KKSNetwork™

OpenOffice.org Writer is an excellent word processing software that’s a direct competitor to the Microsoft’s Office Word. The best part about it is that it doesn’t cost you a dime.

However, the default template basically limits you to the same font (Arial or Times New Roman), same style, and so on. This, however, is about to change.

Note: This is just an example, you can do whatever you want.

In the following example, we are going to change the default spell check language of any document to English(US) (for all the Canada users), we are going to change the default font, add a page number to each page, change the header style, as well as the default zoom level.

1. Open OpenOffice.org.
2. Make a new text document.

Changing default fonts

1. Click tools.
2. Click options.
3. Click the + beside OpenOffice.org Writer.
4. Click Basic Font (Western).
5. Change the default font to, let’s say, Trebuchet MS (You put get anything here).
6. Change the default header font to, let’s say, Verdana (You can put anything here).
7. Click Ok.

Adding footer and page number

1. Click Insert.
2. Click Footer and then Default.
3. Press Tab twice to get to the right most part of the footer.
4. Click Insert and the field. Click page number. (This will insert the page number there for every page)

Change default spell checker

1. Click tools
2. Click options
3. Expand language settings
4. Click languages
5. Under Western, select English(US)
6. Click Ok

Change default header style

1. Press F11 on your keyboard
2. Right click on Heading 1, select modify
3. Do whatever you like!
4. Repeat that for all headings 2 – 6. Anything beyond 7 is not necessary.

Change default zoom level

1. On the bottom right corner of OpenOffice Writer, you’ll see something like “100%”.
2. Double click it
3. A window will popup. I’m just going to choose fit width.
4. Press Ok

Saving the template and make it default

1. Click files on the menu bar
2. Click template
3. Click save
4. Enter a name like “default”
5. Press Ok
6. Click files -> template -> organize
7. Double click on my template
8. Right click on the template you just created
9. Click set as default.
10. Restart OpenOffice.org completely and test it out

I hope this helps you! For anyone who doesn’t want to create it by themselves, you can download the template I created above, here.

To import this template:

1. Go to file -> template -> organize
2. Right click on my templates
3. Click import templates
4. Find the templates you just downloaded
5. Make it default