OpenOffice is a great free alternative to Microsoft Office. For more information on OpenOffice check out my recent post Open Office- The [Free] Microsoft Office Alternative. However, if you already use OpenOffice on a daily basis, then you have probably noticed how slow it loads. Here is how to speed up the load time:

1.) Launch OpenOffice – It does not matter which of the subprograms you open.

2.) Click ‘Tools‘ and then select ‘Options‘.

3.) Select the ‘Memory‘ from the list on the left side.

4.) Under the ‘Graphics cache’ subheading, change the settings to the following:

• Use of OpenOffice.org – 128MB
• Memory per object – 20.0MB

5.) Under the ‘Cache for inserted objects’ subheading, change the settings to the following:

• Number of objects – 20

Here is what it should look like after the changes have been made.

I do not recommend enabling the Quickstarter as items like these tend to make your computer sluggish on startup. Personally, I like setting the ‘Number of steps’ to a higher number such as 200-500. This allows for much more “undoing” while using OpenOffice.

6.) Select ‘Java‘ from the list on the left side.

7.) Under the ‘Java options’ subheading, deselect ‘Use a java runtime environment’

Here is what it should look like after the changes have been made.

8.) Click ‘OK’

9.) Close OpenOffice

10.) Launch OpenOffice again and watch how much faster it loads!

While these changes will make OpenOffice launch quicker, it will also use more memory which can cause your system to run slower. Depending on your OS, if you have 1GB or more of memory, you should have no trouble with these memory tweaks.

How else do you tweak OpenOffice? Let us know in the comments…

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Written by Eric

 

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