Mail merge labels in OpenOffice

Christmas card time again and my usual annual reminder of how tricky this seems to be.

1. There are different ways of creating a data source for OoWriter:
From Egroupware you can use a CSV export of a particular category search. Best to turn this into a MS xls first. Important that you choose 'semi-colon' as delimiter type, NOT comma (commas are used within the fields in egw), when opening up the csv and saving as your xls (strngely couldn't get Base to work with an Oo spreasheet?). In ubuntu it seems tricky to simply to register the xls as a data source using the wizard, but using the spreadsheet as the data for an Oo Base db. still registers it as a viewable datasource in Writer when hitting F4
Egw can also be hooked into as a data source live. to do that...
Everything needed in here: /home/markp/printjobs/Label Runs/christmas The xls feeds the odb, odb is the registered datasource for Oo, the odt template is setup for the 8x3s.

3. to insert such a data source into a sheet full of labels: chose file:new: labels

4. insert the fields when the data source has been selected. Don't be tempted to drag and drop the fields using the F4 view once the thing is opened! (screws the db somehow and field mismatch)

5. To suppress blank fields (per line), view printing characters and change the carriage returns at end of lines for P (paragraphs). Then, with the cursor at the end of the relevant line: (insert:fields:other:functions:hidden paragraph in the condition field the field is referred to, including it's path, a ! means 'NOT'. eg ![addresses1.Sheet1.City (Private)]

5b. To suppress spaces (eg when no < title > field) follow instructions here

6. To see the finished result got to print (huh?) and to create the output as a file choose such. This allows you to save, but not edit that doc. Don't choose 'update all links' that simply inserts that contents of the first (master) label to all the others.

7. To over come the problem of the salutation on the address label being correct for (eg) a family. whilst using an address record that belongs to s ingle person (eg a Church member), I have used the following fields which cover all situations: on first line of address only use prefix, middlename, surname and suffix fields, not firstname, this allows a name to be created thus: prefix MR middlename G & MRS C surname CARRINGTON suffix & FAMILY. conditional text entries required for prefix, middlename fields in case they are blank (suppreses unnecesary spaces). I have also decided to apply a country to all addresses, use conditional text so that only overseas COUNTRIES print, as here. Only use personal (home) addresses, if business address is the only one, copy it to the personal as well.

8. If you need to adjust the layout slightly when you've finished with your sheet here

egroupware add/delete categories error

default 1.6 installation has a bug in file:

usr/share/egroupware/addressbook/inc/class.addressbook_ui.inc.php

not categories are presented when choosing the option to add/delete cats. to multiple contacts

latest version of that file can be found here:

http://www.egroupware.org/viewvc/egroupware/branches/1.6/addressbook/inc/class.addressbook_ui.inc.php?view=log&r1=28226&pathrev=28226

revision 28226 from branches was OK for me Nov 09

Hung openvpn connection

Occasionally (perhaps when rebooting the home PC in a hurry) the previous openvpn connection doesn't get closed down properly. When trying to reconnect openvpn declares that the required UDP socket is already being used.

To solve this, find the pid of the previous connection:

markp@markp-study:~$ ps aux | grep openvpn

markp 5507 0.0 0.0 3240 800 pts/2 S+ 17:47 0:00 grep openvpn
root 6889 0.0 0.1 5132 3060 ? S Oct05 2:38 openvpn --config XXXXX.ovpn

Kill that process:

markp@markp-study-home:~$ sudo kill -KILL 6889

Should fire up OK after that!

Bullet points appearing in Impress (Oo PPT)

Perhaps I'm dim but it's taken me ages to get my head round this:

Choose custom animation
add an entrance
by default all text appears at once, probably not what you want
choose '...' for further options, then 'Text Animation' tab, then 'Group Text' dropdown and choose (most likely) 'All Paragraphs at Once'
Back in the 'Effect Appear' dialogue expand the tree of items by clicking the '+' on the first line.

IF your points are in a text box decide if you want the box itself to be on the slide as soon as it appears (option 'with previous'). If you don't do this it'll take an extra click to bring it in.

DECIDE if you want the first line to appear straight away as well, if yes choose 'with previous'; if you want to bring it in yourself choose 'on click'

CHOOSE 'on click' for all subsequent lines that you want to bring on one click at a time. If a line is treated as it's own paragraph, but really belongs to the point above, make it a 'with previous' item.

suse 11.1 on samsung r40

increasingly fed up with the flakiness of xorg on the Samsung R 40 laptop with my ubuntu 9.04. Constantly had to reboot using the rescue mode.

Notes for using suse 11.1 with KDE:

1. Imagemagick is installed by default
2. Touchfreeze is a possible solution to the 'cursor jumping whilst typing' problem, although see this forum post desribing how to use syndaemon
3. Add the comunity based repos, especially the xxxman one
4. Mythtv frontend can be called from YaST2
5. DVD playback is an issue
   

Meeting with Prime Minister

Gordon Brown come to Worksop's Valley School and I long with about 40 other people representing the community sat around tables, discussed and asked questions.

Here's a report on what he said (though I didn't hear him say some of these things!) Perhaps he said them at another part of the meeting(?), or perhaps this is what his speech writer meant for him to say! Nevertheless he spoke well I thought.

Ubuntu 9.04 - issues with upgrading

Samsung laptop.
All went well using update manager from 8.10 except that I have the bug mentioned here with mythtv not showing any text.

Best fix for this, as of (6/6/09), run mythtv using this command from terminal:

XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS="1" mythfrontend

eee 701
Installed ubuntu net book remix for first time.
Has issue of hanging with a desktop background but no gnome icons. it did work first install when it went straight into netbook desktop, although that seemed jerky. Looks like a gnome windows manager problem.

ibook g4 ppc
Installed using an online upgrade from a 8.04 install disk, via 8.10 then 9.04 upgrade manager installs.
Same issue as with eee.

this post fixed it on the ppc (but not the eee)

drop to a shell using ctrl+alt+F2, then:

sudo dpkg --force all --configure -a