Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 3: Using the Explorer and the Desktop |
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In this hour, you learn the details of using the Explorer window to access StarOffice resources in your documents.
You also learn how to get around the Desktop and associated Start menu to quickly start editing new or existing documents.
This hour builds on the overview of the StarOffice window presented in Hour 2, "Getting Started with StarOffice." You'll have some opportunities to try the things that you are shown, so you might want to have StarOffice running in front of you as you read.
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In Hour 2, you learned about the Explorer window. In this hour, you dig deeper into how to use the Explorer window as you work in StarOffice.
The Explorer window as it appears after you install StarOffice is shown in Figure 3.1. The Explorer gives you a treelike structure in which you can locate and store documents of different types, including templates, Web pages, and documents that you've created. In addition, you use the Explorer to create and access most Internet resources in StarOffice.
Figure
3.1
The
Explorer window in StarOffice.
The StarOffice Explorer window isn't just for documents, however. It provides a quick interface to many specialized resources that StarOffice provides. With the Explorer, you can access these resources with a couple of mouse clicks instead of searching through subdirectories.
To use items listed in the Explorer window, follow these two rules:
If an item has a plus sign (+) to the left of it, click on the plus sign to display the contents of that item. (The Gallery item is an example.) The plus sign then changes to a minus sign (-), which you can click on to close the view of the item.
If an item doesn't have a plus sign to the left of it, as is the case with the Recycle Bin item, click on the icon or the word itself (Recycle Bin) to show the contents of that item in the Beamer window.
Tip - You also can double-click on an item in the Explorer window to display its contents in the main viewing area. This is convenient if you don't have the Beamer open, but it can get in the way if you're working with open documents. |
Tip - If the Explorer window takes up too much room on your screen, click the stick pin icon on the right edge of the Explorer to make the window appear on top of your document. Then use the arrow icon to view or hide the Explorer as needed. |
You'll see the Explorer used for examples throughout the rest of the book.
As you're learning the parts of the Explorer window, you'll view many different types of information and system resources. The best way to view these items is usually in the Beamer window.
To view the Beamer window, choose Beamer from the View menu. The Beamer window is like a little catalog or listing where special information is displayed; it appears just below the toolbars.
With the Beamer onscreen, it is easier to see how useful the different parts of the Explorer can be. Why is the Beamer so useful? In general, the items displayed in the Beamer can be dragged and dropped into the document that you're working on. You'll walk through some examples as you explore the items in the Explorer.
The following sections define each of the items shown in the Explorer window and describe how you can try them yourself.
In order to try the examples that follow, you need to have a document open. To open a blank StarWriter document, double-click on the New Text Document icon. (Use the Start bar Desktop icon to switch to it first, if necessary.)
With the Explorer and Beamer windows visible, you're ready to look at the default items in the Explorer.
Many options in the Explorer are accessed using a right-click menu. To see the main right-click menu, click your right mouse button on the word Explorer in the top line of the Explorer window. The pop-up menu, with the New and Document submenus opened, is shown in Figure 3.2.
Figure
3.2
Pop-up menus are used to access many features in the Explorer window.
The address book is a collection of mini-databases (each one called a Table) in which you can store names, addresses, and other information about people you know. You can create custom queries and forms for these Tables, and you can add new information as needed.
Follow these steps to view the sample table in the Address book and to see how you might use it:
1. Expand the tree, if necessary, by clicking on the plus sign (+) to the left of the Address Book icon; this opens the Address Book.
2. Click on the plus sign to the left of the Tables icon to open the list of Tables.
3. Click on the address item. The sample addresses appear in the Beamer window.
4. Click on one of the gray buttons at the far left, near one of the addresses in the Beamer window, to select that record. (The display that appears is shown in Figure 3.3.)
5. Click on and drag the arrow to the left of the name, releasing the mouse button within your document window.
6. Use the Database columns dialog box to select which parts of the address book entry are to be inserted into your document, and what form they will take (table, text, and so on). When you choose OK, the data from the address book appears in your document.
Figure
3.3
The Beamer window with a sample Address Book entry selected.
