How to Make Your Own Stationary in OpenOffice

Create custom stationary in Open Office for hand-written or typed letters.

Creating your own "ready made" stationary template in Open Office is a convenient way to create professional or fun documents and print them on your home computer. Whether you need stationary for creating resume cover letters, or a fun stationary design for personal invitations, Open Office gives you all the tools you need to create custom stationary and save it as a custom template so that you can use it over and over again.

Instructions

1. Open the Open Office Writer program on your computer.

2. Change the "Default" text to "Heading 1" by using the drop down menu in the toolbar area.

3. Go to the "Format" menu and select "Alignment" to align the text in the center of the document. Type your name or business name and press "Enter."

4. Add the rest of the textual information to the top of your stationary such as address, phone number, email address or business slogan. Manipulate the text size, typeface, text color and other character options by using the options in the toolbar. Alternatively you can modify these settings by clicking on the "Format" menu and selecting "Character."

5. Click on "Format" and select "Page" to add a page border and other effects. Select the "Borders" tab to select a line style, line color and line arrangement for your stationary. You can also click on "Background" to select a background color for the entire document.

6. Add images from your computer, if desired, to further customize your stationary. Although Open Office doesn't have a clip art gallery to pull images from you do have the option of importing any image of your choosing by clicking on "Insert," "Picture" and "From file." A display window will then appear on your screen for importing a picture from your computer's hard drive.

7. Go to "File," click on "Templates" and select "Save" to save your stationary as a new template in Open Office. Once saved you can access the saved template at any time to create a custom letter or document.