StudentEmpowered

Last Minute!

For some of us, yes the semester is finally over! but for some they're just nearing the end of the semester. Do you have last minute groupworks but don't have time for you and your groupmates to sit down and and collaborate? Well here are some tips for you to be able to collaborate with your group project.

1. Use Comments and Tracking Changes in your Word Document
• Do you know how hard it is to realize at the last minute that the original paragraph is better than the revision? Do you want to place your opinions on certain parts of the document? One of the useful features in Microsoft Office Word is Comments and Tracking Changes, here if you are passing along a word document you can track who changed what, who inserted what, who deleted what; helping all of you keep track all the changes in your group's working document. With comments you and your groupmates can give opinions on certain parts of the document so that you can collaborate as you pass along the Word document through e-mail or IM.
2. Use Windows Live Messenger to collaborate and offer assistance to your groupmate at need.
• Need a meeting at 12:16AM? Just drag your groupmates on a conversation window and type your concerns. Need a one on one with your groupmate? place a voice/video call and talk to one another. You realized that you need to help your groupmate with your presentation, let her initiate remote assistance from the conversation window.
3. Don't forget to cite your sources!
4. Don't forget your free pass for research work.
5. Impress your teacher!
• Use title pages headers and footers in Microsoft Office Word 2007 to create professional-looking documents.

Here are some of my tips for the end of the semester, I hope you'll finish this semester with flying colors. Have a nice summer once you're done with your academics.

Free Pass!

Research Paper Status : Page 5 of 10 [I'm not finished yet ] DONE AT LAST! Thanks Windows Live!

Just like me, you might be also doing some research papers towards the end of the semester. One of the most important companions when we are researching is the search engine. Today I found something interesting while doing my research. I used Windows Live Search as my search engine and I clicked a link leading to Encarta. Guess what, MSN Encarta gave me a free two hour pass. I'm really so happy about it since I can have access to the most reliable encyclopedia articles on the internet.

This is a text from the About Your Encarta Free Pass page:

Open the door to a world of knowledge! MSN Search is now offering two hours of free access to the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia whenever you click an Encartalink from MSN Search.

With thousands of articles, Microsoft Encarta is the premier online encyclopedia. Whether you need information for a school report, an upcoming trip, or special interest, you'll find a wealth of information in the Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia.

How to get your free pass

Your Microsoft Encarta free pass is available from any Encartalink on MSN Search. For example:

• Above the search box, click Encarta, or click the arrow next to the Searchbutton, and then click Encarta.
• Click any Encartalink on your results page within an hour of running your search.
• Click an Encartadirect answer link. Direct answers are identified by this symbol .

When your two-hour free pass expires, you can return to MSN Search, run another search or click an Encartalink. Your two-hour free pass is instantly renewable whenever you click an Encartalink from MSN Search.

A few things to keep in mind

• To use Microsoft Encarta online, cookies must be allowed in your browser. For information about allowing cookies, see your browser’s help.
• Your free pass includes access to the Microsoft Encarta online encyclopedia, but does not include other content and tools in Microsoft Encarta, such as homework tools, literature guides, and sidebars.
• With your free pass, you can view thumbnails of Microsoft Encarta illustrations, photographs, audio, and video but not full-size images. (Available in select markets.)
• Not all worldwide sites for Microsoft Encarta have a free pass.
• This is a limited time offer and is subject to change at any time.

It's really a great companion with the 2007 Microsoft Office.

Another great companion for your research is Windows Live Search Academic (http://academic.live.com). This gives you access to academic the title, abstract and authors of journals and researches made by very reliable sources around the world.

Hope this one helps, I need to get back to my paper! (and wish me luck for my finals!)

Customizing the Quick Access Toolbar (The way you want it)

By default, the Quick Access Toolbar contains these items: File, Undo and Redo. Have you thought of customizing the Quick Access Toolbar? Well I’ve seen some people who placed almost every command available in Microsoft Office Word 2007 in the quick access toolbar. But have you thought of customizing the quick access toolbar depending on the document you’re working on?

Let’s say as a student you work on the following types of documents, in which each of them has a special need:

·         Research Papers

o   Citations and Bibliography

o   Captions

o   Footnotes

o   Cover Pages

o   Smart Art

·         Letters

o   Mail Merge

o   Envelopes

·         Physics Laboratory Report

o   Citations and Bibliography

o   Equations

How do you customize the quick access toolbar to cater these needs?

First and foremost, run Microsoft® Office Word 2007 and save the document as a template. So here let’s do the Research papers first, so let’s save it as research papers.dotx. After saving the document as template customize the Quick Access Toolbar by right-clicking the quick access toolbar and selecting “Customize Quick Access Toolbar”.

In the pull down menu under Customize Quick Access Toolbar, select your working document (e.g. For Research Papers) and add commands which you want to add to the quick access toolbar for the specific document.

Since we want to add commands from the reference tab to the quick access toolbar so in the pull down menu that is named popular commands, select References Tab and add everything you want to add to the current document’s quick access toolbar.

After adding all the commands, click ok and save the document by clicking the save button on the quick access toolbar.

