Impress - Open Office 3.30

Hi People

Last time we started work on the title slide for our slideshow.  So load it up (or create it as per the last post)

 It looks pretty basic at the moment so look at the picture below and we will work to producing this.

Firstly, choose another background, which is easily and quickly done, by looking to the right side column, under 'Tasks \ Master Pages'.  Look at the 'Available for Use' section (if you only see the grey bar with a '+' then left click on the '+' to expand the section - note the '+' turns to a '-').  Now click on the background you want to use.

Now lets add a picture, to do this, we will be using the 3 shape icon on the bottom toolbar (see picture below)

The bottom toolbar - below the main slide window

Here you can see the 3 shape icon (second from the left)

Click on the 3 shape icon and locate a suitable picture (perhaps one you have created or one from the internet - free of charge and royalties images only).  Select the image and then click the 'Open' button and wait a few seconds.  

The picture will arrive but not in the position you want to place it, see  the picture below

The picture was deliver in the centre of the slide, note the green  'handles' for re-sizing the picture

Place the mouse cursor in the picture and it will change to a cross with arrow tips.  Hold down the left mouse button and now you can move the picture to wherever you want to put it on the slide.  Use the green handles to resize the picture.  Play with this and get use to it as these handles appear on most containers to allow re-sizing.

Use the corner handles to reduce both height and width together, the mid line handles just re-size the sides, top or bottom (depending on which handle you use - use top for top etc). 

 To use the handles place the mouse cursor on the handle of choice (the cursor changes to a black outlined, white double headed arrow), and HOLD down the left mouse button, now move the mouse to resize the picture and let go of the button when you have got the width, height or width & height you want.

I have added a balloon callout to this slide

Ok from the picture above you can see I have added a balloon callout

 Callout from the bottom toolbar (4th icon in from the left)

Click on the black arrow tip to the right of the balloon (callout) icon and select (by left clicking on the shape you want).  The mouse cursor will now turn to a black cross when on the slide.  Position the cursor where you would like to put the callout  and HOLD down the left mouse button. Now move the mouse (while holding down the left mouse button) and the callout will form under the cursor as you move.  Note the callout has the green handles for resizing and a yellow handle which directs the length and direction of the callout source.

Click inside the callout and add the text you want to display.

Play with this and we will look at slide two and transitions next time

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Using Impress in OpenOffice - 3.30

Hi People,

Firstly, I want to apologise to those of you who were looking to create this slideshow some months ago.

Secondly, due to the time that has lapsed a newer version of OpenOffice and hence Impress (than the one I was originally using), is available.

My suggestion is that you, update your version of OpenOffice.org, so that we can all work through this together.

OK, there are some minor differences when you go through the sequence, of the several previous posts on the use of Impress.  The first major difference come with the button arrangement and what is shown on the menu.

The new Impress layout, with the original starter slide created.

So you can see that some button and options are not immediately available from the menu button directly.  For instance, we did have the ability to turn bullet points on/off via the default button bar.  This option is still available from the 'Format' menu, under 'Bullets and Numbering...' or you could create your own customised button bar with the buttons that you use most (we will look at this in a later post).

For now we will customise the toolbars by replacing the 'lines and filling' toolbar displayed (the one with the paint pot, pen nib, 0.00cm and the Black square in it), with the 'Text Formatting' toolbar.  This replacement tool bar has the Text justification, Font family, Font size, Bold, Underline, Italic and the Bullets buttons on it.
How to do this is:

• Click on 'Tools'
• Click on 'Customise' from the menu
• Click on the 'Toolbars' tab (at the top of the popup frame)
• Now, locate the 'Toolbar' box near the top (just under 'OpenOffice.org Impress Toolbars')
• Use the down arrow to the right of the box and the scroll bar, to select 'Text Formatting' toolbar.
• Click the 'OK' button and you will have the 'Text Formatting' buttons available on the toolbars.

Do not have too many toolbars available at any one time as these will crowd your monitor workspace.

