This one is for the Graham's, Rob's and Tim's of this world...
We finally got a church laptop (loud fanfare) and we have installed Open Office on it (selective cheering). Now I have spent a jolly couple of hours redoing animations on a presentation I imported from PowerPoint and the hyperlinks don't seem to work in the same way... bother!
At present, I hyperlink from my main presentation to the notices (which scroll away merrily) in Powerpoint. This means the the software opens the file in slideshow mode and runs it until I hit 'Esc' at which point it closes it and reverts to the original slideshow. All very simple, easy to manage and does the job in a way that looks nice and tidy. Having worked out how to edit my hyperlink in Open Office, I discover that the best I can do seems to be to open the file as if for editting - not what I want.
I'd like to be convinced Open Office is the way to go, and I'm sure it is possible to sort this out, even if it demonstrates at the first hurdle that compatibility is far from 1:1. So, over to you clever techy folk...
Comments
I think I might have said that Open Office "Impress" is not quite as good as Powerpoint, but workable.
I don't use Powerpoint so I can't be exactly sure what the problem is. However some more information might be helpful.
1. Your projecting a Powerpoint within which you want to display the notices?
2. The notices are what? A powerpoint file or a word ".doc"?
3. In what context do you display this? Why do you want to scroll through the notices when people have them in front of them? Do they have them in front of them?
Ok, I'll attempt an explanation!
I have two files... one with hymn/song/liturgy words in the order I intend to use them and another which contains the notices. We don't have notice sheets. We do have standard and big words for people who can't/won't use the screen.
The notices file is set up with animations and timed transitions to scroll round as people are coming in. The other file is manually controlled by pressing the down arrow (or equivalent).
I have a hyperlink on page 1 of the words file which, in powerpoint, will open up the notices file in slideshow mode - and I can use this with the words file in slideshow mode. When I hit 'esc' it reverts to the words file. All very neat and tidy.
When I tried it in Impress, it opened the notices file in editting mode, so I had to enter slideshow mode. When I hit 'esc' it returned to the edit mode notices file. This defeats the object of using the hyperlink in the first place.
I am sure it would be possible to set up a macro to do this jiggery pokery, if I knew how to do macros, which I don't (that's what IT departments were for...)
It is looking as if the church will give in and buy Office, not becuase they are anti open source software, but because changing everyone over and overcoming glitches with non IT competent folk is too much for them. Sad, but alas MS monopoly strikes again.
Yes, very few of my deacons have made the switch to Open Office, but they all have it installed so they can humor me and read the files I send them!!
If you need a smooth trasition between OpenOffice and Impress, it is too soon. However version 3 is looking promising.
Have you thought about using something other than PowerPoint for the song words. We use Words of Worship, which is very good, but there are better alternatives available now. Tim is the expert in this area! We liked www.opensong.org when we tested it. Have a look we would have switched to it immediately but the church had just shelled £200 on Words of Worship and we didn't think it would be a good idea to ditch it so early in it's lifetime!
As for opening a .odp file in presentation view there are three ways of doing it. By Command Line, By Macro, Or by extension. None of these are particularly easy, but I could explain if you wanted me to!