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PowerPoint audience handouts offer a way of giving the attendees of your presentations something to remember you by. They normally consist of printouts of the presentation; one, two, three, four six or nine slides to a page. Naturally, however, whether or not the essence of your presentation can be captured by this kind of printout depends on the nature of the presentation.

To customize the appearance of handouts, click on the View tab of the PowerPoint ribbon and then click on the Handout Master button. In PowerPoint, masters allow you to determine the format of the three main elements within a presentation; slides, speaker notes and handouts. When you are in handout master mode, the Handout Master contextual tab appears. It contains a Page Setup section which allows you to choose the orientation of both the page as a whole and of the individual slide miniatures. It also contains buttons for activating or deactivating the header, footer, date and page number as well as for formatting the background of the slide.

Given that Microsoft PowerPoint allows you to produce three separate elements (slides, speaker notes and handouts), when the print command is used, you need to specify which of these elements you wish to print. This is done by choosing an option from the Print What drop-down menu. In addition to the three elements mentioned above, you can also print the outline of the presentation.

For presentations containing a fair amount of important detail, it may be more useful to print out the slide outline and distribute it to the audience in place of PowerPoint’s usual handouts. Better still, you can export your presentation into Microsoft Word and then customise it for your audience. To export an outline, from the Office button, choose Publish and then Create Handouts in Microsoft Word.

When exporting to Word in this way, you will be presented with a dialogue box which allows you to choose one of five page layout options. Firstly, you can have speaker notes next to slides. This will create a two column layout with a slide miniature in column one and speaker notes next to it in column two. If you have used the speaker notes feature in your presentation, this may be a useful solution. The second option is Blank Lines Next to Slides: this produces the same two column layout as the first option but the right hand column is blank, so that you can enter notes next to each slide.

The first two options don’t offer you much room for text. If you have made or wish to make extensive notes on each slide, options three and four (Notes below Slides and Blank lines below Slides) provide a layout with the text below the slide miniature and leaves approximately 60 percent of the page free for notes.

If you simply wish your audience to have a summary of the content of the presentation, you can choose the final option: Outline Only. This simply exports the text on each slide into Microsoft Word.

When exporting to Microsoft Word in this way, you have the option of activating Paste Link. This will create a link between the exported file and the original PowerPoint presentation, such that, if the presentation is modified, the exported Word file will also be updated.

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Graphic design refers to artistic and professional tasks which focus on visual communication and presentation in order to communicate an idea or concept. An assortment of methods is used to create and combine symbols, images and words to create a visual depiction of ideas and messages. A graphic artist/designer is one who does the designs graphics. Graphic design software programs provide all of the professional and creative tools that one will need for drawing, photo editing, web graphics, logos, page layout, painting, image design and editing, illustration, and other design processes.

There is no one best digital design computer program. However, there are specific software programs that are better for certain graphic design tasks. One should choose programs for digital design based on the task that will be performed.

Professional graphic designers tend to use graphic designing software that contain page layout software, graphics software, and word processing software. Adobe products of graphic design applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are a few of the best graphic design software. As well, Corel products are top selling products of graphic design software programs. Top Corel products include CorelDRAW, Corel Ventura layout software, and Corel Photo-Paint.

Microsoft produces Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Microsoft Office Publisher which is used in page layout for print. Quark Press Serif produces a number of Web design applications for graphics, but the primary graphic design software application is Serif Page Plus. The latest versions from Adobe, Corel, and Serif can be downloaded or purchased as a hardcopy.

A few top software programs for graphic design include:

Avanquest Design and Print Business Edition: This software allows designers to create and publish various sales and public relations materials such as greeting cards, postcards and flyers.

Greenstreet Publishing Studio: This design software allows one to make documents in a number of languages. One can edit photos with added filters, borders and image effects.

Broderbund Print Master: This software is filled with templates such as brochures, flyers, posters and other office forms. Photo and image editing is included. It is very use-friendly.