Now if you have your 1st slide set up on the screen as above, perhaps we will 'tinker' with it. Firstly, let's have a much larger title 'Computer Parts' and let's centre it.   Centring the text can be achieved by setting the justification button to centre it looks like this

Before using the button, we first click once on the text in the box, this locates the editing cursor on the text, now highlight the text, by moving the mouse to the first letter of the title and holding the left mouse button down whilst moving the mouse over the entire text. Now where the toolbar shows the text size (see picture below) either type the size of the font (such as 36) or click the black down arrow to the right and select a size from the options.  In either case the highlighted text will change immediately in size.

Text Formatting toolbar showing Font, Font size (24 here), Bold , Italic,  Underline and  Shadow buttons

Now click the centre justification button as shown above.  This enlarged text is now centred.

Well that is it for now

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Using Impress - Part 3

Hi People

A Happy, Healthy, Wealthy and Abundant  New Year to you all.

OK now we were looking at a presentation using the Impress module of Open Office.

The slideshow we are creating is going to be about the parts of a computer.

Open your 'Slide test' presentation (if you haven't created it yet, have a look at the last couple of posts).

Firstly, if you want to change the background of your first page (and this can be achieved for all the pages if you want), select the 'Format' menu option, click on 'Page' and use the 'Background' tab.  I chose a blue background.

Now to title your slide,  double click on the 'My First Presentation' area.  Where you double clicked the cursor should be flashing and the 'My First Presentation' should be inside a box (if you have a box with 8 small boxes around the edge, you have single clicked by mistake).  Now you can delete, highlight and over type in the box.  So delete the contents and type in ' Computer Parts.

Similarly the 'Click to add an outline' box can be changed, so type 'A basic computer parts list'.  Now you may have a bullet list (a list with a large dot at the front).  To remove the bullet setup look to the icon bar and you should see an icon like the one below

The 'Bullet list' icon on the icon bar

If you click on it the bullets should disappear on the slide (make sure you are on the same line as the bullet you want to remove.  Question  How would you remove several bullets at once? Answer next time.

The 'justify' section of the icon bar. Note the 'left justify' icon is highlighted (in use). Use the 'centre justify' (the next icon right of the 'left justify'), by left clicking on it

You will also notice that the line is left justified, so again look to the icon bar and left click on the 'centre justify' icon.


Ok , now save your work an we will be looking at this further next time


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Using Impess - Looking at the Options -1

Hi People

Last time we created our first slide (see last post if your unsure or haven't done this).  Also, there were a number of tabs in the main area to have a look at.  These add extra useful parts for the creator of the presentation.

The 'Normal' tab is where the slides are presented for creating and editing.
The 'Outline' tab shows the slides as thumbnails (tiny pictures) with the titles alongside
The 'Notes' tab displays any notes the presenter may which to add which are not seen on the slideshow/presentation
Predictably, the 'Handout' tab is for creating and editing a handout which can be generated to for presentation participants to take away as a hard copy.
Finally, the 'Slide Sorter', no prizes for guessing what this baby does (allows you to order  the slides to your preference of displaying them).  Now if you have checked these out while, going through the above list, you will notice the the 'Outline' tab does not have a right hand area sectioned off (Tasks area).

The remaining tabs do have the 'Tasks' area.  You have seen the 'Tasks' available from a 'Normal' perspective, so check out the remaining 'Tasks' on the 'Notes', 'Handout' and 'Slide Sorter' tabs.

What you will find is that they are all the same, allowing you to replicate your presentation effects over all (though how you could create transition effects on a handout is rather amusing).

That's it for this post

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Using Impress

Hi People

In the last post, we looked at the basics of starting an Impress presentation.  You may remember that, the Impress module of OpenOffice.org is the equivalent of Microsoft's PowerPoint.

In this post we will be creating a slideshow.  I am going to make this slideshow, purely for tutorial purposes.

The slideshow will be about computers and their parts and will be using pictures from various sources, just for illustration purposes.

The background is from an OpenOffice.org extension package called 'Modern-Templates.oxt' and is available here.

