Who is this book for?
Anyone who wants to get up to speed quickly with LibreOffice will find this Getting Started Guide
valuable. You may be new to office software, or you may be familiar with another office suite.
What’s in this book?
This book introduces the main components of LibreOffice:
• Writer (word processing)
• Calc (spreadsheets)
• Impress (presentations)
• Draw (vector graphics)
• Base (database)
• Math (equation editor)
It also covers some of the features common to all components, including setup and customization,
styles and templates, macro recording, and printing. For more detail, see the user guides for the
individual components.
Where to get more help
This book, the other LibreOffice user guides, the built-in Help system, and user support systems
assume that you are familiar with your computer and basic functions such as starting a program,
opening and saving files.
Help system
LibreOffice comes with an extensive Help system. This is the first line of support for using
LibreOffice.
To display the built-in Help, press F1 or select LibreOffice Help from the Help menu.
For quick tips, place the mouse pointer over any of the icons to see a small box (“tooltip”) with a
brief explanation of the icon’s function. For a more detailed explanation, select Help > What's
This? and hold the pointer over the icon. In addition, you can choose whether to activate Extended
Tips using Tools > Options > LibreOffice > General.
Free online support
The LibreOffice community not only develops software, but provides free, volunteer-based support.
See Table 1 and this web page: http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/
For comprehensive online support from the community, look at mailing lists and the Ask LibreOffice
website. Other websites run by users also offer free tips and tutorials.
This forum provides community support for LibreOffice: http://en.libreofficeforum.org/
Another forum that provides support for LibreOffice, among other open source office suites, is:
http://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/
10 | Getting Started with LibreOffice 5.1
