30 June 2009 - 18:46New ShowMeDo series – OpenOffice Calc transition series for Excel users

I spent the weekend cracking through the creation of a new 12-part tutorial  series for ShowMeDo, the result is OpenOffice Calc 3.1 for Microsoft Excel users.  The overview is embedded below, links to all the episodes are further down.  This series was created whilst wearing my screencast production hat for ProCasts.

The goal is to take the hand of an Excel user and easily and quickly move them over to using Calc with the minimum of fuss.

Common topics like sharing .xls files, using .ods native files, printing, .csv files and PDF export are covered.  I also spend three episodes (just over 20 minutes) going through the creation of a sheet to model a mythical eBook’s sales covering formulas, formatting and charting.  Finally I finish with a look at some of Calc’s easter eggs including Star Wars (heck, I didn’t even know there were any games in OOo!).

Note that this series is a part of ShowMeDo’s Club so you need to be a paying member or contributing author to get access to all the episodes.  I’ve also updated the OpenOffice Learning Path which collates all of ShowMeDo’s OpenOffice videos.

1. Series Overview in 3 minutes (OpenOffice 3.1 for Excel users) (Free)
   
2. Installing OpenOffice 3.1 on Windows XP (Free)
3. Working with .xls Sheets in Calc
4. Saving as an ODF Spreadsheet (.ods) and PDF
5. Where to get help
6. Constructing a Sales-Forecast Sheet
7. Formatting your Sheet
8. Creating a Chart
9. Printing your Sheet
10. Import and Export CSV files
11. Re-associating .xls files with Excel after OpenOffice installation
12. Light relief – Star Wars Easter Egg and others

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Ian applies Artificial Intelligence as an Artificial Intelligence Researcher for companies (Mor Consulting), co-founded the StrongSteam A.I. datamining toolkit, co-authored SocialTies, programs Python, writes The Screencasting Handbook and is also a sea-side dweller and consumer of fine coffees.