Chapter 1 About the StarOffice 9 Office Suite

The StarOffice 9 software is a full-grown office productivity suite. The first version, named StarOffice 3.0, was published in 1995, when modules like StarWriter and StarCalc already were distributed in the mid-eighties. The current StarOffice 9 suite is based on the OpenOffice.org 3 suite, sharing the same OpenDocument file format and the same operability.

The StarOffice 9 suite includes the following applications:

• Writer – A word processor to write letters, books, web pages, and more

• Calc – A spreadsheet application for calculations and charts

• Impress – A presentation application for colorful slides

• Draw – A line art editing application

• Base – A database front end

• Math – A tool for inserting formulas into your documents

StarOffice Software Overview

The software is available for multiple operating systems on different platforms, and in many different languages. Documents are stored using the ISO-standardized OpenDocument format (ODF). Using the StarOffice suite, ODF files can be shared across operating systems without the need to convert the files. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument for more information about the OpenDocument format.

For an overview of the main StarOffice 9 software features, see the product web site at http://www.sun.com/staroffice.

Many extensions are available for StarOffice and OpenOffice.org that provide additional features, for example, spellcheckers, templates, calculator functions, and more . These extensions can be downloaded from http://extensions.services.openoffice.org.

What's New in the StarOffice 9 Office Suite

Every new release and update of StarOffice programs includes new features. The following list gives only a few of the highlights that are new in StarOffice version 9. For a full list, refer to http://www.sun.com/staroffice.

• Writer

  • Multiple pages in the edit view, controlled by a zoom slider on the Status toolbar

  • Improved notes that are shown at the page margin

  • New and improved extensions, like the Wiki and Weblog publishing extensions

• Calc

  • Collaboration feature allows multiple users working at the same spreadsheet simultaneously

  • Solver to solve complicated what-if problems

  • Charts can display regression curves and error bars

• Impress and Draw

  • Support for native tables with colorful layouts

  • Intuitive cropping of imported pictures

  • PDF Import extension

• Base

  • Improved interactive Report Builder extension

  • Improved macro functionality