2.4 MICROSOFT OFFICE

 

2.4  MICROSOFT OFFICE

2.4.1  Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is probably the most commonly used item in the Office series. Well, the fact is that in Small Business as well as Corporations, writing letters is always done with Microsoft Word, that is, every secretary of the world should at least know how to use Microsoft Word to be employed. Word is also used widely by customers, which probably bought the Office pack just for it. Once again Microsoft has aimed to get more people use Microsoft Word and make it easier for them to use. The actual look of Microsoft Word has changed much and is intended to be fully integrated with Windows Whistler. The colour of the background of the toolbars is light grey and when you move your mouse over the toolbars, it becomes a light blue colour with a light grey vertical line on the whole menu length. Toolbars are now absolutely flat and just like in Microsoft Word 2000 you can choose to hide or show buttons by clicking directly on the arrow to check or uncheck commands you don't want to use. Hopefully these cosmetic enhancements are not all since there are many changes under the hood. A lot of Smart tags improvements have been used throughout this Suite. There are AutoCorrect Option Smart tags, which provide an easy mechanism for you to control and modify automatic behaviour that takes place within Word. You can undo an automatic correction, choose to not have that correction take place in the future, or access the AutoCorrect Options dialog box. There is also the Name, Address and date smart tag which now will identify a name or address being written in the same way as at the moment Office recognizes an e-mail or URL address being written.

Another new feature Office 10 is the inclusion of Speech. You can dictate texts, make direct formatting changes, and navigate menus using speech and voice commands. Microsoft at last offers its lazy customers a way to write letters or documents without typing on the keyboard (for those of you who still don't know where the letter K is on the keyboard you should consider using speech recognition right now). At the moment speech is currently available for U.S. English, Simplified Chinese and Japanese and has some compatibility issues with some sound cards. As well as the speech function though there is also the ability to translate words in their document (Available languages are determined by language dictionaries that are installed) or to access a translation service on the Web. That is very useful for workers who have to produce documents in different language. This is service provides entire document translation as well as additional languages.

To help out with the productivity of office, Microsoft has added a few more Document Formatting features to make things easier. One of these features is Reveal Formatting where at any point during the document you can see the current font, paragraph, spacing, image, table properties, and more. Also you can compare the formatting of two different sections of a document and apply the formatting of one to the other. As well as this you can open the Styles and Formatting Task Pane, which gives you the ability to see the formatting in use in their document (both styled and direct formatting), recently used formatting, and all the available styles. You can select all text in the document with the same style or direct formatting, and easily apply a new format or style all at once. You will benefit by being able to easily reuse formatting within their document without needing to create styles. New to Word 10 is a small fancy feature that lets you change line spacing direct1y from the main toolbar by pushing a small button. Creating tables is always easy and you can obviously draw tables of your own by simply using the outstanding table drawing feature.

One feature I am really impressed with is the Multi-Selection feature! You've dreamt about it, Microsoft did it! This feature lets you easily select multiple areas of a document at once by merely using your mouse cursor with the Ctrl key of your keyboard, thereby saving time when formatting the document. Additionally, with the Find feature, you can simultaneously select similarly formatted text and reformat it. The double click and type feature is still present in Word 10 so you can double click in any area of your blank page and smartt typing right away without worrying to push several times the enter and space key to reach this area! Just like in Microsoft Word 2000 fonts are previewed directly in the font list so you know what your text will look like. Thanks to the IntelliSense technology, when you're typing the beginning of a font name in the list, Word will guess the end by showing the font name you are looking to use.

Office 2000 introduced a long awaited enhancement named the Office clipboard where users can store up to 12 parts of text, pictures, etc. Microsoft Office 10 comes with super Office clipboards that can store up to 24 different scraps of selections. But if it wasn't enough in Word (like in the other Office 10 applications) you can choose to activate the clipboard view pane that will list the stuff you put in and you'll even be able to preview text, pictures or graphs. So inserting the paste is not a nightmare anymore. Security for documents has also been rethought so users can digitally sign their documents to ensure that unauthorized persons can't modify them.

A new feature called “send for review”, appears in Word and other Office application. And this lets users diffuse a document defining each recipient role. If you choose to send a document for approval this will enable following and modifying tools. When recipients send back their documents, the author can choose to include into the find document each modification one after the other so he can keep total control over it. As usual users can move, delete, replace their texts directly from the print preview window, they don't lose time switching from the print preview to the edit mode to make the text appear as they want.

One thing that Microsoft has listened to and acted upon is Reliability and Data Recovery. There is nothing worse than working on a document and just as you get to the end you have your computer crash and lose all the information. To help fight against this there is now a Document Recovery option where Word 10 gives you the option of saving their current files at the time an error occurs in an application. As a result, you spend less time recreating their documents. But that's not all since Word 10 also makes automatic backups of the file you're working on. If a fatal error occurred and word can't offer you to save it, after you'll have restarted your computer when you run Word 10 again, a small pane1 will appear on the left of the application showing the last file you were working on when the crash occurred. If you click on it, it'll instantly be opened and you'll be glad to see everything has been saved! Office related crashes are now smarter since a nice dialog box says you have encountered a crash and due to the Application Error Reporting it offers you to get back a report of the error to Microsoft or the user's corporate IT department. This gives Microsoft (or organizations) the data needed to further diagnose and correct these errors, and provide users with direct access to workarounds or other information on the error. Application and Document Recovery provides a safer method for shutting down Word if it is not responding. Users can choose to shut down while initiating recovery of the document. They can report the problem to Microsoft or their corporate IT department at the same time. Repair and Extract is where Word can automatically invoke this corrupt-document repair and recovery functionality in the event of an error or a failure to load a file. Users can invoke this functionality by choosing Open and Repair from the File Open dialog box.

Overall Microsoft Word has been widely improved upon to provide users higher productivity, and a good-looking environment to work in and even tighter integration.

2.4.2  Microsoft Excel 2000/XP

1. What is Microsoft Excel 2000/XP

Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet program. There are two versions that are covered in this part, Excel 2000 and Excel XP for our purposes they behave the same and will give the same screen views. The function of a spreadsheet is to store and manipulate data, in particular numerical data. Once this is done, this data can be output in various useful forms such as tables and graphs. Though originally made for business, spreadsheets are widely used in scientific and engineering applications, too.

2. Why is spreadsheeting important to you

As computer programs go, spreadsheets are not particularly fast number cruncher, and the programming you can do with them tends to be fairly elementary. However, when dealing with computers a large part of your time is spent not on crunching numbers or programming, but on formatting you output. This is where spreadsheets work particularly well. They are capable of taking your data, performing mathematical manipulations, and making a clear presentation of the data in graphical form. Thus, they provide a convenient method for analyzing all types of data (financial, inventory, laboratory, etc.) and producing high quality graphics. In addition, if you desire, you are able to make a “quick and dirty” graph to check on the data input, the quality of data, and the strength of your mathematical relationship. “Quick and Dirty”: I like that in a program.

You will find that spreadsheets are often used in the Navy. As a JO, you might find that you are called upon to use a spreadsheet for training records, inventories or as a division officer's notebook. Those of you who are exploring engineering careers might like to know that a LCDR Italked to from the EWS Division related to me the results of a survey that he pedonned. 90 percent of engineers surveyed chose spreadsheet programs as the number one program they use (ahead of word processors).