There are a few others contained in the extension for Impress.  To use it, just double left click the file and (assuming you have OpenOffice.org installed) it will install itself and show you a list of all the extensions you  have installed in OpenOffice.org.  To view the templates, you need to open Impress and look at the new templates individually.

OK open impress and go with the setttings as described in the last post.

The Presentation Screen with a single slide.  Note the Slide List on the left of the main work area and the Tasks area on
the right of the main work area

From the above picture of the presentation work area, you can see the menu and toolbars at the tops, the Slide list on the left, main work area,  and the Tasks area.  Below the Slides and Main area are the tool selection bar.

Note also the 5 tabs above the main area window (Normal, Outline, Notes, Handout and Slide Sorter)

Currently the Tasks area is showing the Layouts section.  Left click on the the other options

• Master Pages
• Table Design
• Custom Animation
• Slide Transition

The tool selection bar has a selection of options for creating your individual slides from scratch (or adding a little to existing slide layouts), for example various lines, shapes, connectors, symbols etc. and the ability to arrange them on the slide, by rotation, alignment etc.

Save your basic slideshow presentation as slidetest and we will continue in the next post

OK That's enough for now and we'll delve deeper next time

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Impress for the beginner

Hi People

Many will not know Impress (the presentation program within OpenOffice.org).  It is the equivalent of the Powerpoint presentation program within Microsoft Office.

Presentations can be made at all levels of social and business interaction, because laptop computers are now available to almost everyone.
Laptops are where most presentations are made from and so a party planner might put on a presentation, school children could watch a presentation (or even put one on), a returning holiday maker, may well put a presentation on for friends and family and of course a salesman may make a presentation to a prospect.

 These are some of the few possibilities, so getting to know what can be done with a presentation package can be very useful for many people.

Let's now take a look at Impress.  To open Impress for a new presentation, simply click on the OpenOffice.org icon and select the presentation icon or select Impress from the OpenOffice menu on All Programs.

In both cases a small wizard window opens and you can choose to use a blank or existing presentation or indeed use a template (leave the Preview box ticked). It is probably wise to use the wizard until you get to know your way around Impress.

Select the blank presentation then click the 'Next' button.

Now you may select the presentation background (it is very limited in the basic installation, but we will look at  getting new backgrounds  at a later time).  Select the Dark Blue with Orange.

Leave the 'Screen' box ticked as we are going to use a computer output presentation (The alternatives can be used for a printed output - Paper, an overhead projector - Overhead sheet or a slideshow projector - Slide).

Click 'Next' and now the options for the type of transition, its speed and a manual or automatic presentation are displayed.

Choose a transition type ( Effect ) and leave the Speed as medium and the Default radio button selected.

You can fill in the boxes on the next screen display if you wish, but they are not compulsory.

Now click the 'Create' button to begin creating your presentation proper.

That 's all until next time

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The Writer Experience

Hi People

At the end of the last post, I left you with an easy question.  The button you were looking for was the PDF button.

What are PDF well most people are aware that they are Portable Document Format files, but they are designed to be non-editable once published.  This means that you can provide them as 'fixed' documents. They are like a 'picture' of the text document.

OK, without a specific task in mind, let's see what we can do in Writer.

ITEM : How to create a header and footer in the document

With Writer open you will have your standard toolbars and menus.

Choose the 'Insert' menu item and the 'Header' item from the menu and from the submenu choose 'Default'

The top part of the page outline, splits into two.  The 'Header' portion and the, 'Body' portion.

This is like a page break, but it retains both sections on one page (and every page).

The footer can be created in a similar manner, using the  'Insert' , 'Footer' and 'Default'

The standard items you would find in a Header would be a logo, aside from things which may be put in alternatively in the Footer, such as the date, time, author initials, page count, total pages, addresses, email, telephone numbers, website addresses etc..  

Putting dates, times and  page count in the header or footer is done using the 'Field' menu item. Fields are found by using the 'Insert' , 'Field' and choosing the appropriate field to insert.

NOTE make sure you leave enough room ( vertically ) to get the recipient's address in, if creating  a header for a letter or letter template.

That's it for now

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