Chapter 8. Office

Table of Contents

Office suites
GNOME Office
Desktop publishing and drawing applications
Finance applications
Getting document templates
People cannot open documents which I have sent to them
How can I create copies of my text documents in PDF format?

Xubuntu comes with a variety of software for performing office tasks such as word processing and publishing, spreadsheets, and presentations.

Office suites

Several office suites are available with Xubuntu. An office suite is a collection of office applications which can be used together to accomplish a variety of tasks.

  • GNOME Office is installed by default. The applications in this suite are generally lighter and faster than the programs in the OpenOffice.org suite, and have fewer features as a result. But this may be exactly what you want. The suite has excellent compatibility with other major Office suites, such as Microsoft Office.

  • Openoffice.org is an optional office suite, with an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use.

  • KOffice is an office suite designed for KDE. It is very comprehensive and offers several novel features, including a high degree of integration between different applications in the suite.

Table 8.1. Comparison of office suite features

Component OpenOffice.org GNOME Office KOffice
Word Processor X X X
Spreadsheet X X X
Presentation Editor X   X
Database X X X
Drawing/Illustration Editor X X X
Image Editor   X X
Technical Diagram/Flowchart Editor   X X
Project Planner   X X
Formula Editor X   X
Report Designer     X

An X denotes that the office suite has a particular feature.