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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Using Writer

Hi People

For the initial posts we have been looking at developing a couple of spreadsheets, so this time we are going to look at the Word compatible Writer module of OpenOffice.org.

It is a sophisticated document creating package, with the capability of saving the output to many types of format, notably :  .doc & .pdf


Most people will recognise both of these as being the formats used by Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat respectively.

So with out further explanation, let's dive in!

Open the Writer module, (either by opening the OpenOffice.org package and using the control panel, or by locating the Writer program in the programs list) and have a good look at the toolbars at the top.  Some of the buttons will be familiar (being the same or very similar to the ones in Word - excluding the new 'ribbon' arrangement in Office 2007 and 2010 - for Windows)

Writer's Toolbars

The lower of the two toolbars, has the standard options, such as

Font 

•  Size, 
• Style, 
• Bold, 
• Underline, 
• Colour 
• Type

Text

• Alignment (Left, Centred, Right and Justified)
• Indents, 
• Bullets,
• Highlighting

The remaining bar has a number of extra tools, most of which are found somewhere in Word, with one major exception.

I will leave you to figure out which tool button it is (clue - it is actually written on the button)

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Personal Accounts - Conditional Formatting - Part 4

Hi People

The conditional formatting item is available on the 'Format' menu

The 'Conditional Formatting' option on the 'Format' menu

When you click on the 'Conditional Formatting' option, you will see the condition entry form

Several things to note here are

• the Condition 1 box is ticked, ready for the first entry
• there are 4 boxes of information required, to start with
• a maximum of 3 conditions are available

Click on the first box to change 'Cell value is' to 'formula is' 

When you change the 'Cell value is' to 'formula is', the middle box disappears, making way for a larger box into which you can type your calculation.  We are going to put the following calculation in

=OR(D7="d";D7="D")

The first calculation for the cell 

This will look familiar to you as it is one of the tests that make up the long calculation we studied several posts ago.  On clicking the 'New Style...' button you will find a window with 8 tabs.  Select the tab marked 'Background'

The 'Background' tab window

Select the red background for debits

Having selected the red background, by left clicking it, left click the 'OK' button and now left click in the 'Condition 2' box.  This will activate the second condition.

The two calculations for the conditional formatting styles (notice the third condition has not been activated)

Again change the 'Value is' to 'Formula is' and type in the formula

=OR(D7="c", D7="C")

Left click the 'New Style....' button and select a suitable green or blue color for the background of credits to the account.

Now left click the 'OK' button and let's test the results

From the picture below you can see what happens when you enter various credits and debits.

The final layout for the basic Home accounts program

Keep this spreadsheet handy as we will further develop it in a later post.

Next time we will look at the Writer program with Open Office.

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Personal Accounts - Conditional Formatting - part 3

Hi People

Let's have a look at the spreadsheet pictures and show you some of the things we have been discussing.

This picture shows the result of an unexpected value in D7.  See the WHAT! in F7

Notice here that the next entry still causes an error in the 'Balance' column - column F

When the errors are corrected, the system goes on working

In this picture a Credit or 'C' transaction is made, and the value of the balance goes up.  Whilst it has been tested the spreadsheet does need much more testing before being happy with the results being seen.

A large withdrawal here has caused the spreadsheet to use its internal conditional formatting.  The  -£17.17 in the 'Balance' column is in red numbers

The last picture above shows that some colour conditional formatting is used in the Currency format for numbers.  We can further enhance the conditional formatting if we wish.

We could highlight the transaction amounts if they are credits or debits for instance

Conditional Formatting is found under the 'Format' menu options, about half way down.

For what we are going to do is fairly involved, so the details we will leave until next time

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