Open Office Writer Notes - Part A PDF

OPEN OFFICE WRITER NOTES - PART A SESSION 1 Writer is a word processor which you can use for anything from...

OPEN OFFICE WRITER NOTES - PART A SESSION 1 Writer is a word processor which you can use for anything from writing a quick letter to producing an entire book. Writer has everything you would expect from a modern, fully equipped word processor. It is simple enough for a quick memo, yet powerful enough to create complete books with contents, diagrams, indexes, etc. A word processor is a type of software application used for composing, editing, formatting , saving and printing documents electronically. Examples include MS-WORD, Open Office Writer, Word Perfect , Google docs etc. Word processing has changed the way documents are created and managed, replacing traditional typewriters and handwritten documents. It has significantly increased productivity and efficiency in various fields, including education, business, publishing, and personal communication. Advantages of a word processor over typewriters 1. Editing of text becomes easy. It produces error-free documents 2. Documents can be saved and later retrieved. It saves time 3. Documents can be saved using passwords. Provides security to the documents 4. Formatting of text like size, color, font, styles, alignment etc is possible. 5. Graphics can be easily inserted 6. It makes it easier for you to perform repetitive tasks using Templates 7. Spelling/Grammar can be checked, Thesaurus can be used easily 8. Mail Merge is possible 1 When you click on Open Office icon , you get a welcome screen Writer Interface : Following are the main parts of a Writer Document Writer is called a WYSIWYG program The full form of WYSIWYG is What You See Is What You Get. Writer is called a WYSIWYG program because it shows the document on screen, exactly the way it will show when you take a print out. 2 Creating a new document You can create a new, blank document in Writer in a number of ways: ​ Press the Control+N keys. ​ Use File > New > Text Document. ​ Click the New button on the main toolbar. Opening an already existing Document 1. Click File > Open (or press Control+O). 2. In the file chooser, you can reduce the list of files by selecting the type of file you are looking for. If you choose Text documents as the file type, you will only see documents the Writer understands. 3. Select the file you want, and then click Open. Saving a Document There are three ways to save a document in Writer: ​ Press Control+S. ​ Select File > Save. ​ Click the Save button on the main toolbar. Printing a Document Click File > Print to display the Print dialog box. On the Print dialog box, you can choose: Which printer to use (if more than one are installed on your system) and the properties of the printer—for example, orientation (portrait or landscape), which paper tray to use, and what paper size to print on. The properties available depend on the selected printer; consult the printer's documentation for details. 3 Which pages to print, how many copies to print, and in what order to print them. Use dashes to specify page ranges and commas or semicolons to separate ranges; for example, 1, 5, 11-14, 34-40. Selection is the highlighted part of a page or pages. Which items to print. Click the Options button to display the Printer Options dialog box. ​ Page Preview The normal page view in Writer shows what each page will look like when printed, but it shows only one page at a time. If you are designing a document to be printed double-sided, you may want to see what facing pages look like. Click File > Page Preview, or click the Page Preview icon. The Writer window changes to display the current page and the following page and the Page Preview toolbar replaces the Formatting toolbar. The Page Preview toolbar. To display left and right pages in their correct orientation (facing pages), click the Book Preview icon. To print the document in this page view, click the Print page view icon. To choose margins and other options for the printout, click the Print options page view icon to display the Print Options dialog box. Exporting to PDF OpenOffice.org can export documents to PDF (Portable Document Format). This industry-standard file format for file viewing is ideal for sending the file to someone else to view using Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewers. Quick Export to PDF Click the Export Directly as PDF icon to export the entire document using the default PDF settings. You are asked to enter the file name and location for the PDF file, but you do not get a chance to choose a page range or the print quality. Controlling PDF Content and Quality For more control over the content and quality of the resulting PDF, use File > Export as PDF. You are asked to enter the location and file name of the PDF to be created, and then the PDF Options dialog box opens. Here you can choose which pages to include in the PDF, the type of compression to use for images (which affects the quality of images in the PDF), and other options. 4  SESSION 2 Formatting Text Formatting text can give a presentation a consistent look and a dynamic feel. A text without any special formatting gives a monotonous appearance. OpenOffice Writer offers a number of choices for formatting such as Bold, Italics and defining the font, type, and font size. Bold, Italic or underlined are the most common types of text formatting. Almost all the formatting options are available under the Format menu. A font is a set of characters in a particular style. Changing the default appearance of the text like changing the font type , size, color, style etc., are called Text formatting. To make the text attractive and more appealing, various formatting like bold, italic and underline can be done by using the following commands The default font type is Times New Roman and the type of font can be changed by clicking on the Font Type icon The default size of font is 12 points which can be changed by clicking on the FontSize icon The default font color is black and the font color can be changed by clicking on the Font colour icon which shows the color palette from which the required color can be selected. 