I am going to start with Excel tips. I thought the obvious place to start was to find a good place that had a basic tutorial for Excel. This site from the University of South Dakota has a very straightforward tutorial.

I found another site that has similar tutorials for Calc, the spreadsheet program for Open Office.

I hope to spend some time comparing the two spreadsheet programs and also looking for tips on ways to teach and use the programs.

Do let me know if you have any questions that you want to me to explore - or if you have found something that helps you.

Changing save default in Open Office

Recently, Bob Owens spent a lot of time at Ferrisburgh - Thank goodness, thank you Bob. Anyway, the tip he gave me is one that I think Open Office users need to know. He only uses Open Office for his work - and has the preferences save everything as if it was written on Microsoft Office.
Here's how you do it -
Go to Tools - Options - Load/Save and you will get this screen. Scroll down to find the Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP. This way what you save for others will be more readable by those that haven't discovered the joys of Open Office.

When we were working on the program for the artist in residence, I realized that I have not done much work with Microsoft Word or Office in making a page that has a header with  columns. This would look like a newspaper banner with columns. I always have used Appleworks for this in the past, so now I need to know how to do it easily in Microsoft Office.

It turns out that the only reason it is more complicated in Office is because there are so many ways you can format the page. Here is the quick way to start making in Microsoft Word  a page that looks like a newspaper.

• Go to View menu and select Header and Footer. Create your title in the header. Center, change font and/or insert an image if you want. When finished close uncheck the Header and Footer in view - your header will be a light gray.
• Go to the Format menu and select Columns. Decide how many you want - you can also decide if you want the columns to be for the whole page or just a portion of the page. Your text will fill down in one column first.
• Insert pictures as you go along. Put your cursor where you wish to insert the picture. Resize the picture if needed.

In Open Office -

• The Header and Footer are separate under View. Visually, this seemed easier for me than the way Microsoft handles it.
• The Format menu also has the ability to select Columns. It appears to have as many choices as Word does.
  

Adding art to a document

I was asked about inserting a picture in Word or Open Office, I quickly realized I hadn't tried it in both. It is quite simple in either program. You would go to insert and either choose clip art or a file. I have found that on the Mac platform, clip art is fairly limited. To the right of this text, is an example of how you would place a picture in Open Office. I find this program to be the easiest to make modifications. Really this is one thing you just need to practice and look around to see all the ways you can change the look of your graphic. It is very similar in Microsoft Office.

Forgot your glasses? Make font bigger instantly

Today at our tech leadership meeting, I learned that if you hold down the control button (Windows/PC), and scroll up or down with the wheel on your mouse, the font will get smaller or bigger!!!! Hooray! Even with 20 pairs of glasses stored all over the place, this will still be a huge help to me.

Word Art /Fontwork

Open Office has just released a new upgrade which makes for a much nicer drawing program. I haven't totally figured out how it compares to Microsoft Office, but I did compare the Word Art/ Fontwork feature. They are very similar, just found out in a different place on the programs.
You can read all about how to use Fontwork in Open Office at the web site http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/tutorial/Fontwork_Gallery.html
It is as clear of an explanation of how to add fontwork in your documents.
For Microsoft Word, I recommend this site http://www.uwec.edu/Help/Office07/wordart-w.htm
Let me know if you try any of these tricks. I am very impressed with the recent upgrade to Open Office, so do remember to periodically look for updates for your programs. Let me know how this is all going and if you have any questions or suggestions as to what you are interested in next, let me know.

Making a Table in your document

Making a table is very easy in Word or Open Office. In both cases, Table is at the top. When you choose it, you can say how many rows and columns you want it to be. It is very similar in both programs.
The difference in the two programs comes when you try and make changes to the border. In Word, you will notice a small plus sign in the top left corner. Right click - or Option click on this sign and you will get a screen that gives you more options
for your borders. In Open Office, a screen pops up on your page once you have made your table that gives you choices to click on to change the borders. I would recommend you play with this sometime to see all the different formatting styles you can get.
Do let me know if you have any other questions or if you are having any success with this process. Thanks.

Creating Bibliographies

When the sixth grade came in to make bibliographies, I realized quickly that while I knew how to make bibliographies in Appleworks,  I did not have the same skill level in Word.

So, it is actually very easy, before you start to put in the entry, you go to format paragraph and you will see this tool bar. You chose indentation, special  and then hanging under special -  and it will automatically put your bibliography in a correct format.

Open Office does not have this exact feature. I am still trying to figure out hanging indents in that program. However, I did notice that Open Office has a bibliography database that you can make your bibliographies in and insert them into a document. I will work on this later and let you know. For people how are writing a lot of papers, this might be a great solution!

Do let me know if there is something you want me to be looking to figure out or post a tip that you have found here. If this is all something you have heard before, then let me know that as well. I am hoping for some discussion about these programs. Thanks.