3. Starting the Program

The first step in learning to use your new software is to start (or in computer parlance : launch) the Excel Program. You launch Excel by selecting the Windows Start button and this will bring up a set of choices in a menu. Drag your cursor over Programs. Another menu will appear to the right. Drag your cursor over to Microsoft Excel and SELECT on it, you will launch Excel.

As each file made by Excel has the extension .xls. For example, in Book1.xls, we will describe files as “xls file”.

The initial xls window may not fill your whole screen. This size is very usefull if you want to use more than one application simultaneously (a Web Browser). However, it is often desirable to have a larger working window (also called working environment) in Microsoft Excel.

The size of the working window is controlled by two sets of three small buttons on the top right of the window (circled with red and yellow). The ones on top (the Title Bar) control the whole Microsoft Excel program environment and the ones on the line that starts on the far left with File (the Menu Bar) control the environment of the particular xls file. If you have more than one file up at a time, each will have these three buttons on their own File Titile Bar.

The left-most looks like an underline symbol. If you click on the box, the program/file gets small. This is called minimizing. From the Title Bar, the underline symbol minimizes the program to the Task Bar on the bottom of the screen. The name of the task always resides there even while the program is large. You will see it as the name of the program (Microsoft Excel) and a shortened version of the file name. When minimized, by selecting this task, it will return the xls back to its previous size. This is called maximizing. Try minimizing, then maximizing the program.

If you minimize the file by selecting the underline on the second line (or the File Title Bar), this minimizes the file to a Task Bar within the Microsoft Excel program, this time as just a shortened version of the file name. Try minimizing, then maximizing the file.

The center symbol is either a square with a heavy line on the top of the box or two smaller overlapping versions of this box. If the single box shows selecting it will make the environment larger. If the two boxes show selecting it will make the environment smaller. It is a toggle; give it a try back and forth.

If you were to select the “X” on the right, the program would close. It is unnecessary to try this one right now. If your file has been changed since it was last saved, it will ask you if you wish to save the changes. If you have saved it or have not done anything to the file, it will close the program immediately.

4. Entering Information

The following is data from an experiment performed to examine how the pressure of an automobile tire changes as a function of the temperature of the tire, see Table 2-1.

Table 2-1  Example

 

Each spreadsheet program creates a “Book” which is made of a number of “Sheets”. The default has Sheet 1~Sheet 3 available. You will be inputting data into what are called cells. Cells are addresses for information. In a spreadsheet book these addresses are defined by three parameters: the page, the column and the row. When you open a new spreadsheet, it will default to Sheet 1, cell column A, cell row 1. In the image above, the cell A1 is boxed and is identified by its address just above the spreadsheet on the left. The book is on Sheet 1(you can see the button Sheet1 highlighted on the bottom). There is a spreadsheet on each of the three sheets. Each spreadsheet has 256 Columns and 65536 rows. Clearly, we do not expect you to use all of these at once.

In these exercises, we will be working on only Sheet 1. Assume that all cell addresses refer to this page. First, we will create labels in order to make your spreadsheet easy to interpret. SELECT the appropriate cell using your mouse and type in the labels.

If you are within a cell, if you just start typing, the label will appear in the cell. It will not record what you type until you tell it you are done. You can do this by selecting another cell with your mouse; Hitting the “Enter” key on your keyboard. It will record what you have typed, and will move you to the cell just below in the same column; Hitting an arrow key will record and move you to the corresponding active cell. If you type “Type pressure vs Temperature” into cell A1 then hit the “Enter” key, you will be all ready to type “Pressure (psi)” into cell A2.

Cell Label:

·    A1: Tire Pressure vs. Temperature.

·    A2: Pressure (psi).

·    D2: Temperature (degrees Fahrenheit).

Note that some labels appear to extend over more than one cell. Navigate to cell B1 by selecting it with your mouse or using the arrows on yor keyboard. Try entering your alfa code into B1. You will notice two things: the leading zero does not show, and the remaining digits overwrite the A1 entry in the spreadsheet area. The first of these shows the difference between the idea of a label and a value. When you typed in your alfa, for example: 034567, you may have expected to see, 034567, but you got 34567. In a numerical value (shortened to value in spreadsheet lingo), the leading zeros have function and are left out. However, anything that can be typed can be part of a label, even numbers. Therefore, if you make your alfa code a label by putting an apostrophe (') as the leading character, now, the leading zero will show.

You may wonder if your typing into cell B1 has erased some of cell A1. Arrow over to A1. You will notice that the whole text of the label shows again. You never lost it. It was just hidden on the spreadsheet window by cell B1. If you move back to B1 and press the Delete key, the alfa code will be removed. As cell B1 is again empty, the full contents of cell A1 will reappear in the window.

Place the pressure data in the A Column starting at cell A3. Remember, you can record the data and move down, both by the “Enter” key. Place the temperature data in the D column starting at cell D3.

5. Formatting

Note that the trailing zeros have been dropped from some of the data entries. In order to show these zeros you will need to change the numeric format of the data blocks.

（1）Highlight the block of data from A3 to A8 by placing the mouse cursor on A3. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor down to A8. The block of data should now be highlighted.

（2）Hold your cursor over the highlighted block and click the RIGHT mouse button. A menu should appear. This is the Object Menu. Contained in this menu is 'Format Cells'. Select this. The window that pops up is titled Format Cells. Since you have highlighted the set of cells from A3 to A8, inclusive on sheet 1,the changes you make will only affect these cells.

（3）The Format Cells window has six folders with a menu on each. Each of the folders is labeled with a tab at the top. Number is the top folder. In this folder there is a list of categories. select “Number” from this list. This will allow you to set the number of decimal places in your data. You will notice in the upper right of the Sample preview box is 32.00. We wish to have one place after the decimal, so change the value of decimal places to1 in the box that comes up towards the top on the right. This can be done by typing 1 in or hitting the down arrow to get to 1. The preview box should show display 32.0.

（4）Select the OK button on the Format Cellsmenu to return to the main spreadsheet. The entries 32.0 and 36.0 are now properly displayed. Any value which is entered into this block will be displayed with one digit beyond the decimal point. This may seem an esoteric example in changing a format, but for a chemist, we are now satisfied that all of our pressures have the same number of significant figures after the decimal point.

6. Saving a Spreadsheet

Select the third icon from the left on the Toolbar (it is supposed to look like a floppy disk). If you prefer, SELECT File on the Menu Bar and then choose Save As from the menu. You will arrive at the same menu if you choose the Save icon, or go through the File menu. Now, choose the Save As commands.

At the top it (most likely) will have Save File. SELECT the box on the left labeled Desktop. Then SELECT the icon on the top (a yellow folder). This allows you to create a new folder. At the top give the folder the name Chem. Then at the bottom of this window enter the file name as “tutor1” and SELECT Save. This is the working title for your spreadsheet book. Always change this title to something that will help you to remember what you were working on.

Note that the Notebook Title Bar (at the top of the Microsoft Excel window) indicates the filename doing with the .xls extension that identifies it as a Excel file.

7. Finding Your File

If you have used the file recently, the quickest way to retrieve it is to go through Documents. However, Windows will not allow too many files to accumulate in Documents, and will purge address after a while. What “a while” means is dependent upon usage.

