There are several ways to change text formatting in OpenOffice. The quickest way is to use the font formatting controls on the toolbar. These buttons will let you specify a font, the font size, bold, italic, underline, font color and text alignment.

Let's change the font color from black to white. Make sure the row is selected then click the font color icon. This will display the standard color palette. Select white from the palette and we’re finished.

The formatting controls on the toolbar are convenient but they only represent a fraction of the text formatting functionality you get through OpenOffice.

To access more advanced options, select the format menu, then choose the cells... option. The font, font effects and alignment tabs contain several tools you can use to format text the way you want it. You’ll see how to use these formatting functions in the next few workshop modules.