OFFICE the Text in the Main Editing Window and Italicize It
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ic or bold to the text you type in the Insert Endnote window, so if you W'ant to itali- cize a book title in a note, you have to insert the note with no italics, then edit OFFICE the text in the main editing window and italicize it. EasySpreadsheet handled our complex sample worksheets reasonably well, although it did not even try to open the charts. Our 4MB Microsoft Excel spread- sheet opened slowly but accurately. Easy0ffice7.0 labeled Filel and File2. Each of those EasySpreadsheet makes life simple for be- E-Press Corp, www.e-press.com. menus contains more than 20 items, in- ginners by displaying a vortical Totals ••COO cluding PDF and HTML export and items column on the right edge, showing the EasyOffice 7.0 packs more applications that store and search backup, grandfather, sums of all rows, and a horizontal Totals and utilities into one freeware package and great-grandfather versions of your column at the foot, with the sums of all than you'll find in any high-priced suite. A files—features you won't find in better- columns, it supports about 125 functions, <?6MB installer expands into a word known suites. Some menu items have but none as advanced as pivot tables, pn'cessor, spreadsheet, calculator, picture shortcut keys that let you access them by array formulas, conditional formatting, fil- editor. PDr editor, presentation program, typing an underlined letter; others are ac- teritig, and macros. You cannot customize and e-mail client. EasyOffice also contains the built-in number several applications that no other office formats. You won't suite provides, including a ZIP file find Excel's data manager and a backup program. validation and other Unfortunately, quantity isn't quality. automated features FasyOffice is clearly a work in progress. Its either, but you can applications perform many basic and mid- certainly maintain a level tasks just as well as the high-priced budget and calculate competition, but are underpowered com- your mortgage pay- pared with free alternatives such as ments. A separate 6031'CSuitc and OpcnOffiee.org. The program, EasyBook- suite's many explanatory menus are too keeper, provides wordy to be helpful. And at times the free- preset templates for ware version seems overwhelmed with accounts receivable, advertisements for the S44 EasyOffice Pre- accounts payable, mium 70 suite, which adds dozens of other EVEN IN EASYWORD'S crowded icon set, the smiley face stands and other standard programs ranging from a VoIP (Voice over out. Clicking it inserts the poem "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann. record-keeping ftinc- Internet Protocol) client to a Web page ed- tions. itor and an encryption utility. Whenever cessible only if you zero in on them with The EasyPresentation software lives you start one of the applications in the the arrow keys or the mouse. Different up to its name by providing wizards for freeware suite, you must click on a Con- menu items lead to the EasyContaet- creating slides, recording your voice to tinue button to get past the advertisement Manager and "Old version of Easy- use in a sound clip, applying animated for the paid suite. ContactManager." But clicking on the transitions, and inserting cheerful clip-art The EasyWord word processor had no grammar-cheeking item causes an "un- cartoon images. The packed menus in- trouble with the complex formatting of supported feature" message to pop up. clude an option to save the presentation our sample Microsoft Word files, but it re- Despite the capacious menus, the pro- complete with Microsoft's free Power- moved all footnotes and cndnotcs without gram's feature set may not be strong Point viewer, so users with no presenta- warning, EasyWord runs in either of two enough even for high-school use. For ex- tion software can view it. PDF and HTML modes: Easy or Advanced. The Easy mode ample, the word processor can't create export aren't available from the EasyPre- has a limited feature set and ieons that you footnotes, and although it creates end- sentation program. can expand; they're clearly labeled, but notes, it doesn't automatically number or EasyOffice goes out of its way to make they're also screen hogs. renumber them, so you have to number everything easy for beginners, even pro- The word processor's Advanced mode, them by hand when you create them. If viding a separate EasyHelper program that like much of the rest of the suite, displays you add or remove a note, you have to opens with a list of frequently asked ques- the most overpacked set of menus we've find the remaining notes by hand and la- tions and lets you run a tutorial. You're seen in any software. Most word proces- boriously renumber them, in both the text warned in advance of potential problems, sors have a File menu; Ea.syWord has two. and the note. Worse, you ean't apply ital- as in a dialog that tells you to ignore error messages issued by the installer for the POf converter. OUR CONTRIBUTORS; Edward Mendelson and Richard V. Dragan are contributing editors of PC Whether the HasyOffice package as a Magazine, and Cade Metz is senior writer. Galen Fott is a freelance writer. Associate editor whole is as easy as it tries to be will de- Sarah Pike and PC Magazine Labs lead analyst Neil i. Rubenking were in cfiarge of this story. pend on the individual users. Some may 102 PC MAGAZINE NOVEMBER 16. 