StudentEmpowered

Blogging with Microsoft Word

For us students, blogging is a form of self-expression. It is where we write our daily encounters with the world and share it to our friends. When I first started blogging, the one thing I hate about the activity is the editor, for me writing on an editor embedded on a web page is too cumbersome and sometimes you don't get the formatting that you really want.

Do you know that you can actually use Microsoft Word 2007 in writing an entry to your blog? Yes you can and it's just as easy as creating a new document.

To begin writing a blog entries in Microsoft Word 2007 click the Office Button and click new. On the New Document Window double-click the New Blog Post icon. After that you'll see a new document in draft view that has two parts, one for the title and another one for the body of your blog entry. Noticeably instead of getting the default tabs in the ribbon you'll only get two, the Blog Post tab which contains commands for creating your blog entry and the Insert Tab.

Before you begin

But before you write your blog entry you need to tell Microsoft Word details about your Blog Provider. To do this click Manage Accounts in the Blog Post tab of the ribbon. A window will appear entitled Blog Accounts click the New button. A wizard will appear and it will ask you for your Blog provider, select your provider from the list. Blog provider not listed? Don't worry just select other and figure out if your blog provider supports the Atom or MetaWebLog API (you will be able to get this information from your blog provider's help system). Once you're done Word will ask you about picture options, this is where you store the pictures you have inserted on your blog post fill it up if necessary.

Going Back to Blog Writing

In the Blog Post tab of the ribbon you will notice some new commands related to blogging. These are Publish, Home Page, Insert Category, Open Existing and Manage Accounts. Here's an explanation of what these are:

1. Publish - when clicked it automatically publishes your blog post to your blog service provider. If you will click the arrow you'll see an option of actually publishing your entry or publish it as draft.
2. Home Page - when clicked it opens a browser window and directs you to the home page of the active blog account that you are currently working on.
3. Insert Category - similar to tags.
4. Open Existing - when clicked it retrieves a list of the blog entries that you have in your blog then it allows you to open and edit them.
5. Manage Accounts - this is where you manage your blog accounts.

This is it for Blogging with Microsoft Word, I hope that you learned something new (and cool) from this blog post, I know that most of use draft our ideas in a notebook, in my next blog post I will discuss how you can plan, organize and draft your blog entry ideas before sending them to Microsoft Word for finalization and posting.

Happy Blogging!

Microsoft Office OneNote 2007

Have you clicked that OneNote icon on your computer? Are you still taking down class notes using Microsoft Word or notepad? For those of you students that have notebook computers and have OneNote installed I believe it's time that we keep our spiral notebooks and use OneNote.

Microsoft Office OneNote is software that enables you to gather and organize your notes as well as to share them to your classmates. If you are new to OneNote, let's be familiar with some of the things in OneNote.

How do I use OneNote?

Basically if you are going to take down notes, all you need to do is to click anywhere within a page where you would want to insert text then format the text as you would do in other Office applications. If you have a tablet PC you can directly write onto the page.

If you want to add shapes onto your page click the drawing toolbar icon on the standard toolbar and you'll see the drawing toolbar at the bottom of the OneNote window. If you need to tabulate data, you can also insert a table from the standard toolbar of OneNote.

Do you have an assignment? Do you have Microsoft Outlook 2007 installed? Click the "Task" button on the standard toolbar to create tasks from Microsoft OneNote to Microsoft Outlook. Also try to explore the tag command in the standard toolbar.

If you need to save your notes just close OneNote, seriously. OneNote automatically saves your notes so no need to worry for lost notes.

This is it, some introduction for OneNote here at StudentEmpowered, we'll get to know about one note as the weeks towards the opening of the new school year go by. For the mean time enjoy your summer vacation!

How do I insert a classic WordArt in PowerPoint 2007?

PowerPoint 2007 offers new ways of working with WordArt, now you add different effects, different styles and other things; However I believe that some of you may be still attached to the WordArt styles back in the previous versions of Microsoft PowerPoint and you tried looking it up in PowerPoint 2007 and left wondering how do I insert a classic WordArt in PowerPoint 2007.

The Copy-Paste Method (Simple)

Do you know that the classic WordArt styles are still available in Word 2007? Yes, classic WordArt styles are still available in Word 2007. This method involves creating a WordArt in Microsoft Word 2007 copying and pasting it to PowerPoint 2007.

