OpenOffice 2.2 Basics

Transcription

1 Writer Projects Writer Project 1 Classroom Newsletter Learning nuggets: working with images (crop, space, wrap, crop), printing to.pdf. Digital photo into a classroom or building newsletter - learn how to work with digital photo 1. Open a Word document called Writer Practice by first opening Open Office, then opening the document. It will open in Writer. When Open Office is the default application for files with a.doc extension, you will be able to double click on the file to open in Open Office Writer. 2. Display the Drawing toolbar. If it s not showing go to the View menu Toolbars Drawing. This toolbar may be moved around to dock it. 3. Insert a digital image into this document. From the drawing menu select or from the Insert menu select Picture From File... The image may be in a variety of formats. 4. The image has uses an anchor icon to show where the image is attached in the document. The Picture editing toolbar shows when the image is selected (note: green square resize handles.) This toolbar may be moved by dragging the gray title bar. Andy Mann Page 1 amann@techforschools.com

2 5. Resize the image by dragging a resize handle towards the middle of the image. Resize it so it fills about 1/3 the document s width. By holding the shift key when you resize, the image is proportionally sized. 6. Change the picture wrapping so the text wraps tightly around all four sides of the image by double clicking on the image, select the Wrap tab and selecting Parallel. A little white space around an image makes it look better so adjust the spacing to 0.10 or more on all four sides. 7. Try cropping or trimming off a portion of the image. Cropping an image is accomplished through the Crop tab in the Picture editing window. A preview of the cropped image is displayed. 8. With the image selected but the Picture editing window closed, under Default change the image to a Grayscale. Watermark is popular to use when an image is place under the text of a document. Experiment with the 11 filters on the toolbar. Remember you can easily Undo using Ctrl + Z. 9. Open Office has printing to.pdf built-in. Select the Print to.pdf icon on the toolbar: Once printed, try double clicking on the.pdf file to open in Acrobat Reader. 10.When you close a document you will be asked if you want to Save or Discard. This is different from MS Word. Writer Project 2 Inspirational or Wanted Poster Learning nuggets: working with Gallery, text boxes, screen view, and drag & drop. 1. Create a full page inspirational poster using clip art from the Clip Art Gallery and text from FontWorks. First decide what you might say after looking at the images in the clipart gallery. These images have been gathered far and wide and represent an eclectic collection of images. Click on the Gallery icon to open the image gallery. Double click on an image to see if full size. Double click to return to the gallery. To use an image simply drag it into the document. To close the gallery, click the gallery icon a second time. 2. Resize clipart similar to how you resized an image above, with the resize handles, holding shift to keep proportions. 3. In the Drawing toolbar, select the Textbox tool: Click and drag the cross hairs to create a text box the width of the screen. Enter text and resize to fit the screen. This text box may be moved around the screen by clicking and dragging. To change the magnification of your document, double click on the size % in the middle of the bottom of the screen. Andy Mann Page 2 amann@techforschools.com

3 4. To make your text seem more like a graphic, enhance it using the Fontwork Gallery. Select the icon from the drawing toolbar. To edit text, double click the graphic and the text shows in the middle of the graphic. Clicking off the text is similar to clicking OK. A special Fontwork toolbar shows allowing modification of the graphic. The graphic may also be altered by dragging the resize handles or the yellow graphic modification diamonds. Fontwork is similar to Word Art in MS Word. 5. To create a wanted poster, inserted a photo of a person and make the image look antique using the aging filter. Add a call out from the drawing toolbar. These can be great get to know you posters for a bulletin board or reward posters for a job well done. Teachers have also used these antique posters by having students become a famous person from history, then write a short biographical summary under the photo. 6. Open Office supports drag and drop. You can drag an image from a folder on your desktop, from your network folder, from a USB flash drive, or even from an Internet web page, directly onto your Open Office document. Writer Project 3 Templates Learning nuggets: templates & certificates 1. Take a few minutes to explore the templates bundled with Open Office. These templates have been organized. Many are Writer templates. A few are for other applications. 2. Take a close look the Student and Teacher Helpers and the Newsletter and Certificate templates. 3. Be sure to click the preview icon on the top of the window to see a preview of each template before opening. 4. If you have time, open a certificate; add your name and print. Notes/favorite templates: Andy Mann Page 3 amann@techforschools.com

4 Writer Project 4 Creating a Report Learning nuggets: default fonts, headers/footers, margins, bullets & numbers, spell ck. 1. Create a new Writer document. Try the shortcut for new document: CTRL + N. Adjust the view so it is Page Width (a good standard practice.) 2. Try one of the three different ways to change your margin. Put a mouse over the margin guide and a two headed black arrow shows. Click and drag to resize the margin. This works on the top ruler left and right, and on the left side ruler top and bottom. Two other ways to adjust margins and set other page settings. Double click on the word on the bottom of the page. This will take you to the Page Style dialogue box. This dialogue box may also be accessed under the Format menu Page. The Page tab provides the margin settings and page orientation choices. Other choices in this dialogue box include turning on header, Page numbers, background color or graphic, and page borders. 3. Everyone has a favorite font and it s usually not Times New Roman or Thorndale. To change the default font to your favorite be it Arial or Comic Sans follow these steps: Under the Tools Menu Options (last one on the list). Double click on the OpenOffice.org Writer menu (or click the +) and select Basic Fonts (Western). Select your favorite font and click OK. The Option dialogue box provides many other ways to customize Open Office to better meet your preferences. 4. Type a sentence with a spelling error. Auto spell check may be turned on/off with the button in the toolbar. When on, the red squiggles show under a word not in the dictionary. To spell check a document the may be clicked. F7 key, like in MS Word, also spell checks a document. If you frequently spell a word incorrectly, you may want to add the word and the correct spelling to AutoCorrect. In the future when you misspell the word, it will automatically be corrected, similar to when you type: teh for the and Writer automatically corrects the word. 5. Add a header and footer to this document. Insert Header Default. Type some text in the header, adjust the font size to fill the header. Center the text (try the CTRL + E for Center). Insert a footer in a similar manner. In the footer, insert a date field on the left hand side. This will automatically insert the date on the computer s clock. Press tab once or twice and type the word: Page and insert a Page Number Field using a similar process. These fields may be inserted other places in a document such as in the date area of a letter. Andy Mann Page 4 amann@techforschools.com

5 6. To change indent, tabs, and more, just double click on the gray ruler. This opens the Paragraph settings dialogue box. Note other settings which can be done such as Drop Caps or paragraph border. 7. Create a to do list using bullets or then try it with numbers. Start in a blank area of the body of the document (not in the header or footer.) Create a title, press Enter, before you begin your list, click the button or number icon in the toolbar. As long as you enter text and press enter, the button or numbering formatting continues. Try pressing tab and note the differences. You may turn on/off bullets and number, restart numbering, or change the look of the bullets or numbers using the Bullets and Numbering toolbar. The last icon opens the dialogue box where you can change the bullet, number or even outline properties. Converting files to/from MS Office & Preferences 1. Open Office settings have been configured to save Writer in native.doc format. This setting was automatically configured when Open Office was installed on school computers or at home using the district provided CD (available from Technology Dept.). Writer files you bring home will open in MS Word. MS Word files created at home saved in.doc format will open automatically at school in Open Office. This setting is made under Tools in the Options dialogue box. MS Excel files with the.xls extension and MS PowerPoint files with the.ppt extension will automatically open in the comparable application in Open Office. Note: nearly everything done in a Microsoft Office suite will convert completely and open in the comparable Open Office program. Be advised that some fonts may be altered, macros not function, and multimedia and transitions in Impress/PowerPoint may not work or not work as expected. To eliminate potential problems, it is recommended that students and staff install and create projects using Open Office on their home computers. The Install CD is available at no charge and they will be using exactly the same program being used at school. As an added bonus, Open Office may legally be installed on every computer in a home (and on their friend s or relative s computers too.) Andy Mann Page 5 amann@techforschools.com