PeterOpenOffice.org is a brilliant office suite, and in a lot of cases can make a very suitable alternative to Microsoft's dominant product.
Nevertheless, OOo can be a bit daunting initially, as sometimes exactly how you perform a particular task can differ between Microsoft's suite and our favourite Free one.
Linux Forums have a great post about switching from MS Word over to OOo Writer and it goes through some common tasks like working with styles, portrait and landscape and using templates.
Despite the fact that it's on Linux Forums, it's not Linux specific so it works fine on the Windows version of OOo too.
Here's a quick taster:
Paragraph and character styles in Writer work in a very similar manner to those in Word. Open the Styles and Formatting box by hitting 'F11' or clicking the Styles icon. Click on ¶ to list Paragraph styles, then right click on 'Text body' and select 'new'.The 'organizer' tab lets you name and link the style. Just like in the example above, we are going to create two styles called 'Epigraph' and 'Attribution'. Both will be linked to 'Text Body'. The 'Next Style' of Epigraph will be 'Attribute', and the 'Next Style' of 'Attribute' will be 'Text Body'.
Unlike Word, where each screen has options to change several aspects of the style, Writer segments the options to a much higher degree. When creating the 'Epigraph' style, set the font to Italic under the 'Font' tab. Set the left intent to 3cm using the 'Indents and Spacing' tab. And when creating the Attribution style, change the text to 'right aligned' under the 'Alignment' tab.
