In giving 2 presentations last week at the UK Hyperion conference, it was great to have Oracle Open Office installed with the Oracle Presenter Console extension.

This allows users to view the current slide, notes, the upcoming slide and timing details:

Using the console made it easy to present and keep on time.

The extension is included in Oracle Open Office 3.2.1 and is also available for download separately for those on OpenOffice.Org and StarOffice versions.

Note: Existing StarOffice customers are entitled to use Oracle Open Office 3 under the same conditions as StarOffice.  Patches can be found at sunsolve.sun.com, a valid online account is required.

Some tips for using:  You need to make sure that the second display is enabled before starting OracleOpenOffice and you will need to change the Presentation Display to be the second screen (from the menu: Slide Show/Slide Show Settings, under the Multiple Screens drop down).  This will only be click-able when second display is enabled – it required me to hit F7 a couple of times on my Macbook Pro 😉