The OpenOffice wizards are especially useful, and walk you through tasks such as creating databases and presentations. Mac users will be pleased to know that it can run on Mac OSX without having to use X11. Particularly useful is that OpenOffice now handles a wide variety of formats, including the upcoming OpenDocument Format (ODF) 1.2 standard, and will also be able to open documents created in Microsoft Office 2007 and Office 2008 for the Mac, which means that it's about as universally useful as an Office suite can be. Once you've opened an application, you can create or open a document by right-clicking the OpenOffice icon in the system tray, and making the appropriate choice. The Start Centre only appears if you don't currently have an OpenOffice application opened. It lets you easily create a new document, or open an existing one - just click the proper icon. There's excellent formatting tools, mail merge, macros, solid charting tools, and the ability to easily create presentations.Īn excellent new addition is the Start Centre, pictured below.

Whether you're creating documents, spreadsheets, or presentations, all the basics, and much more is here.

For most of what you use an office suite for, you'll find that OpenOffice 3.0 will more than fill your needs.

Openoffice review