[PLUG] Struggling with OpenOffice

[Shannon C. Dealy]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Rich Shepard wrote:

[snip]
>   Today's case in point: my letterhead has the e-mail address,
> info at appl-ecosys.com under the telephone and fax numbers. I suppose it is
> because of this, I cannot block any text within the body of the letter.
> When I move the pointer over text, the I-beam changes to a pointing finger
> and I cannot block text or insert the cursor at that point. All I can do is
> read a little window that points to a URI on my filesystem.
[snip]
>   Does anyone know how to overcome this behavior? I want OO to look at any
> document as a string of text characters, not some URL, URI or anything but a
> written document to be printed on a piece of paper. FWIW, the only time I
> have this problem is when I use the letterhead template. If I write a report
> or anything using the 'default' page layout there's no problem. So, I assume
> it has something to do with the fact that I had the audacity to put an
> e-mail address on a doument.

I don't know about your problem with block selecting, it never gave me any
trouble, maybe there is something wrong with the template other than the
email address issue (which I did have problems with).  If I remember
correctly, the email address/URL problem that I had is caused by the
software automatically converting it to a hyperlink, even in non-HTML
documents.  I think the way that I fixed it was to go to their "Tools"
menu and select "AutoCorrect/AutoFormat", and on the "options" tab,
uncheck the two boxes next to "URL recognition".  At this point, the
problem still isn't cured, it only prevents future problems.  You must now
go back and delete/re-enter anything that it has converted to a hyperlink
such as your email address in the template.

As far as your block select problem, is it possible that you are trying to
select data in both a document header area and the main document itself at
the same time?  If your letter head template is setup the way mine is, the
company name, address, email, etc. is all in a document header, which is
entirely separate from the body of the document, and I don't recall that
any of the word processors I have used would allow selecting both the
headers and the document contents at the same time, and I believe it would
generally be a very bad idea if it did.

Hope this helps.

Shannon C. Dealy      |               DeaTech Research Inc.
dealy at deatech.com     |          - Custom Software Development -
                      |    Embedded Systems, Real-time, Device Drivers
Phone: (800) 467-5820 | Networking, Scientific & Engineering Applications
   or: (541) 451-5177 |                  www.deatech.com