Most free translation tools available for such translations are scarce, not quite accurate and generally have a price tag attached to them. There are some great, free options nevertheless. Karl reviewed Polyglot 3000 and found it quite awesome. Maria found 4 great online translation tools. Plus some more translation tools were profiled on MakeUseOf Directory.

I’m here to show you 3 more free translation tools that you can use to get the job done easily.

Google Translate

Google Translate dominates them all. It’s free, it supports auto-detection and it many different languages. Earlier, we had to use different workarounds to get Google to translate the documents or copy and paste the text into the tiny Google Translate Box, however Google just made it a hell of a lot easier to translate your documents into other languages.

All you have to do is browse here, upload the document to you want to translate, choose the languages (or let it detect automatically) and hit translate. Boom, you have the results, right there in the language you understand.

There are certain caveats:

Microsoft Office

If you have Microsoft Office then you can use the built-in translate option to do the translations for you. While this cannot be termed as free, if you already have Microsoft Office you don’t need to pay anything else. Office 2007 users can find the option to translate under the Review Tab. Hitting translate displays the translated text. Office 2003 users can also translate the text via the Tools > Research > Translate option.

OpenOffice Free Translation Tool

On the other hand, if you happen to use OpenOffice, you should install the excellent Writer’s tools extension. Apart from translation, the extension also offers a truckload of other features. Note that Writer’s tools uses Google Translate to give you the desired results.

Which one is the best? I prefer visiting Google Translate. A lot of other tools use Google anyway, plus displaying the result as HTML is better than having them displayed as plain text (because there is still some sanity from the formatting point of view).

But that’s me. It boils down to personal preference in the end, because all of them share the same drawbacks – accuracy and loss of formatting are the two main culprits! If you are using Office or OpenOffice you might not want to leave the interface, or else if you don’t mind the digression, you can always visit Google Translate.

Do you know of some better free Translation tools? Sound off in the comments and let us know!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• What Language Is This? 5 Tools to Identify Unknown Languages (22)
• Writely – Online Word Processor (2)
• What’s new in Gmail: Imports, Images, Previews, Translations and more (11)
• Use Online Apps Offline with Google Gears (11)
• Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting (17)

Every now and then you would get a file that is not supported on your computer, there are couple of ways to tackle such a situation:

If you want to view and print the contents

If all you want to do is view the file and dont want to make any changes then look into TextMaker Viewer.

A 4MB download that allows you to view and print documents in a variety of different formats. Once you have it installed you can view almost all of the common document formats irrespective of the fact whether you have the requisite software installed or not.

TextMaker viewer allows you to open, view and print docx, sxw, dotx, rtf, doc, dot Microsoft Word templates, pwd, tmd, htm/html, odt and txt files.

On the other hand if most of your chores are related to Office 2007 file formats (i.e. docx) and if you have still not made the jump to Office 2007 you can use these Microsoft downloads to get those files working on Microsoft Office 2003, XP etc.

If you want to edit the contents

If you would like to work upon a file that is not supported by the software you have installed, you have to go for file conversion and hope that everything turns out the way you wanted.

If you are going for conversion there are some pretty handy online resources that you should keep in mind. Cometdocs and Convertfiles are excellent for such purposes. You can mostly convert all the common document file formats using these two sites.

Zamzar is another very popular site for similar purposes. Besides documents it also does video, audio and text to speech, so you might want to check it out for your other conversion needs as well.

Online resources generally have a file size limit and you might have to wait in some cases, if you are looking for a solution that is “closer” to home you might want to check out the “Save As” feature of your software. Generally there are plenty of formats available that you can choose from so that your recepient is able to use your file. OpenOffice as an example is able to read doc, docx, pdf besides the native formats, so if you happen to be using OpenOffice you can always open a file and save it in the desired format.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• How To Open Microsoft Word 2007 docx Files (23)
• 9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions (65)
• 3 Microsoft Word Plugins To Boost Your MS Word Experience (17)
• 3 Excellent Sites to Get Free Document Templates (60)
• Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs (45)

However, nothing is perfect. And although imperfections create the uniqueness and beauty in most cases, we want software to be as close as it can get.

This is the main reason why plug-ins were created; one might say to pimp out your applications to fit your preference. Ask any three Firefox users why they use the browser, and I guarantee that you’ll hear the word ‘add-on’ more than once.

However, Firefox add-ons have been discussed multiple times over, but I was stunned to see nearly no one took on the job of looking into Microsoft Word Plugins. We even covered Open Office extensions, but never looked at free Plugins for Microsoft Word.