The Insert Object Method (A Bit Complicated)

Go to the Insert tab of the ribbon and click insert. Then from the lists of objects select Microsoft Office Word Document. From there you'll get a familiar Word 2007 User Interface, insert the WordArt then click outside the Microsoft Word Document object to return to Microsoft PowerPoint.

Single Display vs. Mirrored Display vs. Dual Display

Some schools have started their summer term, I wish you luck to all those who are taking their summer term this school year.

One component of the student life is doing presentations. It is when a student or a group of students are given a chance to impart what they have learned to other students on a specific topic in a particular subject. One of my first encounters with presentations is back in High School; it was a time when I need to bring either the system unit (since my presentation won't run well on the school's computers) or the whole desktop to school (if there were no LCD projectors available).

When one is doing a presentation who is he talking to? Of course not the projected image on the screen but to his audiences. This is one of the drawbacks of using single display (the projected image on the screen) speakers tend to look at the screen behind them to see where they are, where they are going next, and etc.

In college, most students have notebook computers with them and they use it to do presentations. Do you know that in most notebooks pressing FN+F7 (well that one is the key to switch displays on my notebook) will initiate a mirrored display? Mirrored displays are better than that of the single display you see what your audiences see, Mirrored displays are good if you are making demos but for me it is not effective because some of you have a particular inclination of holding index cards for your notes and since you have index cards you can't do hand gestures, etc.

This is where the dual display comes in.

A dual display setup allows you to be able to view which current slide you are in your presentation, as well as your notes that you have typed earlier during the course of preparing the slides for your presentation. In this case you don't need those index cards anymore.

Another thing that is nice about a dual display setup for presentations is that it allows you to take advantage of the presenter view in Microsoft PowerPoint 2002 and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 and the improved presenter view in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007.

One of the improvements of the presenter view in this new version of Microsoft PowerPoint is that the layout has been changed, some new tools such as the highlighter and pen has been added to the presenter view. A timer has been in place for you to be able to keep track how much time have you spent for your presentation. To be able to access the presenter view in Microsoft PowerPoint 2007:

1. Go to the Slide Show tab of the Ribbon
2. Make sure that you have setup the second monitor earlier. Select that LCD Projector on the Show Presentation on drop down menu.
3. Check the Use Presenter View check box.

Now with the dual monitor setup and with the presenter view, you will be able to make your presentations with flying colours.

Knowledge Base Article: KB555375

Sometimes when we hear things about the Microsoft Knowledge Base the first thing that comes into our mind is it is a technical resource where we can find technical information about Microsoft Products. I was browsing the Office Discussion Groups in Microsoft Office Online while I was preparing for tonight's StudentEmpowered post and I came across with this specific knowledge base article which is really interesting and I would like to share it with you my readers. For those who are new to the Microsoft Philippines Community Forums especially the students this one would be a really great resource.

KB555375 – How to ask a question

Creating your own Building Blocks

Have you explored Microsoft® Office Word 2007? Your exploration is not complete until you have experimented adding cover pages to your document, adding those nice looking headers and footers. Cover pages, headers and footers are just some of the Building Blocks in Microsoft® Office Word 2007.

Your school or professor may have a preferred style for papers, case studies or thesis that you should follow as a student. Creating a Building Block for the Cover Page, Header and Footer that follows the requirement of your professor or school can help you save a lot of time.

In this scenario we will be creating a simple Building Block for the Cover Page, Header and Footer. Examples used in this article will be based on the examples in the Online Writing Lab – American Psychological Association (APA) Style Workshop which can be located here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/apa/index.html

The Title / Cover Page

In our reference the title consists of the following elements:

1. Running Head
2. Title
3. Author
4. University / Company / Organization

The title, author and company fields are built-in to Microsoft Office Word. So we have to create a field for the Running Head, to create one we have to go to the developer tab then click on the "Rich Text" control on the upper left corner of the Controls Group. After Inserting Click "Properties" on the Controls group then enter "Running Head" on the Title and Tag textboxes of the Content Control Properties Window, after doing so click "ok". We add the running head to the Quick Parts Gallery by selecting the field and clicking the "Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery" command under Quick Parts in the Insert Tab.

