About the Office plugin

The Office plugin is used to normalise and present office productivity suite files such as those created by Microsoft Office, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org applications. This includes documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. To use the Office plugin, you will need to install OpenOffice.org, which is an open source office productivity suite. Xena uses OpenOffice.org to normalise office productivity files and to view their normalised versions. OpenOffice.org can be downloaded from www.openoffice.org.

OpenOffice.org

Before using the Office plugin, you will need to configure it for use with OpenOffice.org. This is normally done automatically as part of the installation process, however if you have problems normalising office documents, then the first step is to check that OpenOffice.org has been configured in Xena. It does not hurt to repeat this process.

Configuring Xena for use with OpenOffice.org

  1. Open Xena.
  2. From the Edit menu, select Preferences then Plugin Properties and Office.
  3. In the Configure Office Plugin window select the OpenOffice.org directory (on Windows this will usually be C:/Program Files/OpenOffice.org1.1), using the Browse button if necessary.
  4. Click OK.

The Office plugin has now been initialised for use with OpenOffice.org.

Using the Office plugin

To normalise Office files, including MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-Powerpoint, StarWriter, StarCalc and StarImpress, see How to normalise office documents .

To view Office files, including MS-Word, MS-Excel, MS-Powerpoint, StarWriter, StarCalc and StarImpress, see How to view a normalised office document.

Trouble shooting

If you have problems normalising or viewing normalised office dcuments this may be because there is a rogue Openoffice.org process running. If all else fails, try killing any existing OpenOffice.org processes. In Windows, press Ctrl-Alt-Del to open the Task Manager. Under the Processes tab, find the soffice.exe process and click End Process. Xena will try to re-start OpenOffice.org the next time you use the Office plugin.