Opening Open Office on Newcastle College PCs

If you got a new PC, tablet or laptop recently, you may need some office software (like a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation tool) to run on it.

Rather than spending a fortune on the latest Microsoft Office suite, you can get some equivalent, open source software which does exactly the same job to exactly the same quality for FREE from OpenOffice.org.

The bad news is that you can't normally open anything that you create on these programs on Newcastle College computers... unless you use this trick...:

When it comes to saving your OpenOffice word processed work, for instance, DON'T just click on the "Save" icon (or use the CTRL+S shortcut).

Instead, click on File then "Save As..." and change the option in the "Save as type..." box from the default "OpenDocument Text (.odt)" to "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP (.doc)".

Click Save now and your document will work on both your home computer and all Newcastle College PCs.

It works exactly the same if you use the OpenOffice version of Powerpoint (called "OpenOffice Impress") or Excel (which they call "OpenOffice Calc") - just select "Save As..." and choose the Microsoft equivalent.