StarOffice Help

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StarOffice 5.2 is installed on all of our linux workstations.
It is a big, resource hungry office suite, reminiscent of MS Office. It can both read and save most Office97 document formats, including PowerPoint.

To use StarOffice you must set it up.

[If you have been using StarOffice 5.1, you will still have to go through the 5.2 setup procedure described below. Please note that "office" is now written with a lower case "o," in contrast to the spelling under version 5.1. Yell at Sun for this if it really bugs you.]

Type /usr/local/office52/program/setup

This will transfer approximately 2MB of files into your home directory. Be sure that you have space available before you try this. ~~During the setup procedure you will be asked for a license key.~~ (Since Sun purchased StarOffice, a license key is longer necessary)

After you've run setup, you're ready to use the program.

Type ~/office52/soffice

to start it. If you use KDE, a menu entry will have been automatically created in your personal K menu. Just click on it to start StarOffice.

StarOffice as a netscape helper

You can use StarOffice as a Netscape helper application for MS documents by editing your Netscape preferences in the usual way. Start Netscape. Go to Edit->Preferences, then Navigator->Applications. Find the "Microsoft Word Document" and "Microsoft Excel Worksheet" entries under "Description. To setup the helper highlight the file type and push the edit button. Depress the radio button in front of the Application field, and type

"~/office52/bin/soffice %s"

Now click OK and StarOffice should be invoked automatically whenever you run across a Word or Excel file on the Web.

A few hints and warnings

StarOffice seems to have trouble printing certain MS formats. It may crash, or only print parts of the document. If you encounter problems you may wish to export the document in StarOffice's native format and reload it.
Sometimes it may be necessary to print a document a few pages at a time.
As a last resort, save it to a file, and use ps2pdf to make a PDF file, which can usually be printed from acroread.

StarOffice includes a calender system, similar to the Netscape calendar. The default time zone is set to be CET(Berlin). To correct this, right click on the left part of the calendar and choose "Timezone" Select "America/Los Angeles"

Jeffrey Anderson

Last modified: Fri Jun 29 15:52:17 PDT 2001