Open Office - It's the little things

My current employer uses Adobe software to print PDFs from a number of programs, Visio, Project, Word and Excel are prime examples. In a valiant attempt to avoid giving Adobe more money we decided to have a look elsewhere and see what was available for Windows users.

It didn’t take long to notice OpenOffice, it has document compatibility with Word and Excel and integrated PDF printing; it’s just not very good. Here is an example using Excel, you select the current worksheet and click the print PDF button. It prints all worksheets. You then start digging and select Tools - Options - Spreadsheet - Print - Print only selected sheets. This works for normal printing but not from the PDF button. This is where you look at Word in a new light.

You then do some googling and discover Print Single worksheet as PDF. Then comes the head scratching and the cursing. If you select File > Export as PDF you get to name the file AND THEN you can choose the worksheets to print. ARGH!

I’ll skip the bit about OpenOffice not displaying the document styles properly and leave my few remaining hairs where they are.