Select the Windows Start icon. Select Documents and you should find tutor1.

At the top left of the Windows environment is an icon titled My Computer. If you Double-click this (selecting twice the same icon in quick succession) you will find, among others, (C:). You will find the folder Chem in the window that comes up and double-clicking on it will reveal the contents. You should find tutor1.

A find method of finding your file is to go to Windows Start. Go up to Programs over to Windows Explorer, within (C:), you will find the folder Chem in the left-hand window. Double-clicking Chem will bring up in the right-hand window that directory's contents. You should find tutor1.

8. Closing and Opening a File

There are two common methods to close a file. In the course of closing the program, any file you have open will be closed. Or you can close a file without closing the program. These two actions are represented by the two X's in the upper right corner. The X in the very top right (in the Title Bar) will close the program Microsoft Excel. If you have not saved the file since you have made any changes, it will ask you if you wish to save the file. The other X (in the Menu Bar or the File Title Bar) will close the file, but not the program. It will prompt you to save the file you have been working on.

Opening your file uses the same methods as finding the file. We can do this because Windows recognizes that any file with the extension .xls is a Microsoft Excel file. If we choose an .xls file from Documents. My Computer or Windows Explorer, Windows will recognize that it is associated with Microsoft Excel. It will launch the program while opening the file.

9. Making a Chart (a.k.a.Graph) in Microsoft Excel

For those of you who have made graphs in spreadsheets, making a graph in Microsoft Excel is both easier and a bit more obtuse (i.e. obscured by language, much like using the terms: obtuse and i.e.). The easier part is that it is made more clearly stepwise. This clarity, however, is sometimes thwarted by curious terminology. I will try to give you ample warning when such problems may occur.

To make a chart (or graph), select some data. In our case, select A3. A8. As before, put your cursor over the highlighted cells and click on “Insert”at the top of the xls window and SELECT Chart or click on the picture of the chart located on the icon bar. Now you are in the Chart Wizard Window. This window allows you to chart you data in four steps.

Step 1 is selecting the chart type. You will notice that the top of this window reads “Step 1 of 4-Select Chart Type”. For this particular set of data we want an XY chart. Select the chart XY (scatter) from the menu. Select “Next”.

Beware: the default Chart Type is NOT what we want. We want an XY Chart. This is NOT A COLUMN CHART!

Step 2 is selecting the data for each axis (x-axis and y-axis) of your chart. The window that appeared after you selected Next is the “Chart Source Data” window. Select the tab labeled “Series”. As you can see, the data you highlighted will be in the row titled “y-values”. This will be our first set of dependent variables. You must designate the independent variables (x-values) for your graph, also. There can be many dependent variables for any one set of independent variables. Microsoft Excel calls each set of dependent variables a “series”. The bottom left of the “Chart Source Data” window shows that you only have one set of dependent values called “Series”. You can add more series by selecting the “add” or “remove” buttons. In our example, the tire pressure is our only value dependent upon the temperature.

There is a very simple method to enter the values for the x-variables. First, you choose a text block by selecting the arrow to the right of it (dark blue). At this point the Source Data window will minimize to a Title Bar (sometimes hard to see) and you will need to select a block much like you did when you changed the numeric format (by selecting the first cell and dragging to the last cell). When the block is highlighted, hit the maximize button on the Source Data Title Bar. The Source Data window will reappear with the series text block filled in.

Once the Series have been set, we move to the next window. SELECT Next.

Step 3 is labeling the chart. The next window is called the “Chart Options” Window. The first tab is called “titles” and will be selected by default. This is where you enter titles into each of the text blocks. A typical Chart Title would be the name of the experiment. In the Axis titles be sure to put both the measured quantity as the title and the units of the measurement parenthetically. Once you have done this select “Next”.

The final step, step 4, allows you to choose where you want your chart to be displayed. In the “Chart Location” Window you have the choice of selected whether you want the chart on a new sheet or on your existing sheet with your data.

Typically, in Chemistry classes, we ask for both the spreadsheet and the graph. As difficult as it may be to believe, people sometimes make incorrect graphs. This may be because of incorrect data input or analysis, incorrect choice of axes or simple spreadsheeting mistakes. Without the spreadsheet, suggestions, correction and partial credit are difficult to accomplish. It is much like trying to fix a car based on hearing someone describe a noise in the engine. You may get an idea from the noise, but it helps to open the hood.

So, to have both your spreadsheet and graph on the same sheet select “As object in:” and “Series 1” will already appear since we only have one series. Select “Finish”.

Now your chart will appear on your spreadsheet. You can change the location of your chart by clicking on it and dragging it to your desired location.

10. Modifying a Graph

Excel gives you the opportunity to set your own graph size rather than insisting that you use their defaults. The scale on this graph is a little clumsy, the x-axis starting at zero and ending at 200. Starting at 25 and going up by 25's to 250 would give a more pleasing look.As spreadsheets are all about ease of formatting, we might as well make the graph look good. We can adjust the attributes of the X-axis and, later, the Y-axis by calling up a window for each. We call up the X-axis window by putting our cursor over the numbers along the X-axis in the graph and clicking on the right button on the mouse. You will get a drop-down menu with “Format axis” at the top. SELECT “Format axis”. A window will come up with a number of tabs. SELECT the Scale tab. Change the minimum from 60 to 25, the maximum from 200 to 250, and the major and minor units to 25. Select “OK”.

In the same way, move your cursor over the numbers on the Y-axis and right-click. Select “Format axis”, then Scale tab and modify the minimum to 30, the maximum to 40, and the major and minor units to 2. Select “OK”.

11. Printing

If you want to save your printer cartridge a bit, you can take away the background shading in the plot area. Having shading does look pleasant and you can make quite a number of effects, but it is a cartridge killer. To remove the background shading, double-click on the background and the Format Plot Area window will come up. On the right side is Area. Change it from Automatic to None.

To print the graph and spreadsheet data, highlight the spreadsheet data and the cells behind the graph. The graph, itself, is not in the cells but “above” it in a overlapping window. If you print this now, it will print both the spreadsheet and the graph. The easiest way to access the Print window is to select the print icon from the Button Bar.

A Print window will appear. For our purposes, you can select the Print command. If you printer is properly installed, on and functioning, you will get a printout. You may preview what it should look like by selecting Print Preview. You can play with these and other parts of the Print window at your leisure.

This is the end of this Quick Start. You may want to save your file and exit Microsoft Excel.

2.4.3  Microsoft PowerPoint

As every application in the suite, Microsoft PowerPoint has evolved! For those of you who don't how what PowerPoint is I’ll briefly describe its use here. Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation making software that lets you create animated slideshows that can contain multimedia objects like videos, sounds, etc to illustrate, for example, you corporate profile. This is application is widely used in business environments to promote products or to present sales results thanks to its unrivalled powerful but easy to use features. Microsoft has stopped counting how many CDs containing PowerPoint based shows have been created in the world. PowerPoint also comes with the famous task.

