OpenOffice

1. Downloading LanguageTool

You can download LanguageTool by clicking the "Get it!" button on the OpenOffice Extensions LanguageTool page.

If your browser displays a lot of text (see image below) instead of downloading a file, that's okay! If your browser downloaded the "LanguageTool-1.0.0.oxt" file, skip to the "Installing LanguageTool" section below.

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Wait for your browser to finish loading the text, then press Command + S (or click File -> Save) and you'll see the following window pop up:
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Delete the ".txt" and click the "Save" button. You may see a window like this one pop up:

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If so, click "Don't append". The .OXT file extension is for OpenOffice Extensions, and OpenOffice will not recognise a file that ends in ".oxt.txt".

2. Installing LanguageTool

Once LanguageTool is downloaded, installing it is a breeze! Go to the folder where you downloaded LanguageTool-1.0.0.oxt*, and double-click it to start the installation process.

LanguageTool-1.0.0.oxt will open in OpenOffice, and you should see a winow like this:

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Click "OK" to install LanguageTool. Once it's installed, you should see LanguageTool listed in the extension window with all of your installed extensions:

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Now, LanguageTool is installed and ready to start fixing grammatical errors!

* Filename may have changed from the time of writing

3. Using LanguageTool

There are a two main ways you can use LanguageTool: for an individual error and for an entire document.

First, we need a grammatical error. We typed "How much does it tell us about mistake?" into OpenOffice writer, and LanguageTool's blue squiggly line appeared below 'mistake':

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To fix an individual error, right-click (or Control-click) on the underlined word or words. You'll see a pop-up like this one:

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The first line tells you what LanguageTool has identified as a problem. In this case, we're missing an article, and LanguageTool provides solutions to our problem in the next lines.

To check the grammar of a document, you can go to "Tools -> LanguageTool -> Check Text" or press Function + F7.*

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Like with spell-checking, a window will appear showing you the errors it found, giving you the opportunity to correct the error with the provided suggestions. If you'd like to learn a bit more about your error, click the "Explain" button. A pop-up with an explanation will appear, like the one below.

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* Press F7 if your function keys are not set to be media keys by default.