In the previous article we’ve written on our blog, we told you how you can create the basic structure of an address book. However, this was only the first part of the process – it wasn’t a fully working book, it was just the information that would be entered into one. In this article, we’re going to be telling you how you can set your spreadsheet as the data source for an address book and actually make it usable to complete the process for you. We’re assuming that you’ve followed the previous guide so if you haven’t read that yet, now would be a good time to do so.
Now, the first thing to do is to load up Open Office on your computer and open the source spreadsheet that we created earlier. We’re going to continue working on this through the entire process so it’s a good idea to make sure you aren’t doing anything else in the office suite at the same time or are busy at the current time. Once you’ve done this, you then need to go into File –> Templates –> Address Book Source. This is where you’ll need to go to allow the suite to recognise the information you’ve entered previously and be able to process it into a format that we’re looking to use regularly.
You should see another window appearing which will allow you to specify all of the relevant information needed. The first thing you’ll have to do is specify the data source, which you can do by pressing the “Administrate” button. You’ll also have to set the table that is to be used as well. This may appear a bit confusing to start with but you just need to locate the file that we’ve been working on which is saved on your hard drive. It’s hard to give exact advice because it will be different for every system but this shouldn’t take too long once you’ve selected what you need.
After you’ve selected the data source and table, the next important part of the process is to assign the different fields used in the spreadsheet. This is the stage where you’ll tell the program which field is the one for the name, for the address and for the other information required. All you need to do is choose the relevant column for each piece of data it mentions in this window. If you don’t currently have a column for it, you should probably create one to save hassle a bit later on. Once you’ve been able to link your spreadsheet to the address book wizard by selecting all of the features, simply press the submit button to finish this part of the process. There’s still more to do if you want to put this into good use, though.
In conclusion, by following this guide you should have been able to register the address book spreadsheet we created as a data source so that it can be used. This wasn’t a very long process and you may be left wondering “What now?” but what we can tell you is that we’re going to create another guide which will tell you how you can now use this address book in reality and put it to great use. If you haven’t done so already, we highly recommend that you use it to get started with address books and the other great features included in the office suite.
Tags: address book, calc