2004 ivww.pcma9.com FREE PRODUCTIVITY APP5 intricate Microsoft Word documents as smoothly as if it had cre- Word ated them. The Calc spreadsheet was un- fazed by our complex Processors Microsoft Excel spread- eed a free word processor without sheets, although it did the baggage of a wbole office suite? not display the data in NTry AbiWord or Jarte. the imported charts—it Open-source AbiWord 2.0 looks and showed only the axes acts remarkably similar to Microsoft Word. and background. Im- Its help system is a work in progress, but if press, the presentation you know Word, you'll find AbiWord easy editor, opened Mi- to use. Among its many advanced features THE NAVIGATOR IN OPENOFFICE.ORG'S CALC application crosoft Office presenta- are mail merge, columns, revision marking, makes it easy to move around within your spreadsheet. tions, complete with footnotes/end notes, and automatic mis- faney slide transitions. spelled-word flagging; Jarte has none of be grateful to find every function spelled The word processor and spreadsheet let tbese. AbiWord can also insert data fields, out on the menus, along with an over- ordinary users record macros, and the en- tbough not tbe wide variety found in Word. stuffed default icon set. Others may prefer tire suite supports a powerful program- On the other hand. AbiWord lacks print a program that has fewer features, but is ming language similar to Office's Visual preview, highlighting, clipboard histor/, actually easier to use. Basic for Applications. and the ability to insert objects, all fe?i- Writer duplicates most of the functions tures Jarte includes. Neither program OpenOffice.org 1.1.2 of Word and adds a built-in bibliographical includes autocorrect, f ind/repiace of ww w.openoffice .org. database designed for scientists and acade- ••••O mics. Only two views are available; Page OpenOffice.org L1.2 is the open-source and Online (akin to Word's Normal view). app on which Sun's StarOffice, another The Find menu supports regular expres- outstanding alternative to Microsoft Of- sions (including nontext items like para- fice, is based. StarOffice costs $79.95 for a graph and line breaks, formatting items like single-user license; OpenOffice is a 64MB bold and underline, and fonts) for elaborate downU)ad that installs a freeware power- wild-eard searches, and the help file ex- house that ean easily take the plaee of plains this advanced feature clearly enough Microsoft Office on most desktops. Its for beginners to use it. A well-organized full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, Format I Page dialog gives quick aeee.ss to and image and presentation editors match features like headers and footers, whieh are all the widely used features in Office; they scattered among multiple menus in Word. open and save Office documents almost But if you want to change margins in the formatting or nontext items, or support as smoothly as Office itself and add PDF middle of the page, you'll have to look in a for Unicode fonts. (Dom Lachowicz, generation from all applications. Open- different menu for the Section dialog. www.abisource.com. •••<iO) Office is also the only suite that is com- Strangely, the Undo feature won't reverse a Jarte (pronounced jar-TAY) has many of pletely, unequivocally free, whether you page-mai^in change; you have to remember the same features as Microsoft Word, but use it for business or pleasure. the earlier setting and restore it by hand. its appearance could hardly be more Don't be fooled by the low version num- You ean create Web pages in Writer, but different. A colorful set of buttons and tool ber. This open-source suite has been evolv- if you want to be able to modify the raw panels surrounds the tabbed multidocu- ing for a decade, partly through the HTML code rather than work in ment editing area, controlling all features. work of volunteers and partly with strictly WYSIWYG view, you Jarte lacks some important advanced support from Sun Microsystems. have to start up the word features, most notably tables; the program Versions of OpenOffice run on processor in a special Web- suggests embedding a spreadsheet in- every major platform, so it's editing mode.