Figure on Using Figures (Captions) in Word Documents

Happy New Year!

I will start off the New Year with a Blog Post; it was on my list of New Year's Resolutions!

Recently I did some Access consulting and training for the Grand County, CO Sheriff's Office.  After the training I was asked to put together a User Manual (Word Document) to document what I had covered in a hands on training class.

I was specifically asked to 'include screen shots', ie figures (pictures) of the computer screen (or parts thereof) to visually show what someone would be looking at while working with, in this case, an Access database using Access.

I realized that there could be many "screen shots" (30 or more) and wanted to make my life easy in being able to manage these screen shots while creating the document.  Here was my chance to use "Insert Caption" in Word and use Figures.  As I figured (no pun intended) this could also be good subject matter to blog and resolve my Resolution...

First of all, how did I get my "screen shots"?  I used One Note which is a nice Microsoft Application (comes with certain Office Suites) that allows copying parts or all of a screen view and then being able to manage these "clips".  A "clip" from One Note can be copied and pasted into Word (or any other place with a paste command).  Of course the other option to capture a "screen shot" is simply to click the "Print Screen" button on your keyboard.  This copies the screen (the entire screen) to the clipboard.  The Print Screen image can then be pasted into Word (or any other place with a paste command).  Other than a "screen shot" one could use a picture (Insert, Picture).

So I begin creating my Word Document...type, type, type....then it I think, "hey, what a great place for a screen shot".  So I switch windows to the window that I want in a screen shot and either "Print Screen" or use One Note to capture a clip and copy.  I switch back to Word and Paste and end up with a copy of the screen shot or clip (picture).  Of course there are a lot of formatting options (like resize, wrapping options, crop, etc that could be pursued (which I won't go into in this discussion).

Once the screen shot (picture) is pasted into the document it could be setup as a Figure.  With the
picture selected, on the References Tab, Captions Command Group, click Insert Caption.  In the Captions dialog box you now have several options about the Caption.  First of all select the Label (Table, Figure, Picture, Equation) option, in this case I used "Figure".  Notice a Caption is automatically produced with the number being based on its order in the document, ie the first Figure will say "Figure 1" (or Table 1, etc).  Add any information to the caption such as "Screen shot of Access".  Choose Position (above or below pic) and click OK (yes, a few other options I didn't go into). 

You can now reference the Figure in the document.  To do such, click where you want a reference (such as "See Figure 1").  Type "See"  and then click Cross Reference in the Captions Command Group.  Choose the Reference Type (Figure) (a list of Figures will be in the bottom of the window as choices), choose the appropriate Figure to reference.  You can choose an Insert Reference To: option such as "Only Label and Number".  Click Insert and a reference will be generated like "See Figure 1", the "Figure 1" being a Field Code.  By default the reference is also a hyperlink, just Ctrl+Click the reference and you go to the Figure.

The Figure values will automatically be updated when adding a new Figure to the document.  If a Figure is added before Figure 1, the new Figure will be 1 and all others will be updated.  References in the document like "See Figure 1"can be updated by right clicking the Field Code (as mentioned above) and choose update.

So if you figure on figuring to use Figures (or Tables, Pictures, Equations), the Word feature "Insert Caption" could be quite handy.

Have fun in the meantime until next time,  Joel

Basic Concepts in PowerPoint

Hello Again:

I'm sure y'all thought that I had fallen off the face of the Internet earth or earth itself...or maybe worse, gone out of business!  Despite some challenging economic times, I'm still kick'n (a little of my Texan is coming out).

I don't believe, actually I'm sure, that I haven't blogged anything about PowerPoint, Microsoft's "presentation graphics" software.  So here's my chance...

As with other software, but particularly with PPT (yep, PowerPoint) many people tell me it is very easy to use (and therefore no need for a class) and quite "obvious".

I agree for the most part that PPT is easy to use, but there are several important concepts associated with PPT that may not be so obvious, overlooked, or not understood.  And there are quite a few important details associated with such features as the Masters and Animations (maybe talk about these items in later blogs).

For now though, I would like to address one important basic concept about PPT;  default layouts.

