Computer Hope

OpenOffice - What it is

First of all, I'd be remiss as a ComputerHope regular not to link to this excellent free program: http://www.openoffice.org/ This is a free alternative to Microsoft Office. It lacks the Publisher feature of Microsoft Office, and FrontPage is not included. However, it is free, and duplicates the functionality of Word, WordPerfect, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, and a lot more. The main drawback is that it is a monster to download -- the Windows version is about 100 MB. So, don't try this yourself on dial-up.

Making OpenOffice run faster, smoother and more efficiently

The following steps are used to help OpenOffice run more quickly. None of these are required, but they can be followed in part or in whole to make your PC run faster. Read the recommendations; they show how much memory you should have (or not have) to make the suggestion a good idea.

1. Disable the Quickstarter Recommended for: All
The Quickstarter is a tool in your system tray that allows you to quickly open a Write, Impress or other document with ease. However, it's a huge memory eater. It's slowed my 1GB machine to a crawl, and isn't necessary.

NOTE: Only users who install OpenOffice to their hard drive have Quickstarter. OpenOffice installed to a flash drive does not have Quickstarter

To do this:
Right-click on the Quickstarter icon and uncheck "Load openoffice.org on system startup".

2. Increase the cache Recommended for: High Memory users (512 MB or greater)
The cache is the amount of space in memory used to store... whatever OpenOffice needs to store. The cache is set, by default, to 9 MB. It can be set to any number; 64 MB or greater is optimal.

To do this:
Open any OpenOffice program, go to Tools -> Options.
Click the "Memory" button.
Under "Graphics Cache", set "Use for openoffice.org" to 64.

3. Increase "per-object" memory Recommended for: Medium Memory users (256 MB or greater)
Similar concept to the cache, but this is per "object" (activeX, images...) in each document. This can be raised to a significant number for better effect, such as 3 to 5 MB.

To do this:
Open any OpenOffice program, go to Tools -> Options.
Click the "Memory" button.
Under "Graphics Cache", set "memory per object" to any number from 3 to 5.

4. Reduce time before memory is dumped Recommended for: Low Memory users (128 MB or less)
This controls the amount of time the buffers of images and other graphics are kept in memory. Default is 10 minutes, but if you're strapped for memory, this can be a great fix.

To do this:
Open any OpenOffice program, go to Tools -> Options.
Click the "Memory" button.
Under "Graphics Cache", set "remove from memory after" to any desired setting.

5. Reduce number of Undo buffers Recommended for: Extremely Low Memory users (64 MB or less)
Some older computers can't handle a lot of stress. In this case, anything which alleviates memory-stress is a good thing. Most people, however, won't have to do this. This reduces the number of steps that can be "undone".

To do this:
Open any OpenOffice program, go to Tools -> Options.
Click the "Memory" button.
Under "Undo", set "number of steps" to any desired setting.