Save as PDF or XPS in Office 2007

Converting documents from and to PDF is a matter that keeps a lot of tongues occupied. But why all that hassle of converting if you can just save your document to PDF out of Word?

Microsoft released Save as PDF or XPS, a free add-in which adds the PDF format under the save-as menu, together with XPS (Microsoft’s own PDF-like format), and works quicker than many premium solutions I’ve tried before (including the official Acrobat one).

You can also send your documents over the internet in an email, in PDF or XPS format, with a few clicks of the mouse.

The Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS add-on works with the following Office 2007 applications:

• Word 2007
• Access 2007
• Excel 2007
• InfoPath 2007
• OneNote 2007
• PowerPoint 2007
• Publisher 2007
• Visio 2007

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open and save Docx files in Office 2003

One of the biggest bothers that came with the splendid looking Office 2007, was a new file format – the only bother, if I might say.

OK, I get it. It’s smaller in size, stores additional style types, and so on – honestly, if I could just open it in previous word versions, I’d love it.

I’ve always worked around this problem by either saving it in doc format myself, or by converting it if I was using a non-2007 computer. It wasn’t long ago that I discovered the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats. We have already looked at different ways to view docx files.

This download makes all the applications in your 2003 suite compatible with their Office 2007 companions. When installed, you can not only open, but also save docx files.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Open ODF (OpenOffice) Files In Word

A friend once asked me to print out a document for her. With her liking freeware, she sent me an odf file.

For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, odf is the standard format for OpenOffice documents, an open-source Office alternative.

Luckily for you and me, Sun Microsystems (the guys we know from Java) developed an Office plug-in. It’s compatible with both Office 2000, 2003 and 2007, and it allows the user to open, edit and save in the odf format.

The plugin can be downloaded here.

Do you know of any other Microsoft Word plugins? If so, let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• How To Open, Edit and Print any Text Document File (5)
• 9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions (65)
• Simplest PDF Apps Ever: Merge PDFs, PDF to DOC, Convert to PDF (20)
• How To Open Microsoft Word 2007 docx Files (23)
• How To Make Microsoft Office 2007 Look Like Office 2003 (7)

With nearly 3 million articles in the English version alone Wikipedia along with its sister wikis is an Alibaba’s treasure trove of information. Now, Wikipedia gives us a chance to take this information and use it as one of the oldest forms we have known – the humble book.

It is just the Wikimedia Foundation’s attempt to make ‘human knowledge’ accessible to everyone…online and now also offline. It started off with the German Wikipedia last year and now since February 26th it has moved onto the English version too.

To capsulize the process, users can collate the article pages of their choice and create a book from this existing material through a simple link available in Wikipedia. The compilation of articles can be arranged into chapters, given a title and finally exported as a PDF or as an Open Document and even sent to be professionally printed (at a cost).

One essential caveat is that a user has to create an account and log-on to access the book features.

The Wikipedia Help page goes through a step by step process of the nitty gritty…but I will give it a spin here too.

Logging In / Create Account

On the extreme top-right of a Wikipedia page is the link to Log-in or Create Account. Creating a new account is a simple process of giving a user name and a password. No email verification is required.

The Create A Book Menu

Search, browse and navigate to the Wikipedia article of your choice. On the left hand side, near the bottom is the create a book menu. It includes two items – Add wiki page and Books help.

Start adding the pages to your book by clicking the Add wiki page link on the relevant Wikipedia pages you want to include. The number of pages in the book gets automatically updated in the menu on the left. Two additional menu items – Show book (with a page counter) and Clear book appear in the menu.

You can also add an entire category within which the relevant page falls with just a single click. You can find the category hierarchy at the end of the article page.

Add The Title Of Your Book

With all pages added, click the Show book button to review your book. Here it is possible to add a book title (and a subtitle) and change the ordering of the wiki pages of the book through drag and drop. Unwanted pages can be dumped by a simple click of the ‘dustbin’ icon. New chapters can be included using the Create chapter link.

Many advanced functions like adding a particular revision or saving a book and improving the layout can be achieved through a combination of advanced functions. The Help page details those steps.

Download Or Order A Printed Copy

Voila! You have just ‘written’ your first book with the help of Wikipedia. Now, the finished book can be downloaded in PDF or OpenDocument format or ordered as a bound book. To download in the format of your choice, select the format from the dropdown and click the Download button. To order the book as a bound book, click the Order book from PediaPress button.

Wikipedia’s built-in rendering engine assembles the pages, grabs the images and parses them before they are passed on to the user in the final downloadable format. In its final avatar, my seven page Wikipedia selection transformed into a 4.4MB file downloaded as a 64 page PDF book. The end result was good…with neat alignments of photos and text.

