Montag März 07, 2005
OpenOffice.org and StarOffice support in Google's desktop search tool
"There is also the beginning of a third party plug-in movement, which has proved popular for open source software like Mozilla, for the tool. Add-ins include the ability to index OpenOffice and StarOffice documents, IRC chats and intranet webs sites."
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/70093/google-announces-release-version-of-desktop-search-tool.html
( Mrz 07 2005, 02:07:42 PM CET )
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Just switch! - Analyzing data with StarOffice 8
Today I want to talk a bit about the enhanced DataPilot feature in StarOffice 8. The DataPilot tool is very similar to Microsoft Excel's PivotTable feature. The DataPilot makes analyzing data (financial data in particular) very simple. The following screenshots illustrate what you can do with this very useful tool.
The DataPilot tool can be called from the Calc application menu via "Data - DataPilot - Start ...". If a field within a data table is selected when the DataPilot is called, the DataPilot automatically selects the whole data table and shows the following dialog.
In my case the correct range of data was selected and thus I just clicked "OK". The next thing I had to do was selecting the fields that should show up in my DataPilot. I dragged "Country" and "Quarter" to the "Row Fields" section and moved "Revenue" to "Data Fields" area.
The result was a simple table that listed my revenue data by country and quarter. This kind of view is nice, but still not too exciting.
As a next step I wanted to have an additional group that allowed my to analyze the revenue just for the Eurpoean countries. I selected "Germany" and "UK" via clicking on the fields with the country names and keeping the CTRL key pressed at the same time. Then I went to "Data - Outline - Group ..." to create the new group.
The new group was called "Group1". I changed the name to "Europe" to improve the usability.
Collapsing the new group by just double-clicking on the word "Europe" allowed me to look at the total revenue number for Europe.
Then I selected a field within the DataPilot table and clicked the right mouse button to bring up the DataPilot dialog again. I first dragged the "Country2" field out of the "Row Fields" area. Then I selected the "Country" field in the "Row Fields" area and clicked on "Options ...". In the "Data Field" dialog I again clicked on "Options ...". In the "Data Fields Options" windows I selected to sort by "Revenue" in a "Descending" order.
The result was a table in which the countries with the highest total amount of revenue were listed first.
After that I did more or less the same steps again. Thus, I accessed the DataPilot tool via the right-click menu, selected the "Country" field and clicked on options. In the "Data Field" dialog I selected "Automatic" this time to display subtotals.
Then I clicked on "Options ..." to bring up the "Data Field Options" dialog one more time. There I checked "Show" under "Show automatically" and selected "3", "Top" and "Revenue" in the three combo boxes.
The result was a smaller table that showed only the top three countries including subtotals.
Finally, I wanted to know how the UK and Japan compare to the US. Thus, I brought up the DataPilot window via the right-click menu again, but this time I selected the "Sum - Revenue" field in the "Data Fields" area and clicked on "Options ...". In the "Data Field" dialog I clicked on "More" and selected "Difference from", "Country" and "US" for "Type", "Base field" and "Base item".
The new table shows the quarterly differences between the US and the UK as well as the US and Japan. The numbers for the US are empty because they would be zero anyway.
The enhanced DataPilot feature makes StarOffice 8 a very powerful tool that should meet the requirements of most Microsoft Excel power users. Thus, I don't see a reasons why users should not "Just switch!" to StarOffice 8. My next blog will provide some insights into the digital signature support in StarOffice 8. Stay tuned!
( Mrz 07 2005, 10:39:04 AM CET )
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