Week Two - Office Applications 07/08/07

In week two of UPC 0004, we focused on the applications that can be used with computers. The application we used this week was Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. The main points from our lecture this week were:

- PC's are commonly used to achieve tasks such as :

• File Handling


• Word Processing


• Creating Spreadsheets


• Creating Presentations


• Accesing Internet


• Writing e-mails and


• Viewing PDF's

Each of the above tasks require use of different applications. Just to name a few, File Handling is usually achieved by the application Windows Explorer where as Word Processing tasks are achieved by Microsoft Word. Microsoft Excel helps achieve tasks such as creating Spreadsheets while Microsoft Powerpoint helps achieve tasks related to presentations.
All applications require general knowledge and skills regarding which applications suit which tasks. It is important for the users of these applications to understand how to operate these applications to achieve and get the best results from their tasks.

As students in this course UPC, we are required to gain the skills and knowledge on how to operate these applications so that we can successfuly communicate with our peers and lecturers or tutors. Furthermore, we require these skills to successfuly create word documents and powerpoint presentations that are of university standard so that we can succeed in our assignments.

In the tutorial, we learnt how Microsoft Word works, and the different tasks that it can help achieve. We had an excercise to complete in the workshop whereby certain tasks related to the application were set and we had to demonstrate we could perform those tasks by reading through a manual guide. Below are some of the tasks the exercise required us to do:

• Adjust the TYPEFACE


• Adjust the MARGINS AND ALIGNMENT


• Adjust LINE SPACING


• Create HEADINGS (using the "document map" feature)


• KEEP HEADINGS WITH TEXT


• Include a HEADER/FOOTER


• Creating Dot Leaders and



• Inserting an image using clip art.

Below is a screen capture of the excercise relating to the Microsoft Word application.

The red circles show the above mentioned tasks performed as per exercise requirements.

In addition to the Microsoft Word excercise, we also had an exercise on Microsoft Excel. In this exercise we had to:

- moving quickly around Excel
- selecting cells and names of cells
- entering different types of data into cells
- editing a cell
- performing mathematical calculations
- adjusting width of column
- cell alignment
- operating with the auto sum icon
- automatic calculation
- creating borders
- merge and centre
-adding background color
-use of auto format
- auto fill
-format painter/brush and
- conditional formatting

Other things we learnt to do with Excel were:

- creating different charts from our data. These charts included of : Pie chart and Column Graphs.

These were the learning aspects of Microsoft Word and Excel that we covered in our tutorial this week.

Below are screen prints of the tasks performed in Microsoft Excel exercise this week:












Readings:

This weeks reading materials come from the web address below:
http://www.knight-web.net/tutorials/photoshop/
This week the reading is on graphic formats. From the reading, I have gathered the following:

There are several types of graphic formats. Some of these include of:

• Bitmap (.bmp) - is the standard Windows bitmap image format for PC's. It is useful for wallpapers on desktops.
  
• CompuServe (.gif) - is a compressed format of maximum 256 colours that is designed to reduce the file transfer time over phone lines. These formats are commonly used in HTML documents, over the World Wide Web and many online services. Furthermore, GIF file types support annimations.
• Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpg/jpeg) - Commonly used to display images on the internet. Saving an image as Jpeg, will reduce its size and opening it while decompress its file size.
  

These were some of the file types /formats that were discussed in the reading this week.

Below is a screen shot of the webpage where this week's reading came from.

This sums up everything we have learnt this week.