Panes that are divided in three different ways: the Slide Design task pane, the Animation Scheme and the Custom Animation. The first pane “Slide Design” gives users a quick way to dig into their design options such as color schemes, animation schemes. Obviously when users select a new scheme it's automatically previewed in real time. The Animation Schemes pane answers to a redundant problem of previous PowerPoint versions: it was hard to find all the different animations options! The Animation Schemes task pane now lists all the animation possibilities and users can get a preview of each animation. Finally the Custom Animation pane contains very powerful animation effects PowerPoint has to offer like the new “path animation” that lets you move objects along a path simultaneously or slide transitions effects. Animation performance has been enhanced and now takes advantage of hardware acceleration if available: this is especially interesting for bitmap rotation and transparency blending. The major new feature of PowerPoint is surely the fact you can now print preview your scenes before printing them! This is a true and long awaited relief for those of you who create press books based on an existing PowerPoint show. To reduce the size of PowerPoint shows, Office 10 Compress Pictures feature has been added so users can choose to compress images within PowerPoint to save size but not visual quality. In terms of presentation designing features, PowerPoint, comes with several enhancements like the ability to rotate images, a multiple picture file selector that lets users select several pictures to import into slideshows and more! To help you accurately draw in PowerPoint you can choose to enable the visible grid on which you can snap objects to it but you can also display drawing guides on screen.

Below is the features list of PowerPoint.

（1）Slide Design: The Slide Design Task Pane gives users an easier way to discover their design options. These options include design templates, color schemes, and animation schemes—all easily previewed at the time a selection is made.

（2）Animation Schemes: As part of the Task Pane, Animation Schemes give users one-click access to professionally designed animations. Users can easily get a preview of each animation scheme and can cycle through various options until they find the animation they want.

（3）Custom Animation: PowerPoint adds high-quality custom animations that help make presentations come alive. Examples of these animation effects include moving multiple objects simultaneously, “path” animation (moving objects along a predescribed path), and easy sequencing for all effects on the slide, including exits. Animation performance is also improved and takes advantage of hardware acceleration if available (such as hardware bitmap rotation and transparency blending in many 3D video cards). Finally, PowerPoint adds new, more exciting slide transitions and enables users to add animation schemes to their entire presentation with one click.

（4）Multiple Masters: PowerPoint users can easily create more than one slide, title master, or slide master within one file. This makes it possible for users to combine multiple presentations in one file or create separate sections within the same presentation.

（5）Presenter Tools: Users presenting their PowerPoint slides will always be prepared, thanks to the new Presenter Tools. Presenters have their own view, not visible to the audience. This view includes details on what bullet or slide is coming next, enables a presenter to see their speaker notes, and lets them jump directly to any slide.

（6）Apply Automatic Layout: Apply Automatic Layout automatically snaps content into placeholders when inserted or pasted into an already existing slide. For example, when a user is working on a slide with the bulleted list layout applied and then he inserts a table, PowerPoint automatically changes the layout to the Text and Object layout so that the table and text are side by side. Furthermore, a Smart Tag icon is displayed to enable the user to undo the automatic layout or access more AutoCorrect options.

（7）Print Preview: Print Preview enables users to get a preview of how their presentations will look when printed. Users have the option to switch between various views such as notes, slides, and handouts, or even switch between landscape and portrait view.

PowerPoint XP Print Preview Feature:

Thumbnails in Normal View—From within the Normal View (also known as the Tri-Pane View), users can switch between a presentation's outline view and thumbnail views of the slides, just as they can in the PowerPoint Slide Sorter. This graphical representation makes it easy for users to navigate through their presentation.

（8）Diagrams: Users can easily choose from a variety of built-in diagrams (including organization charts, pyramid, cycle, radial, and Venn diagrams) from within PowerPoint without needing to have an OLE server. Benefits of these native diagrams include the ability to execute in-place chart editing, smaller file sizes, and improved international text handling.

（9）Compress Pictures: The Office 10 Compress Pictures functionality enables users to compress images within their PowerPoint (or other Office application) files. Users can select the intended use of the file (Web, print, screen display, etc.) and designate whether one or all images in the file should be optimized. The images are then shrunken and compressed in a manner that minimizes the size of the image without minimizing the visual quality of the image.

（10）Visible Grid: A new visible grid makes it easier to create a drawing within PowerPoint. Within the Grid and Guides dialog boxes, users can select from a variety of options such as snapping objects to the grid or other objects and displaying drawing guides on-screen.

（11）Document Password Encryption: When users save their presentation, they are now offered the choice of using the standard CryptoAPI. CryptoAPI is a stronger encryption algorithm than previous versions. Default encryption remains the same (for backward compatibility) while the stronger encryption is offered as a choice. In addition, users can now set a password on the document that protects the user's data while allowing others to still view the presentation.

KEYWORDS

NOTES

（1）clipboard（剪贴板）。由窗口操作系统维护的一个特殊内存资源。剪贴板中存储着对上次“复制”或“剪切”信息的一个副本。用“粘贴”操作可将剪贴板中的数据复制到当前程序中。剪贴板允许在两个程序之间传输信息，其前提条件是它们能互相读取对方所产生的数据。用剪贴板复制的数据是静态的，因此它不会反映出后来的修改变化。

（2）backup（备份）。对程序、磁盘或数据的复制，它用来对有价值的文件进行存档或保护重要文件不致损失。备份是一个“保险”的复制。有些应用程序会自动对数据文件进行备份，在磁盘上保留了数据的当前版本和先前版本。

（3）dialog box（对话框）。在图形用户界面中由系统或应用程序所显示的一个特殊窗口，它用来请求用户的响应。

（4）number cruncher（数字处理器，数字粉碎机）。它能够迅速进行大量数学计算的计算机。

（5）profile（配置文件）。计算机上的一个记录，它用于在多用户计算机系统中维护一个已授权用户的相关信息。对系统安全和其他原因而言，用户配置文件是必不可少的。用户配置文件中包含诸如用户的访问限制、邮箱位置、终端类型等信息。

（6）bitmap（位图）。内存中的一种数据结构，以单个数据位集合的形式表示信息，位图用于代表位图像。

（7）OLE（对象链接和嵌入）。在应用程序之间传输和共享信息的一种技术。当一个对象（例如一个用画笔程序创建的图像文件）链接到一个复合文档（例如用字处理程序创建的文档中）时，文档只包含对象的一个引用；任何对链接对象的内容所做的修改都将在复合文档中看到。当对象嵌入复合文档中时，文档包含对象的一份拷贝；除非嵌入对象被更新，否则任何对原对象内容所做的修改在复合文档中都看不到。

EXERCISE

1. According to the text, give the answers.

（1）What are the characteristics of the toolbars in Word?

（2）What are the functions of Speech in Word?

（3）What are the functions of Document Formatting?

（4）What are the functions of Reliability and Data Recovery?

（5）What are the functions of Document Recovery option?

2. Translate these sentences from English into Chinese.

（1）Microsoft Word is probably the most commonly used item in the Office series.

（2）Another new feature of Office 10 is the inclusion of Speech.

（3）To help out with the productivity of Office, Microsoft has added a few more Document Formatting features to make things easier.

（4）One thing that Microsoft has listened to and acted upon is Reliability and Data Recovery.

（5）As a result, you spend less time recreating their documents.

（6）The Slide Design Task Pane gives users an easier way to discover their design options.

（7）PowerPoint adds high-quality custom animations that help make presentations come alive.

（8）There are two versions that are covered in this tutorial, Excel 2000 and Excel XP.

（9）Apply Automatic Layout automatically snaps content into placeholders when inserted or pasted into an already existing slide.