If you take the PediaPress option, be prepared to dole out a few dollars as the starting price is US$ 8.90. Of course, the typesetting and publishing is of better quality and it comes bound too. A sample of a finished book can be seen on their site here.

Not many of us would even begin to create a home grown version of shelf lined Encyclopedia Wikipedia. But for smaller data needs, this feature comes as a welcome addition. Instead of individually downloading article pages as PDF’s we can now systematically arrange it into a PDF book for offline perusal.

Have you taken to this feature yet? Give us a glimpse into your thoughts in the comments section.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• The Best 6 Sites to Get Free Ebooks (140)
• Mobipocket – An Awesome ebook Reader Which is Free (14)
• 7 Great Sites To Get Free Romance eBooks For The Hopeless Romantic (12)
• 4 Free Tools to Download and Take Wikipedia Offline (17)
• Who Needs The Amazon Kindle When You Have A Netbook? (26)

It turns out that .docx is the new default file format for Microsoft Word 2007 and they even have xlsx and pptx for Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 respectively. Microsoft probably thought that by making these the default formats, everyone would actually be upgrading to the new version of Office as soon as it was released. Well, I haven’t upgraded till now and have no inclination to upgrade for the next couple of months also.

That said, a lot of my friends have slowly moved over to the dark side and are sending me docx and pptx files all the time. In my quest to find the ultimate docx viewer online, I have come across a couple of resources that I’d like to share with you guys today.

Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack

To be fair, Microsoft didn’t leave us poor souls all alone. They did release the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for users of older versions of Office, to let them view and edit Office 2007 formats like docx, pptx and xlsx. If you’re one of those who owns a previous version of MS Office, this is probably the easiest way to go. The compatibility pack is a free and small (30MB) download from Microsoft.

On the other hand, If you’re as lazy as I am and only want to open docx file then Word viewer (docx viewer), PowerPoint viewer or the Excel viewer are perfect for the task. You don’t need the full version of Office installed to use any of the above viewers.

OpenOffice 3

OpenOffice is a free and open source alternative to Microsoft’s Office suite and the latest version of the product, version 3, includes native support for Office 2007 formats.

OpenOffice only can be used as a viewer for docx right now so editing the file and saving in the same format is not possible. You can only open office docx files and view them. Saving in the older office .doc format is possible though, for those who want to go that route.

Use Zamzar to Convert from docx to doc

Zamzar is an online service to convert files between various formats, docx (and pptx and xlsx) being one of them.

The website is free of advertisements and the service speedy. What more can you ask for ? All that Zamzar asks for is your email address to send over a link to the converted document, and of course the original document.

Just point your browser to the website, upload your document, give your email address and you’re done. No need to download any docx viewer.

You might also want to check out Docx Converter – site that lets you convert docx file to html. And as you may know html documents can be opened with any web browser.

You should receive an email from Zamzar within a couple of minutes with a link to the converted document.

Firefox Plugin to open docx files

Microsoft has also been working on a plugin for Firefox called the OpenXML viewer which is a viewer for docx files and can open docx file inside the Firefox browser as if it were an HTML file. Of course, you can’t edit the file but if viewing the file is all you want, this is probably the easiest solution.

To install the plugin, download it from this site and unzip it. Now, using Firefox, open the .xpi file (File->Open) and install the plugin. You will be asked to restart Firefox and once you restart, the new plugin should be there for you to view all your docx files.

Are there any other tools that you guys use to view/edit Office 2007 files ? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• Online Word Processor: A Closer Look at Adobe’s Buzzword (7)
• How To Open, Edit and Print any Text Document File (5)
• How To Easily Make An Attractive Cover Page In MS Word 2007 (4)
• How To Autosave Docs with AutoRecover in MS Word 2007 (4)
• 3 Excellent Sites to Get Free Document Templates (60)

Before you carry on reading, here are some things that you need to do/know:

Obviously, the extensions require OpenOffice to work. If you have not installed OpenOffice, grab the latest version here.

To install the extension, you have to go to Tools -> Extension Manager in any of the OpenOffice applications. Click ‘Add’ to install the extension that you have downloaded.

Let’s proceed onto the 9 must-have extensions for your OpenOffice.

1) Sun PDF Import Extension

Normally, OpenOffice only allows you to export your file to PDF format, but not to import and make changes to it. With this PDF Import extension, you can now import your PDF files and make changes to the date, numbers or even a small portion of text.