I guess I'd better start at the beginning...

The file created within PPT is called a "Presentation" (*.pptx) for 2007 and later.  The presentation is made of slides that contain various elements such as text boxes, pictures, tables, graphs, etc (objects).

Upon opening PPT a new, unsaved presentation (Presentation1) is created with a single slide.  This slide is considered the Title Slide and has a specific layout called "Title Slide" (what-da-ya-know).  This can be observed by clicking the Layout button in Slides group and seeing the selected layout in the list.

Each slide that is added to a presentation (after slide 1) by clicking the "New Slide" button in the Slides command group on the Home Ribbon has a default "layout" of "Title and Content".  Of course a layout other than "Title and Content" can be chosen.  As a matter of fact, after slide 2, a new slide added to the presentation adopts the layout of the previous slide.  If it hasn't been changed, the layout of all slides after slide 1 will be "Title and Content".

For those of you have "messed" with PPT enough, you have probably figured this out, otherwise you may now understand 'how it is' with slides and layouts.

Whew, I feel better now, I was all blogged up not having said anything in awhile.  Hope I got it all laid out on the layout.

Have fun in the meantime until next time, Joel

Working with Styles in Word

Hello Again:

I know, it's already next year relative to the last time I blogged.  Tempus fugit muy rapido! (Latinol??)

Having been teaching several Word Level 1 classes recently, I have been reminded of some of the great features (in my opinion) that have to do with working with Styles.  Hopefully you saw my blog in March 2011 which explains concepts of formatting including a Style.  Check out the blog to get the big picture..(http://pcapplicationsblog.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html).

What I teach in a Level 1 Word class (and much more!) is how to work with Styles using the Style "Task Pane".  In Word 2007/2010, there is a  Styles Command Group in the Home Ribbon.  As with many Command Groups, there is what is called a "Dialog Box Launcher", the small square button in the lower right hand corner of the Command Group with an arrow pointing to the lower right.  You may notice that many Command Groups have Dialog Box Launchers but not all.  Upon clicking the Dialog Box Launcher, a Dialog Box relative to the Command Group options will appear on the screen.  These Dialog Boxes are the same dialog boxes that have been used in many prior versions and what many people have seen before if they have worked with Word particularly 97-2003.

In the case of the Styles Dialog Box Launcher, it opens the Styles Task Pane (a window pane that "docks" on the right side of the Word window), not a dialog box per se.  It's this Styles Task Pane that can be very useful when working with Styles.

The list of Styles you see in the Styles Task Pane by is controlled by the Style Pane Options accessible through the link in the lower right of the Styles Task Pane, "Options..."; the default list is "Recommend" but consider the other options such as "In Use" or "All Styles".  The order of the list can be controlled as well, the default "Recommended" is set by Microsoft but notice you can choose "Alphabetical" as well as others.

Another significant option is the "Show Preview" check box near the bottom of the Styles Task Pane.  With it "on" the Styles in the list are shown with the actual formatting inherent with the Style name.

Now for some of the functionality.  I you simply click in text of your document or select text (of the same style) there will be an outline around the Style in the Styles Task Pane so you immediately know what the specific style for the select text is.  Furthermore, if you move over the selected style in the Styles Task Pane and click the down arrow button that appears, you have a list of options.  Notice you can see how many times the Style occurs in the document as well as select all of them if desired.  I use this a lot to change one format to another.  For example, let's say I have typed in several paragraphs in a document that are all "Normal" style (the defult style for all documents).  I decided to change all "Normal" styles to "Heading 1" style.  Using the concepts above, I could click on text that is "Normal" and see the "Normal" style selected in the Styles Task Pane.  I click the down arrow and choose "Select All # Instances" where # is the number in my document.  Then I click "Heading 1" Style in the Styles Task Pane to apply the new Style to my selected text.  There are actually other ways to find and replace text formatting but this is a very straight forward method.  Of course there are several other options as what can be done with the Styles Task Pane such as select and clear specific Styles, modify Styles and even create your own custom style and I encourge you to have a look at this.

So what's your Style??

Have fun in the meantime until next time, Joel