Get More from OpenOffice with Writer's Tools Extension

If you took my advice (and you always do, right?) and dumped Microsoft Office in favor of OpenOffice 3.0, here's a cool way to juice it up: The Writer's Tools extension for OpenOffice lets you back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, keep tabs on document statistics, and much more.

In fact, this handy add-on provides 18 useful tools, including these hand-picked favorites:

• Email Backup tool can be used to quickly send a backup copy of the currently opened document to a specified email address.
• Start/Stop Timer tool can be used to keep tabs on the time spent on the currently opened document and save the time data (the document name, used time, and date) in the accompanying WriterDB database.
• miniInvoices is a customizable invoicing solution for writers. miniInvoices is built with OpenOffice.org Base and relies on the Sun Report Builder extension. The solution features support for multiple currencies and basic reporting capabilities. The latter allows the user to generate print-ready invoices and earning reports. miniInvoices is available as a separate download.