I rarely use this software only because I have a perfectly fine working copy of Mac MSOffice 2011, but I often refer it to clients of mine as a free work-around. Anyway, recently one client asked for help creating an OO spreadsheet. When I went to launch OO, I was presented with the “Registration Wizard.” Never had happened before in all the years I’d used the s/w. I tried to cancel, and the program just quit. EEEK!!! GAD!!! NO!!! Really? Doesn’t seem match the open source community philosophy.
Anyway, in my search to find out how to ‘get around’ the wizard, I came across this thread with a variety of techy, high effort (download), code solutions that didn’t satisfy my “simple solution” sort of mentality, plus, it’s almost a decade old:
https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=19023
A little more research found this lovely PDF of a 2008 marketing presentation to SUN Microsystems outlining the reasoning behind the registration. The URL gave it away to me even before I read the title of the presentation — the URL is cataloged in the “marketing” department:
http://www.openoffice.org/marketing/ooocon2008/programme/friday_1448.pdf
“Registration and how OpenOffice.org Benefits”
How’s THAT for ya?
Then, I did what I usually do and just started the registration process knowing I could abort at any time. It worked!
Here’s what to do:
1. Launch Open Office.
2. If the Registration Wizard starts, choose the “register now” or “Next” or whatever to proceed.
3. Do not enter any of the data asked for and just click “Proceed/Next” through one or two more screens.
4. On the final screen giving the options of “Register Now,” “Remind me later,” etc., choose “Never Register.”
That should do it.
Happy Open Sourcing, and consider donating to any / all open source software you can. Developers are some of the most generous time-giving people.