Now, close Microsoft® Office Word and go to your documents folder and double click your newly made template. Notice that the customizations you made, now you have a different set of quick access toolbar commands. Create another template using the steps above and there you go you now have different document templates with different sets of commands in the quick access toolbar.

Citations and Bibliography made Easy

Is Microsoft® Office Word 2007 installed on your computer? Are you working on your term paper, final paper or thesis? If you say yes to both of my questions you’re lucky indeed.

Do you remember the time when you have to memorize how to cite sources or write bibliographies using the MLA (Modern Language Association) or APA (American Psychological Association) documentation formats? Plus the pain of manually typing, and formatting each entry in the bibliography only to find out that you used the wrong format for writing the bibliography of an article in a news paper after you submitted your work.

No need to worry, here’s Microsoft® Office Word 2007 to the rescue. One of the features I loved the most with this new version of Word is its ability to manage my sources, insert citations and bibliographies depending on the documentation format I’m using.

Let’s say you have the following source:

·         A book entitled Term Paper Success with the References Tab written by Juan Dela Cruz and published by JDC Publishing in Manila on the year 2007.

Now you need to properly cite the source and create bibliography entries for it. What should you do?

1.       In Microsoft® Office Word 2007, click the References Tab in the Ribbon.

2.       Select the Style under the Citations & Bibliography group, depending on the documentation format that you are using. For this purpose we’ll be using APA.

3.       Click Manage Sources.

4.       In the Manage Sources window click new.

5.       In the Create Source window select the type of source and fill-up the fields required.

6.       After filling up all the fields click “ok” and click “close”.

Now you have placed your source in the master and current lists. Now it’s time to insert a citation. In the Citations & Bibliography group in the References Tab click insert citation and select the source that you wish to cite.

To insert the bibliography, click Bibliography and select a style form the gallery.

Look how easy it is to cite and document your sources with Microsoft® Office Word 2007, now you have more time focusing on how to make the best paper ever than figuring out on how to document your sources.

Stack ‘em, Group ‘em and Filter ‘em

How many items does your documents folder have? Currently my notebook computer has 995 files in 98 folders inside the documents folder alone. If you think that’s many think again, my desktop computer on the other hand contains thousands, or even millions of files, I can still retrieve the files I’m working on when I was in third year high school.

Going back to my notebook computer, most of these 995 files are just archived work; they might be a paper that I’ve submitted a few months ago for my film class or some might just be a work that I would like to show to my classmates. Only a small percentage of these 995 files are the files that I’m currently working on.

What should I do if I only wanted to see the files that I’ve been working on from last week until today? Can I regroup these files depending on the tags they have?

In Microsoft Windows Vista, organizing files has been made easier!

Stacks

If you have hundreds of files on your computer and it stays on one folder, after a while you will realize that you want to organize them into folders then after some time you would want to organize them in a different way. But do you really have time to organize them into folders?

In the previous post, I discussed Search Folders wherein it helps you organize your files by grouping them according to your search query. Stacks on the other hand organizes your files depending on the attribute they have (e.g. File Name, Date Modified, File Type, Author, etc.).

Let’s say that for the past six months, you are receiving documents from the following people:

·         John Doe

·         Juan Dela Cruz

·         Uncle Sam

And one day, you would want to stack them according to the author. In previous versions of Microsoft® Windows what you will do is to create a folder for each of these people. Now with Microsoft® Windows Vista™ all you need to do is to click the pull down arrow beside the “Authors” column header and click “Stack by Authors”. Automatically based on the author property of each document, they will be grouped into stacks and you will see icons with authors as their labels.

Aside from authors you can also do this with Date Modified, File Type and any column available in Windows Explorer.

Groups

This time let us change the scenario; this time around let’s say that you would want your files to be grouped depending on the size of each file.

Grouping files is actually the same as Stacking, except that you have to click “Group” rather than “Stack by...” What I really love about grouping files is that I have the ability to hide some of the groups so that I can focus on the files I need to place my attention on.

Filtering

Let’s say you are working on something, and let’s say you categorized your documents like this.

Of course the only thing that you would like to see is the current documents that you are working on. If you have tens of thousands of files on your documents folder how can you tell the explorer window to show your current documents?

Step 1: Tell the explorer window not to show your archived documents, but to show documents that you modified within the past few weeks.

Highlight the “Date Modified” column and click the arrow and place a check mark on the following:

1.       Today

2.       Earlier this Week and

3.       Last week

Step 2: Eliminate all other files, except Word Documents, Visio Drawings and Excel Spreadsheet.

Highlight the “Type” column and click the arrow and place a check mark on the following:

1.       Microsoft Word Document

2.       Visio Drawing

3.       Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet

And viola, now the only thing that you should see on your screen should be the documents that you need to focus on.

Organizing files in Windows Vista™ has been made easier and better. Now that you have organized your files, you can now focus on the tasks that you need to accomplish and be an empowered student.

What’s next?

It’s March and the school year nears to an end. Want to finish the school year with flying colours? Find out how to create great reports, spreadsheets and presentations for school with the 2007 Microsoft Office System. That’s next on student empowered.