files in future.

Mark.

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Mark raises a good point. It's worth migrating rather than switching.

LibreOffice works well alongside MS Office and it's good to have both on
most computers for a while. A migration means people are still able to use
the more familiar system for a while if they really need to and it gives
them time to become more familiar with the newer system at their own pace.

There are various optimum routes for this. One of my favourite routes is
to start by leaving MS Office as the default for their formats but keep
LibreOffice as the default for ODF. As they get more and more ODFs they
find themselves using LibreOffice more and more, naturally. Maybe also set
LibreOffice to be the default for the older MS format too (the doc, xls,
ppt etc). After that phase has shown a few people they can right-click on
a file to "Open with" something other than the default then switch it over
so that LibreOffice is the default for all types of documents.

Some people say that letting people default into their familiar old system
means that many wont ever try the new system. However some people will try
it and those people will be handy for the next phase - as they will
probably have already found out answers to the problems the
stick-in-the-muds manage to find.

Of course the Microsoft world tends to push people into switching by
forcing them to get rid of (or 'upgrade from') the system they are familiar
with. Then productivity drops and users can be blamed for not learning the
new way. Then many of the new users resent the new system and grumble
about how much better the old one was and push for it to be resurrected.

I think the switching route is a bit rude tbh. I don't see why people have
to have their toys snatched away like that.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: