Tag Archive for 'tutorial'

How Styles Work In Microsoft Excel 2007

Published
by
Matthew Fletcher
on January 28, 2010
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments

In addition to using and modifying Excel’s built-in cell styles, you also have the facility of creating your own. A convenient method of doing this is to highlight a range of cells and apply all the formatting attributes that you would like your style to have and then to turn those attributes into a cell style. When you create your cell style, Excel will detect all the attributes from the highlighted cells and include them in the style. Let’s take an simple example; let’s say we want to create a cell style for headings with our text angled at 45 degrees.

To set the text angle to 45 degrees, choose “Angle Counter Clockwise” from the Alignment section of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon. We might also want to centre the text horizontally and vertically, change the colour and make the text bold and slightly larger. Having chosen the relevant options from the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon, to create a style which has all these attributes, simply highlight a cell that contains these formats and choose “New Cell Style” from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles Tab of the Excel Ribbon.

The Style dialogue will then appear. Here, we enter a name for our new cell style: let’s say we call this cell style “Angled Heading”. The Style dialogue window contains six categories of formatting information which can be activated or deactivated via a series of checkboxes. We can now switch off those categories of formatting that don’t apply. Thus, in this example, we won’t need the categories “Number”, “Border”, “Fill”, or “Protection”; so we can uncheck all of them. Next to each of the aforementioned categories, you’ll notice that Excel has picked up all the attributes of the highlighted cell; so it is not necessary to click on each category to set any options; all we need to do is click OK.

When creating a cell style in this way, it is important to realise that Excel does not apply the style to the cell or cells on which the style was based. If you wish to apply the style to the cell, you need to do so explicitly by highlighting the cell and choosing the name of your new cell style from the Cell Styles drop-down menu in the Styles section of the Home Tab of the Ribbon. Once you have created a style, you’ll notice that Excel has an extra category called custom in the Cell Styles drop-down menu and it is here that you can choose the style that you just created. Although the highlighted cell may not look any different, it will now be associated with the new style.

We would then go on to apply the style wherever it was needed throughout our workbook. Just doing this is, in itself, a big time-saver. In addition, however, if we were to change the format of our heading, all we need to do is to modify the attributes associated with our cell style and all of our headings will be automatically updated.

Author is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes at their central London training centre.

Easy Steps With Microsoft Excel Training

Published
by
Benjamin Williams
on October 26, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments

The features of Microsoft Excel training give you the abilities to create statistical analysis using tools. Your will learn spreadsheets and schematic diagrams using graphs and legends. The training combines the function of the tools using spreadsheets and other selections. Learn and perform operations calculating, finding the mean, class analyzing data, summations, and integration.

The training uses workbooks to teach how to calculate and arrange a number of pages in a specific order and store it; including graphics. Designers, secretaries, payroll clerks, and engineers use the organizing tool.

The versatile functions make this popular for the calculations and making changes in their designs and other projects. A workbook feature uses applications in visual basic, allowing a blueprint to be drawn in as little as a hour. Teachers use the features to track students and their progress.

Teachers can quickly detect areas needing improvement and can help the student. The program uses individual cells that store formulas and performs the calculations. This feature connects directly to the other application.

The program is designed so you can create a tracking system for deliveries. You use the Vlookup formatting features. The Smart Art Graphics offers click sheets and graphic elements. There are too many features to describe, but another important one is the automatic formula and the formula name feature. Math has never been easier than it is using a program like this.

Another easy to learn function is the Formula builder, which Microsoft Excel training offers because it will simplify and describe the elements of formulas. Indicating the correct matches with color-coded answers and then saving them, for a day you may need the formula. Learning the program is not hard with the easy to follow training.

The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes, as well as Excel VBA training at their central London training centre.

Techniques For Moving Objects In Adobe Illustrator

Published
by
Dwight Davidson
on July 17, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments
by Dwight Davidson

Because Adobe Illustrator is a vector-based drawing environment, each Illustrator drawing consists of independent elements or objects. Much of the process of creating a drawing consists of transforming objects, either to customise them or to derive other objects. In this article, we will examine some of the key techniques used when carry out such transformations.

First of all transformations can be carried out in three different way: using the selection or free transform tool, using the transform tools (scale, rotate, shear and reflect) or using the options in the Transform sub-menu of the Object menu. Using the selection or free transform tools is very much like transforming vector and other objects in most non-specialist programs such as Microsoft Word or PowerPoint.

Moving objects is one of the simplest forms of transformation. To move an object with the pointer or free transform tool, simply position the cursor over the object, click and hold down the mouse button and drag the object to a new position. If you hold down the Shift key as you do so, you will constrain the movement of the object to the horizontal, vertical or diagonal plane.

It is also possible to highlight the object and then use the cursor keys on your keyboard to move it up, down, left or right. The amount of movement is dictated by one of the settings in your preferences. To change this, choose Preferences from the Edit menu (Windows) or choose Illustrator from the Apple menu (Macintosh). In the general category, enter a setting for “Keyboard Increment”. (The default setting is 0.3528 mm.)

You can also increase the amount of movement by a factor of ten by holding down the Shift key in conjunction with any of the cursor keys. Also, bear in mind that keys repeat; so if you keep a cursor key down, the object will move continuously. You don’t have to press the key repeatedly.

Illustrator also offers a more precise way of moving an object, using the menu command Object-Transform-Move. This displays a dialogue in which you can enter the precise distance that you would like the object to move. There are four settings: horizontal, vertical, distance and angle. Any of the four can be modified and the other three will be automatically updated. For example, if you enter 10 for horizontal and 10 for vertical, Illustrator will automatically enter 45 degrees for the angle and 14.1421 for the distance. If you then enter 10 for the distance, Illustrator will change both the horizontal and vertical settings to 7.0711; and so forth. The Move dialog also contains a preview option, so that you can verify that the object will end up where you want it to as well a Copy button allowing you to duplicate and offset the original object.

About the Author:
The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Solutions, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Illustrator Classes in London and throughout the UK.

Customizing Audience Handouts In Microsoft PowerPoint

Published
by
Dwight Davidson
on July 6, 2009
in Computer Training
. 0 Comments
by Dwight Davidson

PowerPoint audience handouts provide a way of giving the attendees of your presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.

To personalize the look of your handouts, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.

Given that Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.

If your presentation contains a lot of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.

When exporting to Word in this way, you will be presented with a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.

The options we have seen thus far don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.

Perhaps your main aim is for the audience to take away a summary of the content of the presentation. In this case you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.

As is often the case when transferring data from one Microsoft Office application to another, you have the choice of activating the Paste Link option. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.

About the Author:
The The writer of this article is a training consultant with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.

Excel 2007 Navigation Techniques

Published
by
Andrew Whiteman
on June 5, 2009
in Computer Training
. 1 Comment
by Andrew Whiteman

Each Excel document is referred to as a workbook and each workbook can contain up to 255 worksheets. To navigate to a particular worksheet, click on one of the sheet tabs displayed at the bottom of your screen.

To the left of the tabs will find four navigation icons. These are very useful where you have a workbook that either contains lots of worksheets or has worksheets with very long names. The very first button makes the name of the first worksheet visible; the very last button makes the name of the last worksheet visible. The left pointing arrow button makes the name of the previous worksheet visible and of course the right pointing arrow button makes the name of the next worksheet visible. These four buttons don’t actually activate a worksheet; they simply make its tab visible. To activate a worksheet, you still have to click on that particular name tab.

Worksheets can also be activated from the keyboard. To activate the next worksheet to the right, hold down the Control key and press Page Down. This moves you forward through your worksheets are naturally holding the Control key and pressing Page Up moves you back to the left.

Once you’ve navigated to a particular worksheet, you will need to go to a particular cell or a particular section of that worksheet. Naturally, you can use the scrollbars to make different parts of the worksheet visible. You can also move around the worksheet using the arrows on your keyboard: down, right, up and left.

Excel also allows you to use keyboard shortcuts for moving to the edges of a given body of data. To get to the right-most cell of the current range, hold down Control and press the right arrow and of course to get to the bottom cell, hold down Control and press the down arrow.

It is also possible to do exactly the same thing with the mouse. Position the cursor on one of the edges of the selection rectangle (that bold highlight which is displayed around the currently active cell) and then you simply double-click. Double-clicking on the right hand edge of the selection rectangle takes you to the extreme right of the current range. Double-clicking on the bottom edge jumps to the bottom of the range, and so forth.

There are two final navigation keyboard shortcuts which should be mentioned: Control-Home and Control-End. Hold down the Control key and press End to move to the bottom right of the current range. Hold down Control and press Home to move to the top left of the current range.

As well as navigating through the worksheets, all users of Excel make frequent use of the Ribbon. Excel offers a series of useful keyboard shortcuts when working with the Ribbon.

To access Ribbon keyboard shortcuts simply press the Alt key once. A series of numbers and letters is then displayed. These represent the shortcuts that you should type to activate that part of the Ribbon. For example, “W” is the shortcut key for activating the View Tab.

When you press “W” and the View Tab becomes active, another series of badges is displayed on each of the commands within the View Tab. For example, the “Arrange All” command has “A” as its keyboard shortcut, so simply typing “A” is equivalent to clicking the Arrange All button.

Once you have typed a letter to execute a command, the Ribbon loses focus and the shortcut letters and numbers disappear. To access Ribbon commands via the keyboard again, just press the Alt Key and the badges will reappear. This means that you never have to worry about learning keyboard shortcuts. All you have to remember is to press the Alt key on your keyboard and Excel will prompt you from then on.

About the Author:
The writer of this article is a developer and trainer with Macresource Computer Solutions, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel 2007 Classes in London and throughout the UK.
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