Documentation and community

Resources on using the suite and getting out of trouble when you’re stuck.

There are many ways of learning how to use a piece of software as complex as an office suite, such as tutorial videos, electronic manuals and active forums. When searching online for tutorials and other help, LibreOffice has the benefit of popularity, particularly when coupled with the materials available for its sibling OpenOffice. The website provides printable manuals that are comprehensive and well-illustrated. Because of their similarity it’s probably worth trying the OpenOffice forum if you have a question to ask. There’s also a help system built into the individual modules that’s invoked by pressing F1.

The OnlyOffice website is something of a maze, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the wealth of information that’s focused on the enterprise and online collaboration optional extras. Thankfully, buried within the labyrinth is a comprehensive user guide that resembles a traditional manual, and an active forum with moderate activity.

The WPS Office website offers a knowledge base that presents usage information in the form of around 100 illustrated miniarticles. They look comprehensive enough to take you through every aspect of using the suite. The FreeOffice website has an active forum and a brief tips page. It offers three traditional looking manuals for the three application modules in PDF format, and these are extremely comprehensive. Calligra has its own section on the KDE forum, but it’s only moderately active. There is a downloadable manual, but it’s disappointingly brief.

Looking at the YouTube scene, all of the suites had some tutorials available. However, as expected, LibreOffice and OpenOffice, taken as a single entity, was the leader here.