Erwin's StarOffice Tango

Erwin's StarOffice Tango
Erwin Tenhumberg's Insights into Open Source and Dancing
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Donnerstag Mai 26, 2005

Just switch! - Using Styles in Org Charts
I think, all what I'm showing today, should also work in StarOffice 7. However, the screenshots are from one of the latest build of the upcoming StarOffice 8. In StarOffice it is pretty easy to create org charts using the rectangular shapes and connectors. Here is my little demo document:

BTW, you can find the connector tool in the "Drawing" toolbar:

As you can see in the "Styles and Formatting" tool on the left side, the style automatically assigned to a new shape is called "Default". Now I change the background color and the font color for one of the boxes:

Next, I create a new style by clicking on the modified box, keeping the mouse button down/pressed for 1-2 seconds, and dragging/moving the mouse to the "Styles and Formatting" tool on the left. In the styles tool the mouse pointer should show a little "+" sign, and when I release the mouse button, the following dialog pops up, where I type in the name of the new style ("OrgChartBox" in my case):

Then, I assign the new style to the other boxes by selecting them and double clicking on the "OrgChartBox" in the styles list:

Thus, finally it should look like this:

Since the text in the box at the bottom hits the frame of the box, I decide to reduce the font size. Therefore, I move the mouse pointer over the "OrgChartBox" entry in the styles tool, do a right-click, and select "Modify ...":

This brings up the "Graphics Styles" dialog where I change the font to a smaller size:

Once I click "OK" the org chart looks like this:

Now I want to change the background of my boxes, but this time I use a slightly different approach. I select the top box, do a right-click and select "Area ...":

This brings up the "Area" dialog where I change the color for my gradient from yellow to red:

The result looks like this:

Since all boxes should look the same, I have to apply my changes to the style, so that all boxes are affected. Therefore, I click on the "Update Style" button in the "Styles and Formatting" tool:

The final org chart now looks like this:

As you can see, using styles in org charts and presentation slides makes it much easier to maintain complex documents.
( Mai 26 2005, 04:17:07 PM CEST ) Permalink

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