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 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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