（10）This enables users to easily browse to the Web site using their default browser without having to copy the address first and past it into their Web browser.

READING MATERIALS

AutoCAD 2002

No doubt AutoCAD^? or an AutoCAD-based product is used in the design and maintenance of much of what you see around you—your computer, the desk, and lighting—and much of what you don't see, including your building's HVAC and electrical systems, the surrounding landscaping and roads, and your telecommunication networks.

AutoCAD is a powerful 2D and 3D design and drafting platform that automates your design tasks, and provides digital tools so you can focus on the design rather than the software itself. Architects, engineers, drafters, and design-related professionals use AutoCAD to create, view, manage, plot, share, and muse accurate information-rich drawings.

1. Concepts and Definitions

AutoCAD is an interactive drawing system designed to permit a user to construct or edit a drawing on a graphics display screen. To this extent, it is analogous to a word processing program, except that in this case the thing being processed is a drawing. Each drawing is stored on a disk file, and AutoCAD is only able to edit one drawing at a time. This similarity to word processors is reflected in the fact that the principal functional component of AutoCAD is known as the drawing editor.

Up until Release 10, AutoCAD was essentially a two-dimensional drawing system. Following that release, it now supports a full three-dimensional database. This has had the effect that the features of AutoCAD that support two-dimensional drawing are fully self-contained and can still be used as a 2D system without being concerned with its 3D features. In this course we will focus on the 2D drafting aspect of AutoCAD since that better reflects the way in which this system is generally used in practice at the present time. Several sections in these notes explain how the 3D features have been incorporated into AutoCAD, but provide littIe detail of the 3D operations.

In order to understand AutoCAD, we must focus on a few specific concepts.

2. What's in an AutoCAD Drawing

An AutoCAD drawing is made up of entities. These can be either simple graphic primitives (such as lines, arcs, circles, text, and so on) or blocks (which are groups of entities).

The graphic primitives are defined geometrically in terms of the normal Cartesian coordinate system (right-handed system with positive X-axis to the right, positive Y-axis up the screen and positive Z-axis coming out of the semen towards the user). Hence, for example, lines are defined by their end-point coordinates (x, y and z), while circles are denned by their center coordinates and radius. Each entity also has certain attributes associated with it, such as line style, text font or colour.

A block is a group of entities that can be manipulated as a single unit. Once created, a block may be moved, scaled, rotated, copied or deleted. A block can be created by collecting together a group of entities from the current drawing (the drawing being currently edited) and assigning a single name to that group. Alternatively, an existing drawing (from disk) can be inserted into the current drawing as a block. Equally, a block from the current drawing can be written out to a file as a new drawing.

It is important to understand that a block, in AutoCAD, is unique to a specific drawing. That is, when an existing drawing is inserted into the current drawing as a block, AutoCAD simply copies the graphics from that drawing and includes it as a single object. The existing drawing is unaffected by the action. Indeed, if that existing drawing (from which the block was created) were subsequently edited then those changes would not affect the inserted block. It is possible, however, to update a block definition in a drawing by having AutoCAD redefine the block using the current version of the original drawing.

As an alternative to inserting a drawing into another drawing as a block, AutoCAD now provides the facility to attach a drawing to the current drawing as an external reference. The external drawing is then treated like a block except that it is automatically updated each time the drawing to which it is attached is loaded. Naturally, if the external drawing is altered in the meantime, then the external reference will be updated to reflect those changes.

Another important feature of a block (including external reference blocks) is that it can be duplicated many times within a drawing, with each copy pointing to the one graphic description, but having its own unique position, scale and rotation factor. This is known as instancing. There are two advantages to this approach:

·    space saving:the graphics description is only stored once.

·    ease of redefinition:the graphics description of a block can be altered and then redefined in order to update each instance in the drawing.

It is also possible to associate named attributes with a block. For example, a block repr- esenting a door might have attributes such as type, manufacturer, finish, lock-type, etc. Each instance of the block would have a value associated with it for each defined attribute. AutoCAD provides facilities for scheduling the attribute data associated with inserted blocks in a drawing.

The final concept to be explained about blocks is the notion of exploding. Any instance of a block may be exploded in order to reduce it back to its separate graphic entities. Similarly, an external reference block can be unbound so that it becomes a local block and then, in turn, can be exploded.

3. Units, Scales and Paper Sizes

A clear understanding of the way that AutoCAD handles units of measurement, scale and paper size is necessary before a drawing can be created or edited. AutoCAD provides complete control over these things by distinguishing between model space and paper space. All drawings, whether two-dimensional or three-dimensional should be thought of as models of a real-world entity (either a drawing or a 3D description of a real-world object). In either case, the description is maintained in model space. Paper space can be thought of as a model of a standard-size piece of paper on which you can establish view ports (rectangular regions) in which AutoCAD will display scaled views of the drawing you have created in model space. You call of course, add additional line work in paper space to form borders and annotation.

In order to understand this, it is best to picture model space as a very large piece of paper located somewhere in two-dimensional space. (AutoCAD can actually draw anywhere in 3D space, but let's ignore that for the moment!) Since the size and location of that piece of paper is entirely up to you, it would make sense to choose something that makes drawing as simple as possible. Now, Australian architects typically use millimeters as their unit of measurement and would draw objects in their ture size. This means that when drawing a plan of a building that is, say, 15 meters square, the “paper” size (in model space) would be set at something greater than 15 000×15 000 units (where “units” equals millimeters). Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to set the model space drawing size, but it is helpful to do so in order to establish a context for the drawing.

When working on the drawing in model space, you should think of the graphics screen as a window through which you can view all or pad of that drawing sheet. Thus, when viewing a drawing, a larger display scale will allow you to view only a pan of the drawing on the screen. This is referred to as zooming in on the drawing. As you increase the scale, you can see less of your drawing, but what you can see will be in greater detail. If you zoom out, then you will be able to see more of the drawing, but in lesser detail. AutoCAD provides some fairly sophisticated tools for zooming in and out of your drawing and for panning back and forth across it.

Although it is possible to plot from model space, it is normal to set up a sheet in paper space, and create one or more view ports showing different views of the drawing in model space. Each view is displayed at a fixed scale, and the paper space drawing is then plotted at a scale of 1:1. In this case, text notes and other annotation on the drawing is the best added in paper space, and plotted at its actual size. Any text that is entered in model space has to be drawn at an artificially large size so that when it is scaled down for plotting, it ends up at the size required. For example, text on a 1:100 drawing might be set at 250 millimeters high in model space to create plotted text that is 25mm high on the plot.

4. Drawing Layers

AutoCAD also supports the standard notion of layering. This means that my drawing entity can be assigned to my layer of the drawing. This allows separation of portions from the drawing. For example, all brickwork could be assigned to one layer, all electrical work to another, and so on. In that way, when plotting, only selected layers need be included in the physical drawing that is produced from the one AutoCAD drawing.

Layering can also be used to advantage while editing a drawing. For example, suppose a plan drawing is substantially complete with only the brickwork cross-hatching to go. If all the brickwork is on one layer, each other layer could be turned off so that only the brickwork is visible and selectable. That makes it possible to crosshatch the brick work without inadvertently affecting something else.

Layering in AutoCAD is manipulated through the properties that can be assigned to each layer. Once the interaction between layer properties is understood, then these can be manipulated to great advantage. The following notes summarize the properties of layers.

