2. What Is Open Office? Open Office is an open source (free) suite of editing programs such as a word processor, spreadsheet manager, powerpoint creator, and more. The paid-for, widely used, counterpart to Open Office would be Microsoft Office. While the layout is somewhat different, Open Office is, functionally, equal to Microsoft Office and should easily meet the needs of anyone who is used to Microsoft Office but no longer wishes to pay for newer versions.

3. Why Open Office? Open Office is completely free, even for newer versions Open Office contains all of the programs found in more popular suites such as Microsoft Office Open Office can save documents and files in all major and popular formats (.doc,.ppt, etc.)

4. Downloading Open Office Open your browser, navigate to openoffice.org Click on I Want To Download Apache Open Office Select your Operating System (Windows EXE if you are using Windows) and click Download Full Installation

5. Downloading Open Office, Cont. A new tab or page will open When the dialogue box appears click Run in Internet Explorer, Save in Firefox, and in Chrome your download will start automatically

6. Downloading Open Office, Cont. In Firefox click the arrow in your toolbar, then click on the file in the drop down menu In Chrome click on the file name at the bottom of your screen In Explorer your setup should already be started

7. Installing Open Office You may be asked if you would like to allow Open Office to make changes to your PC, select YES A dialogue box will open. Click Next and then click Unpack

8. Installing Open Office, Cont. A new dialogue box will open Click Next Enter your name, click Next Make sure Typical Install is selected, click Next Click Install

9. Installing Open Office, Cont. When Open Office is finished installing a new dialogue box will open Click Finish Open Office has now been installed on your PC

10. Wrapping Up Now that Open Office is installed, we will cover how to use it in a later class. In the mean time, feel free to explore it’s features or check the link below for tutorials. http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/category_index/Index.html

11. Questions? If you have any questions or require further assistance, feel free to ask. Thank you for visiting Rowan County Public Library.