Frequently Answered Questions about OpenOffice.org / StarOffice
This is the OpenOffice.org Help Tips 'n' Tricks Blog. You want to know the main tip and trick how you can get help in OOo? The answer is the F1 key. Help is already installed together with the software suite.
But there are many other ways to get help online. The main online Help portal page is located on the OOo Wiki. The Wiki has the advantage that every user can easily add information to the online Help contents. Another Help portal exists as part of the http://documentation.openoffice.org project. At that page it is not as easy to change contents and links, however, so it may be a little bit outdated from time to time. That's the difference between last century web pages and Web 2.0 pages.
So let's have a look at the Wiki. Browse to http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation to see what's available.
Authors from Sun and from the OOo community are constantly working to improve the Help contents of the Wiki. And the Wiki is a place with many visitors. In October 2008 there have been 360.000 page views for the documentation section of the OOo Wiki, and the numbers are constantly growing.
Have a look at the FAQ pages at http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ - click the links in the FAQ box. These pages try to answer the most frequently asked questions. The questions and answers that get clicked most often are positioned at the top. So you can easily see where the users really need additional information.
On every FAQ topic page there is a text entry box, where any user can add a pair of question and answer texts to further improve the online Help contents.
Some users don't want to scan through canned answers but prefer posting to mailing lists or in an online forum. Of course these are also available:
The OpenOffice.org Community Forum is located at http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/
A list of available mailing lists can be found at http://www.openoffice.org/mail_list.html