As I said, I work with tech support and you would be amazed the number of people to whom I’ve shown the help files and say “WOW! If I ever knew there was such a thing!”. And if I, who work with computer and tech support for more than 10 years, looked and could not find, what would you say of the average end user (grand-ma)? Even if it is there, average end users DON’T look on the help files. How on earth would a normal user find out how to place a custom background? “Look on the help files” ? Two things: It’s not there, I looked.

I’m sorry guys, you have made a GREAT software on the overrall, but this is exactly the kind of thing that blocks new users. The model chosen by OpenOffice developers is absolutely pathetic. On the window that opens you choose for a bitmap, a gradient, a color whatever you want, and even choose if it will apply to all slides or not. Can you imagine something less obvious to do? I mean, on PowerPoint, all you have to do is to right-click your slide and select “Change Background” or something like that. Turns out that, if you want to define a custom background for your slide on OpenOffice Impress, you have to create a bitmap fill, then, go to the master slide, and then select the bitmap you created before, and then close the master slide. So forgive me for any english mistakes, but this post is being written on the heat of emotion (anger, by the way). I was building my slides for a speak I’ll make on this Sunday when I came to such a disappointment with OpenOffice that I had to scream! And I was searching for the adequade place to do it when I remembered of my blog.

Openoffice impress definition