Print Shop Pro Publisher: This award-winning program allows one to edit photos and images, produce unlimited designs, and use clip-arts for a variety of projects.

Logos: For commercial printing, scalable EPS graphics are the format that designers choose because they can be easily imported into most major page layout programs. Vector-based drawing programs allow more flexibility when creating artwork that is to be resized or must go through numerous edits. Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, and Macromedia Freehand are examples of vector-based graphics software for logo design.

Print Artist: This software contains a broad range of images, design, templates and fonts.

Graphic Design Software for Photo-Editing and Illustration: Adobe and Corel provide most of the professional level graphics software choices. Bitmap graphics tools are needed for working with photos, scans, or other images. Adobe Photoshop, Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and The GIMP are top choices.

With the right digital design software, you can create just about any print or Web design project.

Designers generally prefer Macromedia and look for cheap Adobe software for their computers. Business professionals likely look for Microsoft software for managing and operating basic business functions.

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Before you can edit or format your text, you need to highlight it. Highlighting your text is a way of telling Microsoft Word that you want to work with a certain piece of text. (Highlighting is also referred to as selecting.)

The easiest way of selecting text is to position the cursor where you want your selection to start, click and hold the mouse button down and drag to the position where you want to end the selection. It is not necessary to drag across every single line that you want to select. It is sufficient to move in a straight line from start to the finish.

To deselect your text and remove the highlight, simply click anywhere in your text. The flashing text cursor will then reappear.

Another easy way of highlighting text is to select the whole document. This is done using the “Select All” command. In Microsoft Word 2007, the “Select All” command can be found in the “Editing” group of the “Home” Tab. Click to display the “Select” drop-down menu then choose “Select All”.

The “Select All” command can be found in lots of programs and lots of different environments. It can also be done via the keyboard using Control-A: that is to say, keep the Control key held down while typing “A”.

As well as highlighting character by character, Word also allows you to select complete lines. To do this, move the cursor into the left margin and you’ll notice that it changes to an arrow pointing to the right. When the cursor changes, simply click to highlight a single line or click and drag to highlight several lines.

Another way of highlighting text is to click multiple times. To highlight a word, double click on the word; to highlight an entire paragraph, click three times on the paragraph.

It is also possible to select text using the mouse and keyboard. This normally involves using the Shift key. One such technique is click then Shift-click. First, you click to position the cursor at the start of the text to be highlighted; next hold down the Shift key and click to mark the point where you want the highlighting to end. All the text between the two clicks will now be selected.

To highlight text without the mouse, use the cursor keys on your keyboard to position the cursor where you want your highlight to begin. Next, press Shift in conjunction with one of the cursor keys. To highlight character by character, press the right or left cursor key depending on the required direction. To highlight line by line press the down or up cursor key.

The Shift key can also be used in conjunction with Control. For example, if you hold down the Control and Shift keys and press the right arrow, you will select word by word instead of character by character. In a similar way, if you hold down Shift and Control and press the down arrow, you will select paragraph by paragraph.

The Home and End keys can also be utilised in this context. For example, if the cursor is in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the current line. Holding down Control and Shift and pressing the right cursor key will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control, Shift and End will select from the current position to the end of the document.

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One of the pivotal components of the Microsoft Office 2007, Excel is a uniquely powerful spreadsheet. If you bought this sophisticated piece of software, it makes sense to ensure that your staff members know how to use it effectively. Having allowed them a week or two to get used to the new environment and go through some online tutorials, you will probably want to get them properly trained. Tutor-led software training has the benefit that delegates are able to ask questions as they learn and have complex concepts explained and demonstrated to them until they fully understand them.

Sending your people on a public Excel course is one possibility. However, increasingly companies are demanding to have this training customised to meet their specific demands. Microsoft Excel can be used for a variety of data analysis and storage tasks: not everyone uses it in the same way. Perhaps you will be using it for complex business modelling. Or, you may be using it to create interactive forms and reports complete with complex calculations. Maybe your staff will be using the program in a database role recording information under column headings. Booking a customised course will ensure that you only pay for instruction which is relevant to your requirements and reflects the way in which you will be using Microsoft Excel.

