Download BC2 - La Passerelle

Business computing
Session 2
22nd October 2003
The MS Office suite softwares
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The word processor : « Word »
The spread sheet : « Excel »
The presentation software : « PowerPoint »
The database : « Access »
The web page editor : « FrontPage »
Web pages vs Word pages
• Web pages are prepared using a language
called HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up
Language, invented in 1989, by Tim
Berners-Lee)
• They adapt their display to the size of the
window
• Word pages do not adapt to the window
The right way to write a document
• A document is organised in paragraphs
• Each paragraph should start with a first
punchy sentence. The rest of the
paragraph are sentences illustrating the
1st one.
• The last sentence introduces the next
paragraph (but is not the punchy sentence
of the following paragraph).
Well written books
• Well written books apply this rule : each
paragraph contains only one idea,
expressed in a punchy way in its first
sentence.
• Consequence : well written books can be
« read » in two hours : read only the 1st
sentence of each paragraph.
• Prepare your ESCEM papers this way!
The accompanying Website
• All AC’s courses are found at
• http://www.lapasserelle.com/escem/notre_
dame.html
• With all the Office softwares, when we
type a web address it automatically
becomes a « clickable link »
The Great Wall is a tourist
attraction
How to get a picture of the Great
Wall ?
• Use the Web « search engine » called Google
• Address : http://www.google.com
• Google will search within 425 million images
The Futuroscope is a modernistic
set of buildings
Find an image to put here
All Office softwares have the same
structure
• All office softwares have similar « toolbars »
(with the exception of Access)
• The main toolbars, Menu, Standard, Formatting
are very similar across Word, Excel,
PowerPoint, and FrontPage
What is Shift + F1 for ?
• Shift + F1 is designed to give us Help
– It transforms our pointer into a Question mark
– Then click with the « question mark » onto the
icon we want to understand and we get a little
explanation
The companion
• For extensive help we can ask the «
companion » :
– Click on the question mark of the menu bar
– A companion appears, and a window where
we write our question
• The companion is better than a textbook
– It is very complete, up to date
– It proposes explanations close to our problem
The web dictionary
• The site http://www.dictionary.com offers a
great online dictionary and thesaurus
• Plus pronunciation
• A thesaurus is a book listing « words close
to the one we entered »
A standard business letter
• Your name (or your firm’s name) and
address, and logo in the top left corner of
the letter
• The name of the addressee below shifted
to the right
• The main body of the letter
• Signature
The importance of well
presented business letters
• A business letter is
often the first image
of yourself you give
• And, as you know, the
first image is often the
one that remains
The importance of well
presented business letters (2)
• A business letter is
often the first image
of yourself you give
• And, as you know, the
first image is often the
one that remains
Let’s prepare a logo
• We shall prepare a picture of the word « Our
Firm »
• How do we do this ?
• Use a drawing software :
– Paint is the simplest one
– Paint Shop Pro
– Adobe softwares
• Logos are subtle signs. Firms spend a lot of
money to get a good logo.
How to move a text to the right ?
• We use tabulations or (better) indentations
A first mail merge
• In the menubar select tools and select display
the mailmerge toolbar
• Then prepare a database of names and
addresses (we did that with Excel)
• Then prepare the model letter with fields like «
surname », « firstname » etc.
• Then merge
• And print
• This creates in minutes 150 personalised letters
Word models
• Word offers plenty of prepared letters
along various models
• We don’t have to create new letters from
scratch