Writer

Writer is OOo's word processor.  It probably works like any strong word processor you've had before such as Microsoft Word, Google's Docs Service, or Word Perfect.  It includes all the basic services of a processor such as a spell checker; formatting such as bulleting; font color, size, and styles; and plenty of other necessities. Maybe best of all, as part of the OpenOffice.org suite, it is completely free.

Writer Interface:

 

Features

Writer has some really nice features that sets it apart from most word processors. 

• AutoComplete - suggests common words and phrases when you type to shorten your typing time.
• Advanced Notation System - which lets you create notes on the side of documents displaying the editing time and date, additionally notes from different users are different colors.
• Saving and Exporting Options - Writer boasts 20 saving formats and 5 exporting, not to mention the options that you have with some of those such as password protection.
• Portable Document Format (PDF) Export - The application has PDF exporting, which as the portable in PDF explains, is extremely transmittable in the digital world. Also, every major publishing company uses PDF form to create books, online and not, because of its What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) printing.
  
• Master Documents - Which allows you to create large books and writings, without keeping everything in one document. Linking smaller documents into a larger, complete one.
• The Wizard - which gives you great templates to start any project.
• Keep Old Documents - Writer has great backwards compatibility with earlier versions of it, and even better, can read all of your Microsoft Word documents.
• Great Interface - the interface of Writer is extremely clean and slick with the Galaxy style and the menus are completely customizable.
• Styles and Formatting - Writer has an amazingly strong and in-depth styling and formatting system, which puts the power of styles into the average user's hands.
  

Quick Rundown

 

• A. - File, this contains commonly used objects such as Open, Save, Export, Print and more..
• B. - Edit, contains common actions such as Copy, Paste, Cut, Undo, Redo, Find & Replace, and more..
• C. - View, handles all of your Menus and Toolbars along with Zooming options.
• D. - Insert, most of your features other than text come from here, for example: Pictures, Tables, Headers & Footers.
• E. - Format, contains all of your formatting needs, Left, Right, Center, Columns, Page Layout, Bulleting, etc. the list just keeps going.
  
• F. - Table, has exactly what it says, options about tables, Inserting Tables, Merging Cells, Splitting Cells, etc.
  
• G. - Tools, this contains much more in-depth things, such as Macros, a Mail Merging Wizard, the Gallery, but also common tools such as Spell/Grammar Checking, a Thesaurus, and Word Count.
  
• H. - Window, this is an extremely simple menu that contains the windows of OOo you have open, for all sub-applications of OOo, contained in a list.
• I. - Help, which has things about using OOo and OOo itself, a quick reference guide, and is extremely useful in learning the OOo environment.
  
• J. - Zooming & View, a simple part of the menu but extremely important when you want to see an entire, complex document, there is a slider for on-the-fly changing, page viewing options on the left, and on the right the current zoom percentage (right click for common zooming options.)
  
• K. - Styles & Formatting, Bold, Italic, Underline, Superscript, and Subscript. Probably some of the most used options so it is worth mentioning.
  
• L. - Font Type & Size, also used a lot, change your font on the left, change the size of that font on the right, simple enough.
  
• M. - Bulleting & Indentation, Numbering, Bulleting, Decrease Indent, Increase Indent, also simple tools used fairly often.