Before you start contacting Excel training companies, it would be a good idea to ensure that you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve by using Excel and that your expectations are realistic. When you approach training companies, you should make it clear that you do not simply want them to deliver their standard Excel courses but that you require a customised programme of training. Between you, a schedule of topics to be covered should then be drawn up and the duration of the program decided.

The customisation process may also involve identifying different requirements within your own organisation. Different people may need to do different tasks with the program and therefore need different skills. For example, some of your users will be primarily interested in using Excel for business analysis and projection. Their primary areas of interest will be the “What if” analysis tool like goal seek, scenarios and pivot tables. On the other hand, you may have people who are interested in create charts and reports either for printing or for use in PowerPoint presentations.

Most training companies offering customised Excel courses should be willing to accommodate the specific needs of your organisation and the different profiles of the staff members: accounts, sales and marketing, etc. Between you, you can then create a program of study which satisfies the needs of all users. Perhaps this may mean, having different courses for users with different profiles or perhaps the best approach will be a modular one whereby some modules are taken by everyone while others are only attended by certain user groups.

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Core XML

XML can be found in a growing number of applications nowadays; but what exactly is it? Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a specification by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) for creating markup languages such as XHTML. The XML specification is being used in an increasingly wide range of applications for exchanging data between different environments, platforms and media. One of the main reasons for its rapidly growing popularity is its flexibility. It allows developers to define their own hierarchy of tags which reflect the structure of their data. In addition to the core XML specification, a number of other technologies have been developed for working with XML projects.

XML Schema

Closely linked with XML documents, we have XML schema. XML schema documents and schema languages are used to validate and document XML markup languages. They allow developers to explicitly lay down the syntactical and structural ground rules for particular classes of XML documents. A number of schema languages have been developed but perhaps the two most important are those defined by the W3C: Document Type Definition (DTD) which was built into the original XML specification and the more XML schema language developed a few years later.

XSL, XSLT AND XSL-FO

XML also offers technologies for transforming XML documents. Extensible Stylesheet language (XSL) comprises two parts: XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO). XSLT stylesheets are essentially XML documents which transform a given class of XML document (referred to as the source tree) into a different class of XML document (referred to as the output tree). XSLT documents can be compared to CSS documents but are much more powerful. XSL-FO documents are written in XML and control the formatting layout in an output document in a very detailed manner. It allows the definition of layout masters from which are derived page sequences for generating the final document pages. Flow objects are then used to bind data to the various regions of pages.

XPath, XLink, XPointer and XQuery

When we want to target elements within XML files, there are a number of technologies we can call upon. XPath, XML Linking Language (XLink), and XML Pointer Language (XPointer) are all provide solutions for linking and addressing when working with XML documents. XPath is a declarative language which uses expressions that resemble the directory paths used to describe locations in computer file systems. XPath expressions are used in XSLT documents to address specific nodes within the hierarchy of the XML source document.

XLink is fundamentally a method of creating hyperlinks within XML documents. It overcomes some of the limitations of the hyperlinks used in XHTML, such as the fact that each hyperlink has only one source and one destination. XPointer allows you to create links which point to very specific points within the hierarchy of an XML document by including XPath expressions in its syntax. XQuery is designed to query XML data in much the same way that SQL is used to query databases. It uses XPath expressions to extract elements and attributes within the structure of an XML document.

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When entering numbers into a spreadsheet, one often needs to ensure that the number format is consistent. For example, if the numbers represent prices, you may want to display the appropriate currency symbol or you may simply want to ensure that the number of decimals displayed is always the same.

Unless you specify otherwise, all numbers in Excel are rendered in the “General” format. This means that numbers are displayed exactly as you enter them: if you enter two decimals, two decimals are displayed; if you went to one decimal, one decimal is displayed; and so on.