By default, this extension imports the PDF file into the Draw application rather than Writer, even though it may contain a full page of text. You may be wondering why, but if you remember that when the PDF format was first created, it was designed not to allow any editing at all. As such, importing as a text document into Writer may prove too difficult a thing to do.

With that, capturing the content as a Draw object now seems the easiest and most logical thing to do. When you import your PDF file into your Draw application, every single line of text will be treated as a draw object and you can edit the text and rearrange it as you like.

Sun PDF Import Extension is still in beta and only works in OpenOffice 3.0.

2) Professional Template Pack II – English

With more than 120 professionally designed document templates at your fingertips, it is hard not to create a high quality document or presentation.

This extension adds various kinds of templates, ranging from business correspondence, budgets and project plans, event posters, invoices, notes, minutes, press releases to personal letter templates.

You’ll never have to spend your time writing up the whole document again.

After installation, the templates can be found under File -> New –> Templates and Documents.

3) OpenOffice.org2GoogleDoc

This extension allows you to export and import documents from Google Docs, Zoho and any WebDav server. Files supported include OpenDocument Text (.odt), StarOffice (.sxw), Microsoft Word (.doc), Rich Text (.rtf), OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods), Microsoft Excel (.xls), Comma Separated Value (.csv) and Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps).

Java 6 is required to use this extension.

4) Writer’s Tools

If you are just like me, who spends a great deal of time sitting behind OpenOffice writing articles, then Writer’s Tools is the extension that you must have. Writer’s Tools is a set of utilities designed to help OpenOffice users perform a wide range of tasks. You can back up documents, look up and translate words and phrases, manage text snippets, and keep tabs on document statistics. Some of the useful functions of this extension include:

• Lookup word from several sources, including Cambridge Dictionaries, WordNet, and Google Define.
• Backup a copy of your current document by sending an email to a specified address.
• Wikify Word tool links a selected word or text fragment in the current document to a Writer document, which is created on the fly
• Quick Converter that lets you convert between the metric and imperial systems easily.
• Bookmarks tool allows you to bookmark often-used documents, so you can access them with a few mouse clicks.
• Word of the Day tool picks and displays a random word and its definition from the accompanying WriterDB database.

and many more…

5) LanguageTool

What use is there if you can’t check your grammar and other language errors in an Office suite? The LanguageTool extension is an Open Source language checker for English, German, Polish, Dutch, and other languages. It is rule-based, which means it will find errors for which a rule is defined in its XML configuration files. Rules for more complicated errors can be written in Java. You can think of LanguageTool as a tool to detect errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect, e.g. mixing up there/their, no/now etc. It can also detect some grammar mistakes.

The Language Tool extension does not include spell checking.

6) Creative Commons Licensing

If you are always creating open source projects with the Creative Commons License, this extension will come in handy to you. The Creative Commons Licensing extension provides the ability to select and embed a Creative Commons License in Writer, Calc and Impress documents.

7) Data Form

In the Excel application in Microsoft Office, there is this feature – Data -> Form – that allows you to key in data easily. What this extension does is to replicate that feature in OpenOffice. The Data Form extension generates a data input form for tables in the Calc application that you can use to enter values.

In Calc, create a table with at least one row and the headline, for example:

Then, click on a range or any cell of the newly created table (not on empty cells), and go to Data – Form. That’s it. A form should appear letting you insert other records, or edit-delete the old ones.

Modern Impress Template

The Modern Impress template extension installs more than 30 beautiful templates that you can use for your presentation. All the graphics in the template are based on open-source art.

After installation, you can access the template at File -> New -> Templates and Documents -> Templates -> My Templates

9) Sun Presenter Console

For those who need to give presentations regularly, wouldn’t it be great if during the presentation, you can view what the next slide is and read the note that you have written all from the screen? It will take the guesswork out of you and also keeps you away from the troublesome paper notes scribbled with tiny text. What this extension does is to project different views to different monitors and allows you to see your upcoming slide and note while the audience only sees the current slide and the slide effect.

There are three views that you can configure in the Presenter Console. The first view displays the current slide for your audience to read while the second view shows the speaker’s notes in large, clear and scalable type plus the current and upcoming slide. The third view is a slider sorter view with the slide thumbnails. In your Impress application, go to Slide Show -> Slide Show settings and you can decide which view is to be projected to each monitor.

Do you use extensions for your OpenOffice? If so, which one is your favorite?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on Twitter ? Now you can follow MakeUseOf on Twitter too.

• How To Make Microsoft Office 2007 Look Like Office 2003 (7)
• Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs (45)
• Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) (12)
• OxygenOffice Pro: Enhanced Version of OpenOffice (5)
• How To Open, Edit and Print any Text Document File (5)