（1）Layer name.

An unlimited number of layers may be created. Each is identified by a unique name assigned by the user. The name may be up to 31 characters long, made up from uppercase letters, digits and three special characters ($ - _ ).

（2）Current layer.

AutoCAD maintains the notion of a current layer, being that layer upon which all newly created entities are placed. Any of the existing layers may be selected as current at any time.

（3）Visibility.

Each layer can be either visible (ON) or invisible (OFF). Only visible layers are displayed or plotted. Layers can be turned on or off at will, in my combination. Entities can still be added to an invisible layer (indeed it is possible to have a current 1ayer that is invisible), but entities that are not visible cannot be selected for editing.

（4）Colour and linestyle.

Each layer has associated with it both a colour and a linestyle. As entities are drawn, they are assigned, by default, the colour and linestyle of the current layer. (This can be overridden by assigning each entity its own colour and linestyle). By default, new layers are assigned colour (white) and continuous linestyle.

（5）Freeze/Thaw state.

At any time the user may freeze one or more layers of a drawing. A frozen layer is made invisible. Any entities on a frozen layer are completely ignored or forgotten by AutoCAD during the editing process. This has the effect of speeding up many editing operations. Naturally, a frozen layer can be thawed again at my time.

The above discussion refers to the manipulation of layers generally, whether in model space or paper space. AutoCAD also permits layers to be manipulated (turned on/off or frozen) independently in each viewport in paper space. This means that a layer may be visible in one viewport, but not another. AutoCAD also allows you to manipulate layers that are contained within external reference drawings.

FrontPage

FrontPage is another frequently used program and it's a must have software that I regularly use to update the websites I manage. Any improvements to make me woke more efficiently are greatly appreciated and thank God, FrontPage is full of new features. Microsoft once again doesn't disappoint us since the program was totally rethought once again. As a reminder for those who forgot, originally Microsoft didn't make FrontPage. When Microsoft in 1996 felt that the Internet became unavoidable they bought this website editing software from another company. Since then there were many FrontPage versions, each one better than the previous and changing the way you're working with websites to provide more efficient solutions. Versions 95 & 97 of FrontPage were slow and not user-friendly, with FrontPage 98 Microsoft started to show improvements. Then came Microsoft FrontPage 2000, which was probably the most accom-

plished version of the software by respecting and treating correctly HTML code to avoid my compatibility worries. FrontPage is a new exciting challenge for the Microsoft FrontPage development team, which they raised successfully. So let's see what Microsoft has done to improve an already great program. The first major enhancement of FrontPage you instantly notice is that you can open several pages in the same window thanks to the new tab feature: using the tab you can easily switch from a page to another, staying in the same window! A real revolution compared to FrontPage 2000.

Sure, for each page you display you can enable three different views.

The first design is the place where you create your page from the scratch. You can use one of the predefined templates if you're not really inspired or build your own one very easily just like if you were working with Publisher. Indeed the major advantage of FrontPage is its WYSIWYG design environment. With other web editing tools you may not get the result you were expecting when you designed the page. Here people that hate HTML code don't even have to worry about it since they create web pages as easily as typing a letter in Word and the result they get in their browser exactly represents what they have designed.

The HTML view is for pros only. Anyway thanks to that French scientist of the CNRS that created this language. Indeed instead of making a complex language the one he created, HTML (HyperText Markup Language), is really easy to learn and to understand and doesn't require too much practice. Obviously the HTML editor uses color codes to highlight portions of code and let you quickly identify which part is used for.

Finally the design view of FrontPage lets you view the page you've created exactly as it'll be shown by your browser.

Building a website becomes as easy as constructing Legos with FrontPage 10. Indeed Microsoft FrontPage gives you the power to add dynamic content with the new Photo Gallery component, cross-browser enhanced Drawing Tools, and Automatic Web Content from Microsoft MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, and bCentral. Users can save time and achieve professional-looking results by using sophisticated technology such as fully customizable Themes, customized lists, and quick-to-build surveys without having to know or spend time on complex programming. In addition to that all the DHTML and other banner effects remain always easy to apply in order to create high technology websites. Many other new features are included in FrontPage like:

（1）Photo Gallery:Users can quickly and easily create a Photo Gallery to display photos or images. They can add images to the Photo Gallery, select from several different customizable layouts, add captions and descriptions to images, reorder images, change image sizes, and switch layouts.

（2）Enhanced Drawing Tools:Enhanced drawing tools such as auto-shapes, drop shadows, Word Art, and text boxes are as easy to use because they are in Microsoft Word and Microsoft PowerPoint. This also means that users can easily paste any shapes they have created in other Office applications directly into FrontPage.

（3）Automatic Web Content:Users can add Automatic Web Content to their Web site by inserting MSNBC headlines and weather forecasts, MSN search, Expedia maps, and bCentral small business tools. Inserted content is updated daily by the respective sources, so users can have continuously updated content without having to continually update their site.

（4）Insert Browser-Editable Lists:Users can insert lists, via Microsoft SharePoint technology, that they have created from scratch or selected from a variety of list templates such as Announcements, Events, Tasks, and Contacts. Authorized users can easily edit, customize, and subscribe to these lists from level 4 or later browser, and these lists can be exported to key Office applications.

（5）Insert Discussion Boards:Users can insert a Discussion Board, making it easy for team members and visitors to the Web site to participate in newsgroup-style threaded discussions. Users decide who can see the discussions and who can contribute to them. This functionality is made possible through Microsoft SharePoint technology.

（6）Insert Dynamic Online Surveys:This feature enables users to create and insert dynamic Online Surveys, complete with easy-to-add radio buttons, drop-down menus, and check boxes. Visitors can respond to surveys from their browsers and can choose to see results in automatic graphs. Users can simplify their survey creation with template choices, or create surveys quickly with the Survey Wizard. Dynamic Online Surveys are made possible through Microsoft SharePoint technology.

（7）Theme:Users can apply a virtually limitless variety of formatting options with 67 customizable Themes. Each of the Themes have been updated in FrontPage and each has its own look and feel, including coordinated bullets, buttons, background, page banner, horizontal line, and font styles. Users can apply a Theme across a single page or all pages in their site. Themes can be also applied to Microsoft Word documents and Microsoft SharePoint based Web sites.

（8）Border Drop-down Tool Button:Border Drop-down Tool Button enables users to add borders of my color or background color to text or graphics quickly and conveniently. This makes adding borders in FrontPage as easy as it is in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, and there is no need to put the text or graphics into tables.

（9）Page Tabs:Page Tabs make editing many pages at once easier. Users can open several pages in FrontPage and switch from page to page with just a click on the tab that represents that page.

（10）Navigation Pane:Users can access the Folder List and Navigation Pane from the main FrontPage. This enables them to continue to edit pages while alternating between managing files and folders to manage the way the pages link to each other.

（11）Table Editing:Table AutoFormat, Table Fill, and Table Split—Table AutoFormat provides a fast and easy way to create professional-looking tables. Users can select the style they want to use, and FrontPage automatically changes the table's borders, shading, and colors.

With the new Table Fill, users can quickly repeat the contents of an individual cell to the right of the cell (Fill Right) or below the cell (Fill Down). This saves time when users want to copy the same content to multiple cells.