When specifying the number format, the best idea is usually to select the whole column. To do this, click on the letter or letters representing the column. (Any text contained in the selection will not be affected by the number format you specify.)

Number formats are specified in the “Numbers” group of the Home Tab of Excel’s Ribbon. There are three important formats which apply to numbers: the first is simply called “Number”, the second “Currency” and the third “Accounting”. To gain access to the complete range of number formats, click on “More Number Formats” in the “Numbers” drop-down menu. Another way of opening the “Numbers” dialog box is to click on the launch button in the “Numbers” group of the Home Tab of the Excel Ribbon.

When you click on each of the number formats, you are presented with a series of choices which enable you to refine the way that the format will work. For example, if our numbers refer to an hourly rate, we would probably click the “Number” category in the left column and then specify two decimal places. The option labelled “Use Thousands Separator” will insert the appropriate separator to demarcate thousands. The separator which Excel uses will depend on your locality: for example, if you are in the UK or USA, a comma will be used; if you are in a European country, a dot will be used.

The final option in the “Number” category controls the display of negative numbers. The default is to display a minus sign in front of the number and leave the colour of the number unchanged. However, you can also dispense with the minus sign and change the colour of negative numbers to red; or you can both change the colour of negative numbers to red and display the minus sign.

When we click the “Currency” category, we have pretty much the same choices with the addition of the currency symbol. We can specify which currency symbol is used or we can dispense with the symbol altogether.

The “Accounting” category is pretty much the same as “Currency”. Once again, you can choose a particular currency symbol. However, you will notice that you do not have any choices relating to negative numbers. The convention in accountancy circles is to always place negative numbers in brackets.

As an alternative to using the number dialog box, you can also click on one of the series of handy buttons which are used to apply each of the number formats with single click. There are also two buttons for decreasing and increasing the number of decimals displayed in the highlighted cells.

Finally, there will be times where you enter a number into a cell but do not want Excel to regard it as a number. For example, if you have a column of data with an ID of some sort, although the ID may be numeric, you may not want Excel to see it as a number or to change it in any way. You will probably want the ID to simply stay exactly as it was entered. In this scenario, it’s best to format the number as “Text”. The easiest way of doing this is to highlight the appropriate column and in the number dialog box select the “Text” category.

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Each Excel document is called a workbook and each workbook can contain up to 255 worksheets. To navigate to a particular worksheet, click on one of the tabs displayed at the bottom of your screen.

To the left of the tabs will find four navigation icons. These are very useful where you have a workbook that either contains lots of worksheets or has worksheets with very long names. The very first button makes the name of the first worksheet visible; the very last button makes the name of the last worksheet visible. The left pointing arrow button makes the name of the previous worksheet visible and of course the right pointing arrow button makes the name of the next worksheet visible. These four buttons don’t actually activate a worksheet; they simply make its tab visible. To activate a worksheet, you still have to click on that particular name tab.

Worksheets can also be activated from the keyboard. To activate the next worksheet to the right, hold down the Control key and press Page Down. This moves you forward through your worksheets are naturally holding the Control key and pressing Page Up moves you back to the left.

Once you have navigated to a particular worksheet, you will need to go to a particular cell or a particular section of that worksheet. Firstly, you can use the scrollbars to make different parts of the worksheet visible. Secondly, you can move around the worksheet using the arrows on your keyboard: down, right, up and left.

Excel also contains useful keyboard shortcuts for moving to the edges of a given body of data. To get to the right-most cell of the current range, hold down Control and press the right arrow and of course to get to the bottom cell, hold down Control and press the down arrow.

It is also possible to do exactly the same thing using the mouse. Position the cursor on one of the edges of the bold selection rectangle surrounding the active cell and then simply double-click. Double-clicking on the right hand edge of the selection rectangle activates the extreme right of the current range. Double-clicking on the bottom edge moves the cursor to the bottom edge of the range, and so on.

There are two final navigation key combinations which should be mentioned: Control-Home and Control-End. Hold down the Control key and press the End key to move to the bottom right of the current range. Hold down Control and press Home to move to the top left of the current range.