Now we have the running head field, it's time to add the other fields. These other fields can be located in Quick Parts > Document Property under the Insert Tab.

After inserting all the fields to your document, format them to follow the APA format for Title Pages or format as desired. After doing so, select all the text in the page by pressing CTRL+A go to the Insert Tab of the Ribbon and click Cover Page and click "Save Selection to Cover Page Gallery". You will be asked to fill-in some details about the cover page and there you go you now have your APA Title Page.

Header

Double click the header portion of the document, insert the "Running Head" from the Quick Parts Gallery, and insert the page number by clicking the first gallery object that you see under Page Number > Current Position of the Header & Footer Tools Contextual Tab. Once done select the header by pressing CTRL+A then click "Header > Save Selection to Header Gallery", do as instructed just as you did in the Title / Cover Page. And there you go you now have your header for APA.

Windows Vista and 2007 Office Community Launch

We are inviting everyone to attend the Windows Vista and 2007 Office Community Launch organized by the Philippine Windows Users Group (PHIWUG). It will be on Saturday, 14 April 2007 at the Microsoft Philippines Office in Makati.

This is open to all professionals and students alike.

Event Agenda (Summary)

Morning

1. Launch Keynote
• Adrian Rodriguez
• Jay Paloma
• Jasper Jugan (c/o Microsoft)
2. Windows Vista and 2007 Office Launch
• Windows Vista General Features (Adrian Rodriguez)
• Windows Vista Infrastructure Management/Security (Jay Paloma)
• Introducing the new Microsoft Office (Chester Coronel)

Lunch (12:00 NN - 1:00 PM)

Afternoon

1. Development Talk (John Patrick Oliveros)

For more information about the event as well as to register for this upcoming event please click the following link: http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=117619

See you there!

Where did I go wrong?

What did I do to make my numbers wrong completely?

If you are a student who uses Microsoft® Office Excel extensively in school for your science laboratory class or for your other classes that demand intense computations, I know that there is a point in time that everything seems incorrect and you asked yourself, "Where did I go wrong?" The most obvious thing that a student would do is to check each cell and try to take a look if the formula is correct. However, that method of checking your spreadsheet is very time consuming. Is there an easier way to check for errors?

The good news is that Microsoft® Office Excel 2007 through the new User Interface offers tools to help you answer the question "Where did I go wrong?" These tools can be found on the "Formula Auditing Group" under the "Formulas" tab of the Ribbon. We can see that we have the following commands available:

1. Trace Precedents – answers the question "which cells does this cell depend upon?"
2. Trace Dependents – answers the question "which cells depend on this cell?"
3. Remove Arrows – clears the arrows made by Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents
4. Show Formulas – shows the formula used instead of the value, answers the question "is my formula correct?"
5. Error Checking – acts like the spell checker, helps you with the common errors in formulas
6. Evaluate Formula – shows the calculation steps for the selected cell

So how do you use these commands?

For Trace Precedents and Trace Dependents select the cell which you want to analyze and click either the Trace Precedents or Trace Dependents command. Upon clicking you'll be seeing arrows from pointing to and from the selected cell. Same with the Show Formulas command, just select the cell and click the command, you'll be seeing the formula instead of the value itself.

In Error Checking, just like the spell checker click the command and if there is any error in the spreadsheet you will be presented with options for you to be able to correct the error. You can either ask Excel to show the calculation steps for you to be able to realize that the formula is erroneous or you can also correct the formula in the formula bar yourself.

Evaluate Formula shows the calculation steps for the selected cell. Select the cell in which you would want to review the calculation steps. In the 'evaluate formula' window, click 'evaluate' to show the result of the formula or click step-in to get deeper into the underlined portion of the formula.

You can also use a "Watch"

A watch helps you observe what's happening on a specific portion of your excel spreadsheet.

To add a watch click on Watch Window under the Formulas tab of the ribbon. Select the cell/s in which you want to add a watch, and then click Add Watch on the Watch Window. In the watch window you'll see the specific cell, value and formula used.

There you go, no more checking-individual-cells moment for you. You can now work smarter with these commands under the Formula Auditing group under the Formulas tab of Excel.