Table Split enables users to divide a table at any location quickly and easily. This is convenient when users want to add text or graphics between rows in a table.

（12）Task Pane:The Task Pane enables users to have easy access to frequently used commands such as New Page or Web, Web Site Templates, Insert Clip Art, Search, and Office Clipboard.

（13）Office Clip Board:Office Clip Board helps users copy or cut content from Office applications and quickly paste them into Web pages they are creating with FrontPage. Users can visually see representations of the content on the clipboard in the Task Pane, and they have the option of preserving the source or destination text, formatting, or pasting only the text without the formatting.

（14）Link Bars:Users can build Custom Link Bars to link to pages on or off their site. They can create Link Bars via the Navigation View to be applied site-wide, or create ad-hoc Link Bars to apply them anywhere they want in their Web. Users can place Link Bars in shared borders for site-wide navigation, or they can insert them anywhere on any page in their Web.

Users can also use the Link Bars as “back” and “next” links to chain their Web pages together in sequence, or they can include only one link to make a quick button. Users can even insert Link Bars into pages on their site with Microsoft Word 10.

（15）Web Components:FrontPage Web Components such as hit counter, banner ad manager, marquees, hover buttons, link bars, and Web-wide search make inserting sophisticated technology into Web sites fast and easy. New components in FrontPage include Photo Gallery, Link Bars, Top 10 Lists, List Views from Microsoft SharePoint, Save to Database, and Automatic Web Content such as headline news and maps.

（16）Inline Frames via HTML4based Support:FrontPage offers support for features enabled by advanced technology such as HTML4, including Inline Frames, language attributes, and button and fieldsets in forms.

FrontPage also has new tools in there for people that run the website making a daunting task like that a lot easier.

（1）Usage Analysis:Usage Analysis Reports can help users better understand who visits their site. This feature enables users quickly find what pages are getting the most hits and how customers find their site with referring URLs in daily, weekly, or monthly reports. These reports can be exported to HTML or Microsoft Excel and can be filtered and charted to show the exact information users want.

（2）Top 10 Lists:Users can quickly insert Top 10 Lists that link to the Top 10 pages on their site. The Top 10 pages can be determined by the number page hits, referring domains, referring URLs, search strings, visiting users, and more. These lists are automatically refreshed when the user comes to the page. This feature can be used on Internet or intranet sites.

（3）Enhanced Reporting：With FrontPage Enhanced Reports, you can monitor your site's performance by quickly finding slow or unlinked files or pages and broken hyperlinks. You can also auto filter the reports and export the data to HTML or to Microsoft Excel.

Also control on how your HTML code looks has not been forgotten:

Paste the Way You Want:When users paste content into their FrontPage-based Web site from other applications, they can now decide whether they want to preserve the formatting from the document they copied (Keep Source Formatting) or let the page's Theme or style change the formatting (Use Destination Styles), or strip out all of the formatting and simply paste in the text (Keep Text Only).

Microsoft didn't forget programmers! FrontPage includes many new features to ease their life. For XML lovers the new Apply XML Formatting Rule automatically takes an HTML page and reformats its HTML tags to make them XML-compliant: great! In order to produce homogeneous pages if on a site you can use the new HTML Reformatting feature that enables the user to tell FrontPage how their HTML page should be formatted—from how many indents should come before each tag to whether or not to use optional tags. New in FrontPage is the ability to take a page that has been imported into a Web and reformat the page according to the user's preferences. Finally a very important feature is the new Active Server Page (ASP) Source Code Preservation that lets users to edit content in pages containing ASP code without disturbing the ASP code. Now, FrontPage always opens the ASP page in Normal View mode, regardless of whether the ASP code violates convention (such as mu1tiple <head>, or <body> tags).

Also added into Frontpage is Microsoft Sharepoint. Microsoft SharePoint technology enables custom Web pages and collaboration capabilities to be truly accessible to whole teams or organizations. It is possible to edit Microsoft SharePoint sites straight from a browser, making it simple and accessible for everyone to participate in discussions, surveys, announcements, and more. For more information see the Microsoft SharePoint Product Guide.

In addition, FrontPage has not only increased the number of available languages to 26, but has also added Unicode Support that enables users to alternate between supported languages while they create and edit Web sites. This international supported enables users to work in the appropriate languages with team members who are all over the world.

Sharepoint also increases communication and collaboration.

（1）Microsoft SharePoint:Microsoft SharePoint enables users to quickly set up a team Web site for the intranet or Internet. This enables the team to store, find, and share information, documents, and Web pages.

（2）Browser:Based Editing of Microsoft SharePoint-Based Sites. Users can edit Microsoft SharePoint content, upload documents, and participate in threaded discussions directly from the browser. All team members can contribute and interact with the Web site using the tools they prefer, and they can even receive automatic notification when pages or discussions are modified.

（3）Discussions and Subscriptions:With Discussions, users can post and reply to comments on pages on their site or on my Web page on the Internet. They can also sign up to receive an e-mail notification when discussions have changed or when pages on their site have changed.

（4）Customization and Integration with FrontPage:With FrontPage, users can customize their Microsoft SharePoint team Web sites. Users can create and apply custom Themes; insert graphics, Link Bars, and Automatic Web Content; and insert lists such as Announcements, Events, Contacts, Surveys, and Links on their Web site for all to view and contribute.

（5）Document Library:Users can add a Document Library that lets them store documents in one location for everyone (or only specific people) to access. Users can create a new document for the Document Library from a specified template or upload existing documents to the Document Library. They can also sod and filter the lists of documents in the Document Libraries as well as update or contribute new information to the Document Library from my level 4 or later browser.

Another feature added is e-commerce functionality.

（1）bCentral Commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage:Users can now easily add e-commerce functionality to their FrontPage-based site via bCentral's Commerce Manager service. The Commerce Manager service and the Commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage allow users to quickly build a catalog of items to sell online. Users can subscribe to the Microsoft bCentral Commerce Manager service and then easily insert “buy” buttons and a shopping card into their Web Site.

（2）Auctions via bCentral Commerce Manager:Once users subscribe to the bCental Commerce Manager service, they can take their e-commerce functionality one step further by promoting their products across Internet auction sites like MSN eShop Auctions and Fair Market Auctions with an optional upgrade package. Users can access this functionality via the bCentral commerce Manager Add-in for FrontPage.

（3）Database Interface Wizard:Users can display the contents of a database on their page by using the Database Interface Wizard. This Wizard comprehensively generates the forms and pages needed to create a Web site front-end for data.

Users can allow other, specific users to edit or delete records from the database via a Web page that is created with this wizard, while at the same time allowing everyone who can browse the site to add new records and view existing ones. Additionally, it enables users to filter data more quickly to find what they are looking for.

MicrosoftOutlook

Microsoft Outlook—What a strange name for an e-mail client! Microsoft Outlook was by far one of the most used programs that I had used along with Microsoft Word. It managed my e-mai1, contacts and let me do things in an efficient way. Outlook 10 is more than improved. In fact it was totally revamped especially concerning the e-mail area. New features and improvements are numerous making Outlook better and much more powerful than ever.