As well as navigating through worksheets, all users of Excel make frequent use of the Ribbon. Excel offers a series of useful keyboard shortcuts when working with the Ribbon.

To access the ribbon keyboard shortcuts simply press the Alt key once on your keyboard. A series of badges are then displayed which represent the letters or numbers that you should type to activate that part of the Ribbon. For example, “W” is the shortcut for accessing the View Tab.

When you press “W” and the View Tab becomes active, another series of badges is displayed on each of the commands within the View Tab. For example, the “Arrange All” command has “A” as its keyboard shortcut, so simply typing “A” is equivalent to clicking the Arrange All button.

Once you’ve typed a letter to execute a command, the Ribbon loses focus and the shortcut badges disappear. To access Ribbon commands via the keyboard once more, simply press the Alt Key and the badges will reappear. This means that you never have to worry about learning keyboard shortcuts. All you have to remember is to press the Alt key on your keyboard and Excel will prompt you from there.

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Parental Control Software Ratings reveals 5 parental internet monitoring software programs available in today’s market – Webwatcher, Cyber Patrol, PC Tattletale, Net Nanny, and Soft for You. There are many software programs available; however these five have high ratings. Internet monitoring software programs helps protect children on the Internet.

With all the different kinds of internet monitoring software, finding the right one for your family can be difficult. On this single page website parents can easily compare prices, features, services, and the program system requirements of all 5 products. This type of software was made to protect children from undesirable material found on the Internet.

The ratings for parental control software were not taken lightly. Being able to protect children on the Internet is a serious problem, and has proven to be hard as there are advances in technology every day. The useful features that parental internet monitoring software provides help protect children while online.

Included in these parental internet monitoring software programs are:

- A user friendly interface

- Inappropriate Adult Content blockers

- Ability to observe any of your children’s email, peer to peer network, chat & blog, and newsgroup activities

- Limit Time

- Capabilities to keep cyber bullies and online predators away

- Ability to record passwords, keystrokes, chats, and screen shots

- Control Computer/Video Games

- Flexible content filtering options that allow you to customize settings for each user

- Limit access to programs, entire websites, or specific content

These programs differ in that some include features that the others may not. For example, Webwatcher has a full remote monitoring feature meaning that you can monitor from anywhere in the world. PC Tattletale focuses more on monitoring where as Cyber Patrol focuses more on filtering.

Webwatcher is not limited to just monitoring children’s online activity. It can also be used for law enforcement agencies, keeping an eye on your spouse, school computers, and governmental purposes. This is an all-in-one package, which is why the ratings by price ($97.00) are high.

The ratings for PC Tattletale ($49.95), Net Nanny ($39.99), Cyber Patrol ($39.95), and Soft for You ($34.95) parental control software programs according to price are about half that of Webwatcher. These four parental internet monitoring software programs were designed specifically with children in mind. Don’t be fooled by the relatively lower cost because they offer the same basic features as Webwatcher.

Parental Control Software Ratings take all these aspects, similar and different, into account. However, it is ultimately up to you to decide which parental internet monitoring software will best suit your family’s needs. You can’t place a value on your children’s protection on the Internet.

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As well as using the mouse, Microsoft Word 2007 contains a number of useful options for selecting text via the keyboard. Most of these options involve using the Shift key in conjunction with other keys. However, there are also some techniques which rely entirely on the keyboard.

Shift-click

One little-known highlighting technique definitely worth mentioning is the use of the Control key in conjunction with the mouse. This enables you to make discontiguous selections: in other words, selection that have gaps. For example if we want to select just the headings in a particular document, you can drag across the first heading to select it; hold down the Control key and drag across each of the other headings. You will notice that the headings will be selected while the text between them is not. You can then change the format of your headings and none of the other text will affected.

