Recently, I need to draw block diagrams for some presentations and reports. I began to explore using the free vector-based diagramming program OpenOffice.org Draw to create such diagrams.

I have used other expensive vector-based diagramming program before. Comparing to these programs, OpenOffice.org Draw produces professional looking diagrams to be pasted in the documents or presentations without the money cost involved.

In general, I find that OpenOffice.org Draw is quite easy to use. It took me some time to get myself familiar to the new interface. This software calls its functions differently. For example, instead of “order”, it is called “arrange” for deciding which item to be in front or at the back.

Other the naming difference, there are very few difference as compared to other vector-based diagramming software.

OpenOffice.org Draw, being part of the suite, provides easy export to Adobe PDF files. This allows us to easily put these files in the public domain without the worry that other would modify it.

There are also some areas which I think the OpenOffice.org Draw can improve on.

One area is the lack of “single click to rotate 90 degree” function. OpenOffice.org Draw does provide the free hand rotate function. But sometime, we do need to rotate the object at 90 degree for alignment. It would be some issue for people like me who has poor sense of alignment.

Overall, OpenOffice.org Draw is a very useful and easy to use vector-based diagramming program without the money cost. It has helped me to produce professional looking diagrams.

OpenOffice.org suite is available for free downloading at http://www.openoffice.org/

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Most of us write our documents using Microsoft Office Word. Unfortunately, Microsoft Office does not provide export to pdf file facility in the package. We may need to purchase other software to do so.

Alternatively, we can also convert the file online. This will be a time consuming process if we want to convert a very big file.

There are free software packages available on the net which allow us to convert the document files to pdf format.

I personally like OpenOffice.org.

First it is free. Second, it can be used to edit Microsoft Office files. Thirdly, it has almost all the functions provided by Microsoft Office. And of course, it can be used to convert Microsoft Office files to pdf format.

What I usually do is, I would open the file using the OpenOffice.org equivalent software. Then I would easily export the file to pdf format, with a few clicks.

The equivalent of the OpenOffice.org software is as follows:
MS Word – Writer
MS Excel – Calc
MS Powerpoint – Impress
MS Access – Base

The result is quite amazing. Once I have to upload a very long report. The author has converted the original 27MByte file into a 17MByte pdf file. When I converted the same source file using Writer, the new pdf file is now only 2MByte.

OpenOffice.org is a free software which not only can be used to edit Microsoft Office Document, it can also be used to convert Office files to pdf format.

OpenOffice.org is available for download at http://www.openoffice.org/

If you like what you read, please post post your comment below or subscribe to my blog via RSS or E-mail on new content.

“How to use Free Software to Convert Microsoft Office files to PDF Files” is brought to you by http://stopebizfrustration.com/

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Wordpress Default RSS Subscription

I strongly recommend Feedburner, a free service available. It provides more than a RSS subscription. It provides E-mail subscription for updates and tracking of subscribers.

The following is the guide to get started using Feedburner.
(You may need to click on the image for bigger version)

Visit Feedburner Website – www.feedburner.com

Create an account or login using Google Account.

Feedburner Page. Sign in or Register

Create a feed by entering the blog address on the space and click on “Next”.
Follows the instructions on the screen.

At the “Enhance Your Stats” Page, you might wish to select addition features provided to track your leads.

You will be given a new feed address, highlighted at the red box.

New RSS Subscription Feed Address Provided by Feedburner

To insert the Feedburner Subscription Option in the Blog.

Still at the Feedburner Page, click on the “Publicize” tag and then click on the “Chicklet Chooser”

Scroll down to the box below “Copy the HTML below for use in your own templates:”. Select all in the box, right-click on it and select “Copy”

Copy the code provided

Go back to the Blog Administrations. Select “Widget” under “Appearance”.

At the selected Tool Bar (remember to click “Show”, after selecting), add “Text” (“Arbitrary text or HTML”).

Click on “Edit” to edit the text. Paste the code in the box empty box. You may want to add a title. Once it is done, click on “Done” and “Save Changes”.

Add the Code in Blog Widget

And now you have a BIG RSS Subscription Box on your blog. It allows your readers to easily locate and subscribe to your RSS Feed.

If you have benefited from this tutorial feel free to share it and post it on your blog or comment below.

This article is brought to you by stopebizfrustration.com.

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We are wondering, what actually happened. Is the external drive damaged or worse, the USB port is damaged.

There is a possibility that the Windows could not automatically assign the drive letter to the removable media. The followings are the steps to manually assign the drive letter to the external media.

1. Insert the external drive. Wait for a while for the Windows to detect it.

2. Go to “Control panel” and go to the “Administrative Tools”. If the control panel is set to classic view, just need to double click on the icon. If the control panel is set to “Category View”, then we need to select “Performance and Maintenance” and then go to the “Administrative Tools”.

Control Panel - Classic View

3. In the “Administrative Tools” view, double click on the “Computer Management”.

Administrative Tools Window

4. In the “Computer Management”, on the left folder view, select “Storage” and then “Disk Management”.

Computer Management Window

5. Locate your Memory Card. Right click on it and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”

Select the "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."

6. Follow the instruction to assign it to another Drive letter. Make sure that this drive letter is not used by any other media, e.g. Hard drive or CD.

Changing the Drive Letter

If the process is successful, Windows would automatically prompt on external drive action.

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If you have running Windows with at least Office 2003, this is a very simple process.

1. open Microsoft Office Pictures Manager. Select Thumbnails view. Make sure that you are in the directory/folder where you want to store the file.

2. In the Adobe Reader, at the top pull down menu, go to “Tools”, “Select & Zoom” and then “Snapshot Tool”.

3. Use this tool to select and copy the image.

4. Over at the Microsoft Office Pictures Manager, Paste the image. It will automatically create a new bmp file.

5. If the created file is too small, repeat 3 and 4 with larger zoom at Adobe Reader.

Please note that, some Adobe Reader file can be password protected to prevent copying.

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We can easily open the file using Microsoft Powerpoint. All we need to do is to rename the file extension.

To do so, we first have to set our windows explorer to show the file extension. At the Explorer pull-down menu, you click on “Tool” and select “Folder Options…”. It would open a new windows. Select “View”. In the window, by default, there is a tick on the box beside “Hide extensions for known file types”. Click on the box to remove the tick and click “Ok’.

We would see the file extension. If there is a “.pps”, then we are on the right track. Now go to the file we want to open. Select the file. Hit “F2″ key to rename the file. Now, change the “.pps” to “,ppt”.

Now double-click the file. We would be using Powerpoint to view the file.

This article of Powerpoint Slide Show file to Powerpoint Presentation File is brought to you by stopebizfrustration.com/

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