New Orleans Personal Computer Club

May Issue of the MotherBoard 2000

Suites 2000 SIG

by Ashton C. Mouton, Jr.

Sorry for the two people who could not attend April’s meeting due to prior engagements. Hope all went well. Tanks to the five attendees who came one of which two which were new to the club and a SIG meeting. Again we held another answer session for those in attendance. Many questions were addressed with one about how to do indents in Corel’s WordPerfect Office Suite and in Lotus SmartSuite Millennium. We closed with a little basic information on databases, which we will cover much latter.

Lets go over indenting again. There are four types of indents: left, right, first line, and hanging. A left indent is where the entire paragraph is indented or moved over a specified distance toward the right from the left margin (or starting position for the entire paragraph). Right indenting is where the entire paragraph is indented or moved over a specified distance toward the left from the right margin.

The first line indent and the hanging indent are relational; they are both opposite of each other. A first line indent involves the indenting of only the first line of a paragraph. Only the first line of the paragraph is moved from left to right a specified distance while the rest of the paragraph remains at the left position or margin. The hanging indent is just the opposite; the first line stays put while the rest of the paragraph indents or moves from left to right a specified distance.

In Lotus WordPro indenting is made extremely easy with a pull down menu that allows you to format an entire paragraph no matter where the cursor is located within the paragraph. You get to the pull down menu from the Text tab on the Menu Bar and pressing the Alignment tab.  The Paragraph Pull Down Menu appears and will allow you to do five types of alignments, four types of indenting, indent distance from margin, paragraph spacing and line spacing from this very convenient menu. The best part is that the cursor can be in any position within the paragraph and the entire paragraph can be aligned, indented, and spaced as desired. You can also indent single lines using the ruler indent indicator (a down-pointing and up-pointing triangle on the left side of the ruler or the up-ward pointing triangle on the right side). The down-pointing triangle is for first line indents on paragraph and the up-pointing triangle is for hanging indents, while the up-ward pointing triangle on the right side of the ruler is for left indents (moving toward the left).

In Corel’s WordPerfect indenting is a little more complex because the position of the cursor within the paragraph will determine what and how the indenting is done. Your first must make sure the cursor is at the very beginning if you want the entire paragraph to be indented a certain way otherwise only the information following the location of the cursor will receive the indenting commands. Second, all indenting is ruler tab dependent that is the tap position on the ruler will determine the distance used for the indenting. You can override this by using the Paragraph Format dialog box. You can get this pull down menu got point to Paragraph on the Menu Bar and clicking on Format to bring up the dialog box. This menu allows you to set the distance for the first line indent, left margin adjustment, right margin adjustment, and setting the spacing between paragraphs. You can also indent by using the Quick Menu (right-click for the menu) and pressing the Indent button, pressing F7 will do a first line indent, or by using the Format command from the Menu Bar, pointing to paragraph and choosing Indent. Remember that you must have the cursor at the start of the paragraph for the entire paragraph to indent the entire paragraph. You can also indent using the special symbol on the left side of the ruler but it is cumbersome and awkward and would not be recommended.

Indenting in Microsoft Word is similar to Lotus WordPro. The position of the cursor is not important only that indenting will occur in the paragraph where the cursor is located. You will need to use the Paragraph dialog box to assign the distances for the indenting to use. You can also use the increase indent buttons on the Formatting Toolbar to do the same thing. Another way to indent is to use the ruler indent indicator (a down-pointing and up-pointing pentagram or home plate symbol on the left side of the ruler or the up-pointing pentagram or home plate symbol on the right side). The down-pointing symbol is for first line indents on paragraph and the up-pointing symbol is for hanging indents, while the up-pointing symbol on the right side of the ruler is for left indents (moving toward the left).

In our March SIG meeting we will continue our discussion of advance functions. We will work primary documentation, secondary documentation, research related word processing functions and how best to use them. Usages of  justification, indenting, bulleting, lists, text spacing, line spacing, paragraph spacing and when not to use them will be presented. Line numbering, page numeration and identification, special insertions (dates, time, registration, propriety marks, and others) will get a detail review. Creating master documents, tables of contents, indexing, and other large document functions will get a detail treatment.

For those who may not know, we are covering all three major suites (Microsoft Office 2000, Corel WordPerfect Office 2000, and Lotus SmartSuite Millennium) in this sig. At present we are covering word processing. Depending on how much time it takes to finish we will later cover databases, spreadsheets, presentations programs, or organizers.

The e-mail for this SIG will be suites2000@nopc.org.  Any communications outside of SIG meeting time is accomplish by e-mail or though phone calls (Ashton C. Mouton, Jr. at 246-7759). There will be samples of work, problem solving, and a question and answer session at each meeting. Hope to see you there.