As usual Outlook 10 can perfectly manage several e-mail accounts and due to the fact you can create your own folders, managing and sorting e-mails is a child's game. Thanks to the fact Microsoft Outlook 10 supports multiple folders, you can create rules to automatically transfer incoming e-mails into a specific folder according to the characteristics of the e-mails you receive. That is to say you can create a folder for work e-mails, another folder for family mails, as well as other folders for unknown and junk e-mails. In that way you can efficiently manage you e-mails assigning them a priority level of treatment.

Until recently, Microsoft Outlook didn't support HTML e-mails. The HTML e-mail support was always weak but this time with Outlook 10, the HTML e-mail support has been enhanced so you can receive multimedia e-mails with Flash attachments and read them with no problem. One feature Microsoft planned to add in Microsoft Office 2000 SR1 that was postponed is now part of Outlook 10, so you can, at last, retrieve e-mails you received on your Hotmail accounts, manage existing ones or send new ones directly within Outlook without the speed to launch a browser to connect to Hotmail.com.

Back to Microsoft Outlook 10 is the ability to request a delivery receipt for sent e-mails (but why did MS remove this feature previous release). So you are sure the server you were sending it to correctly received e-mails. Just like in Microsoft Outlook 2000 you can request a read receipt for the e-mail you sent, so you're sure recipients read your mails. An interesting new feature of Outlook that quickly becomes essential is the “AutoComplete Addressing”, that is, when user enters an e-mail address, Outlook automatically recognizes it and completes the name based on previously sent e-mail (or on the fact the buddy is m your address book) to the recipient. This enables users to quickly send e-mail to others without spending time searching for e-mail addresses. I really fall in love with this simple but awesome feature. Once you taste it you how this feature is missing in Outlook Express.

Microsoft Outlook 10 reintroduces an improved WordMail feature that is now the default e-mail editor so you can create high impact e-mails using the power of Word! Many things were improved in WordMail like first the reliability. Then the size of produced HTML messages is smaller than before thanks to the fact WordMail removes document specific tags that were previously included so that users could edit it back in Word. If you're like an avid user of e-mail that keeps track of every e-mail over the years you'll quickly have an enormous inbox with thousands of e-mails. As a result your storage file gets enormous while loading Outlook can be very long. Here Microsoft has done a good job enhancing core code to fasten loading operations, so users with a large inbox don't wait too much before Outlook start.

But Microsoft didn't stop here since they even include Mailbox cleanup tool that display the size of the mailbox while enabling users to search for files by size or by age in order to delete, move or archive them so they can free up some space (Exchange users can also automatically be notified when they are approaching their mailbox size limit and choose from the above options for cleaning up their mailbox). The search feature of Outlook has also been revamped: when you enable the search feature a simple small toolbar appears with a text case where you'll have to type the content you're searching for. This doesn't cumber the screen and allows you to still view received e-mails. As part of the core enhancement the search feature finds items much faster than before. Obviously advanced searching tools are still available to let you dig in your inbox. To improve further your overall communication experience, Outlook 10 now lets you directly chat through MSN Messenger with online contacts by a simple click in the contact card or in the last e-mail you received from this specific person.

Microsoft Outlook 10 carries tons of other enhancements listed below.

（1）Send Using (e-mail Account Selection):Users with multiple e-mail accounts (such as a Hotmail account and an account on Exchange) can choose on a per message basis which account to use to send their message. When the user chooses an account, an information bar shows which account is used to send the mail.

（2）Rules:Explicit rules are built in to determine which account should be used as the default (e.g., when replying to a message, the account is used that the message was originally sent to) or users can assign a default account for Outlook to use.

（3）Smart Tags in Wordmail:With Word as the default e-mail editor, users can take advantage of the Smart Tags that are available in Word (including AutoCorrect, Paste Options, Address, Name, and Date Smart Tags). Smart Tags are context-sensitive buttons that give users the options and information they need at the time they need them.

（4）Message Format in Wordmail:Users can easily change between different mailformats on the fly and on a per message basis. By giving users the option to switch between HTML, rich text, or plain text, they can more easily format their message so that the recipient can have the best viewing experience.

Microsoft Outlook XP Mailbox Cleanup.

（1）Text Auto Cleanup:Outlook 10 can automatically clean up plain text e-mail formatting that often contains extra line break that make the message difficult to read. Outlook automatically removes the extra line breaks (an option exists to turn this off as well) when a user opens an e-mail message, previews the message in the preview pane, or prints the message so that it is easier to read.

（2）Hyperlinks in Subject Line:Outlook 10 mail messages now recognize URLs that are placed in the subject field. This enables users to easily browse to the Web Site using their default browser without having to copy file address first and paste it into their Web browser.

There have also been improvements to the Calendar side of Outlook.

（1）Group Schedules:Users can save multiple group calendars within Outlook for quick and easy access to their team or conference room schedules. Within this single calendaring interface, users can view the free and busy times of their group as well as easily e-mail or set up an appointment with the entire group.

（2）Outlook Free/Busy Sharing:Outlook 10 enables users to share Free/Busy information with others on the Internet for free. This makes it easy to schedule meetings with other Outlook users with whom you don't share an Exchange server with.

（3）Reminder window:Users now get a single reminder window for all their appointment or task reminders. This enables the user to easily dismiss, snooze, or open one or all of the reminders at once.

（4）Calendar Coloring:Users can identify their important appointments via the new color-

coded calendar. The user can apply a color to individual appointments or they can automatically apply color by creating automatic formatting rules. Each color has a label that can be customized by the user.

（5）Propose New Time:When receiving a meeting request, users now have the option to propose a new meeting time to the meeting organizer rather than just declining the request. Furthermore, users who have Exchange server can see the free and busy times of each attendee before submitting the new meeting time.

To round off the improvements for Outlook they have updated and improved the Contacts and Address Book.

（1）Display As Name Field:Contacts now include a Display As field for e-mail names. The name you type in the Display As box appears in the To: field when you compose a message instead of the actual e-mail address.

（2）Address Book Column Headings:Column headings are now resizable in width. This enables the user to reveal or conceal columns to show only the information they find useful for address book entry lookup.

（3）Contact Address Book (CAB):The Contact Address Book makes use of the Contact's “Display Name”. With this Column, you can look up contact entries more efficiently, especially with multiple entries for the same contact name.

（4）Upload Only Changed Properties:Only changes get uploaded to the Exchange Server, meaning greater performance for users when working in Outlook. For example, today if a user receives a meeting request with a large attachment and they dismiss the meeting, both the dismissal and the large attachment are uploaded back to the server. With the Local Web Storage System, only the dismissal is sent back up to the server.

（5）Asynchronous Open Operations:Users can now continue working within Outlook 10 even while large messages are being downloaded from the server.

（6）Unplug and Go:A number of benefits enable users to work remotely more effectively without their interaction. For example:

Users can switch between online and offline states on demand and without restarting Outlook.

Users do not need to synchronize their messages, appointment, etc. This automatically takes place, enabling users to continue to access their information even when not connected to their server.

Users can easily customize groups to synchronize for different combinations of accounts and folders. This benefits users by letting them control what gets synchronized automatically and what does not.

（1）Progress Reporting:Users can easily see a progress report of the synchronization that is taking place instead of just receiving an “hour-glass” with no clear indication of when syn-

chronization is taking place.

（2）Revamped mailbox setup dialog boxes:Outlook XP features brand new mail setup configuration boxes that let users better manage their data files and their e-mail accounts.