5  Text Alignment The text layout within a paragraph with respect to document margins is called text alignment. Steps to change the text alignment in a document are as follows: Step 1: Select the text that you want to modify and then choose the type of alignment Command Description Tab Align Text Aligns all the selected text to the left margin. Left Center Aligns all the selected text to an equal distance from the left and the right margins. Align Text Aligns all the selected text to the right margin. Right Justify Aligns all the selected text equal from both the sides and lines up equally to the left and the right margins. Traditionally many books, newsletters and newspapers use full-justification. Bullets and Numbering You can fully customize the appearance of a list, changing the bullet type or numbering for the entire list or for a single entry. All the changes can be made using the Bullets and Numbering dialog box, which is accessed by selecting Format > Bullets and Numbering or by clicking on the Bullets and Numbering icon on the text formatting toolbar. Selecting the entries For the entire list: 1. Select the entire list or click on the gray border of the text box so that just the green resizing handles are displayed. 2. Select Format > Bullets and Numbering or click on the Bullets and Numbering icon. 3. The Bullets and Numbering dialog box contains five tabs: Bullets, Numbering type, Graphics, Position, and Customize. ​ If a bulleted list is needed, select the desired bullet style from the six default styles available on the Bullets page. ​ If a graphics style is needed, select one from those available on the Graphics page. ​ If a numbered list is needed, select one of the 6 default numbering styles on the Numbering 6 type page.  The Bullets and Numbering dialog box For a single line in the list: 1. Click anywhere in the line to place the cursor in it. 2. Follow steps 2–4 of the previous instruction set. Line Spacing Follow the steps below to change the line spacing or add line space in OpenOffice Writer. Open OpenOffice Writer. On the right side of the Writer window, click the blue and green properties icon to show the document properties. Under Spacing, click the Line spacing button and select the desired spacing option. 7 Inserting Images in Writer When the image is in a file stored on the computer, you can insert it into a writer document using either of the following methods. Drag and drop 1. Open a file browser window and locate the image you want to insert. 2. Drag the image into the Writer document and drop it where you want it to appear. A faint vertical line marks where the image will be dropped. This method embeds (saves a copy of) the image file in the Writer document. To link the file instead of embedding it, hold down the Control+Shift keys while dragging the image. Insert Picture dialog 1. Click in the OOo document where you want the image to appear. 2. Choose Insert > Picture > From File from the menu bar. 3. On the Insert Picture dialog, navigate to the file to be inserted, select it, and click Open. At the bottom of the dialog is the Preview option. Select Preview to view a thumbnail of the selected image on the right, so you can verify that you have the correct file. Insert Picture Dialog. Inserting an Image using a Scanner If a scanner is connected to your computer, OOo can call the scanning application and insert the scanned item into the Writer document page as an image. To start this procedure, place the cursor where the graphic is to be inserted and select Insert > Picture > Scan > Select Source. Inserting an image from the clipboard Using the clipboard, you can copy images into an OOo document from another OOo document and from other programs. To do this: 1. Open both the source document and the target document. 2. In the source document, select the image to be copied. 3. Move the mouse pointer over the selected image and press Control+C to copy the image to the clipboard. 4. Switch to the target document. 5. Click to place the cursor where the graphic is to be inserted. 6. Press Control+V to insert the image. 8  Using a graphics program. Inserting an Image from the Gallery The Gallery provides a convenient way to group reusable objects such as graphics and sounds that you can insert into your documents. The Gallery is available in all components of OOo. It does not come with many graphics, but you can add your own pictures or find extensions containing more graphics. 1. To open the Gallery, click on the Gallery icon (located in the right side of the Standard toolbar) or choose Tools > Gallery from the menu bar. 2. Navigate through the Gallery to find the desired picture. 3. To insert the picture, click and drag it from the Gallery into the Writer document. You can also right-click on the picture and choose Insert > Copy. The figure below shows an example of an image dragged from the Gallery. Inserting an image from the Gallery. To close the Gallery, choose Tools > Gallery to uncheck the Gallery entry, or click on the Gallery icon again. 9 Inserting Borders to images 1. Insert an image to the document using any of the above methods 2. Right click on the image and select the Picture option. The following dialog box appears. Choose the appropriate border arrangement, style and color. 10