Shift-click

Shift can also be used in conjunction with the cursor keys to highlight characters, words, lines or paragraph. To use these techniques, begin by using the cursor keys on your keyboard to position the cursor where you want your highlighting the start. To highlight character by character press the right or left arrow depending on the direction that you want to move in. To select line by line pressed the down arrow or up arrow depending on the required direction. To deselect some of the highlighted text, move the cursor in the opposite direction. To remove the highlight completely, press any cursor key without the Shift key held down.

Using Shift with the cursor keys

As well as using the cursor keys you can also use Home and End. For example, if the cursor is positioned in the middle of a line, pressing Shift and Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the line; while pressing Shift and End will select from the cursor position to the end of the line.

As well as using Shift, you can use Control-Shift. Control-Shift Home will select from the cursor position to the start of the document. Control-Shift end will select from the cursor position to the end of the document.

The Shift key can also be used in conjunction with the Control key. For example, beginning at the start of the document, if you hold down Control and Shift and press the right arrow, you will select word by word instead of character by character. Similarly if you press Control, Shift and the down arrow, you select paragraph by paragraph.

One little-known highlighting technique definitely worth mentioning is the use of the Control key in conjunction with the mouse. This enables you to make discontiguous selections: in other words, selection that have gaps. For example if we want to select just the headings in a particular document, you can drag across the first heading to select it; hold down the Control key and drag across each of the other headings. You will notice that the headings will be selected while the text between them is not. You can then change the format of your headings and none of the other text will affected.

Making discontiguous selections

Let’s finish with a technique that everyone should be using: click followed by Shift-click. To use this technique, click to mark the start of the area that needs to be highlighted. Next, hold down the Shift key and click to mark the point where you want the highlighting to end. All text between the two clicks will then be highlighted.

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Upgrading to Excel 2007 may be something of a shock to you and your staff. The initial reaction of most people is: “where is everything?” Bearing this in mind, you may well find that a training course on Excel 2007 is a good investment. The training should first of all get you past the initial state of confusion caused by the fact that 2007 looks so different from previous versions. Then it should give you some guidance on the new features in Excel 2007 such as the enhancements to charting and graphics, functions and conditional formatting.

One of the first things you should look for in having training on Excel 2007 is a full explanation of how the new interface works. You should be shown the new way of working and learn useful tips and shortcuts which will enable you to become at least as productive in Excel 2007 as you were in 2003.

In addition to this, however, you will want to learn the new features that Excel 2007 has to offer: the stuff that either wasn’t available in previous versions or which has undergone considerable enhancement.

One fundamental new feature in Excel 2007 is the dimension of a worksheet which is now about 1000 times bigger (in terms of the number of cells) than previous versions. A good Excel 2007 training course should show you how to fully exploit the space available and how to quickly navigate and manage the larger worksheets that will result.

Pivot tables have been considerably improved in Excel 2007. However, given that so many users are a bit vague on getting the best out of pivot tables, why not ask that your training on pivot tables begins with a review of fundamental pivot table concepts before moving on to look at how Excel 2007 implements pivot table features.

Charts and graphics are a great way to add impact to your Excel reports. Does your organisation use them? If so, make sure that your Excel 2007 training course incorporates gives you plenty of practice examples in using Excel 2007’s new features to create and manipulate charts and graphics. You should become a dab hand at using the new charting ribbons: the format ribbon, the design ribbon and the layout ribbon. Do you need advanced features too? If so, you should also be looking to learn about pivot charts, scatter charts and adding trendlines to your charts.

Your Excel 2007 training course should also cover conditional formatting. This is a feature that has been much enhanced in Excel 2007 and your training should show you how to exploit the new features available. Make sure you will come away from the training knowing all about Data Bars and Color Scale.

An Excel spreadsheet without formulas and functions is not much use to anyone. Functions are what Excel is all about. Microsoft have improved the way in which function are entered and edited and added several new functions. When you book training on Excel 2007, make sure that your course will include coverage of new functions like SumIfs, IfError and AverageIf as well as a demonstration of the improvements to the editing of formulas.

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