Tip - You can create new tables by right-clicking on the Tables item in the Address Book and choosing New, Table, and then AutoPilot or Table Design. |
Bookmarks are pointers to documents that you might want to view or edit again in the future. The bookmarks folder is like using bookmarks in any Web browser, except that in StarOffice you can use bookmarks for local documents as well as for documents on the Web. If you want to add a file that you're viewing to the bookmark folder, just drag and drop the Link icon onto the Bookmark folder in the Explorer. (The Link icon is a folder with a triangular flag on it, located just to the left of the URL window in the Function toolbar.)
If you click on the Bookmarks folder, a few predefined bookmarks appear in the Beamer window.
StarOffice comes with a collection of hundreds of graphics that you can use for your own documents. The Gallery collection includes many types of images, including the following:
Bullets--Small graphics that you can use to highlight items in a list
Rulers--Horizontal lines that you can use to graphically separate sections of a document
Textures--Colors and patterns that you can use to form a distinctive background for your documents (but don't make your text unreadable!)
You might recognize that these graphics are most useful in creating Web pages, as described in Hour 22, "Creating Internet Documents with StarOffice." However, they can also be useful for other documents.
All these graphics are located in the Gallery folder of the Explorer. You can browse through the graphics in the Gallery and insert any of them into a document, spreadsheet, or presentation you're preparing.
Use a graphic from the Gallery by following these steps:
1. If necessary, click on the plus sign (+) to the left of the Gallery icon to expand the Gallery tree.
2. Click on the Bullets icon. A collection of bullet icons appears in the Beamer window. (This is shown in Figure 3.4.)
Figure
3.4
The Beamer window with bullet graphics from the Gallery displayed.
3. Scroll around the Beamer window until you find the graphic that you want.
4. Click and drag that icon, releasing the mouse button over your document. A copy of the graphic is inserted into your document.
Most graphical operating systems have a recycle bin where you can place documents that you no longer need. The recycle bin in StarOffice provides this feature for your StarOffice documents. By default, documents are not actually erased until you empty the Recycle Bin.
You can place any unwanted file from the StarOffice Desktop or Explorer folders in the Recycle Bin by dragging its icon to the Recycle Bin folder.
When you click on the Recycle Bin icon, the list of files stored in the Recycle Bin appears in the Beamer window.
The Explorer Recycle Bin lists in parentheses the number of files that are currently in the Recycle bin (no number is shown if no files are present).
To work with the Recycle Bin, click on the Recycle Bin icon with your right mouse button. You can then choose to empty the Recycle bin to permanently delete the files it contains (thus freeing up that disk space).
Note - The Recycle Bin pop-up menu does not include the option to Empty Recycle Bin unless the Recycle Bin contains at least one file. |
Caution - No undelete command exists in Linux--the delete function is permanent. When you delete files by emptying the Recycle Bin, you cannot recover the files that were deleted. |
The Samples folder contains templates and sample documents that you can use to prepare your own documents in StarOffice. You'll look at some of these sample documents later to see some of the features of StarOffice.
Tip - If you didn't use the Standard installation for StarOffice, the Samples folder might be empty. |
The Work Folder is your personal storage area. When you save a file in StarOffice, the default location in which to save it is the Work Folder, described in Hour 7, "Creating a New StarWriter Document." When you open the Work Folder item, all the files that you've stored in the Work Folder appear in the Beamer or on the Desktop area; you can then double-click on any document to open it. Figure 3.5 shows how the Work Folder might look after you've saved a few StarOffice files in it.
Figure
3.5
The StarOffice Work Folder with some user-created documents stored in it.
Of course, the Work Folder is actually just a directory on your hard disk (~/Office50/ explorer/WorkFolder). In fact, the graphics in the Gallery and the other Explorer items are also stored in distinct subdirectories on your hard disk. The Explorer window is useful because it makes opening files that you work on regularly more convenient--you don't have to browse through the entire Linux filesystem.
The Workplace is a way to graphically access the filesystem on your Linux computer. When you click on the plus sign next to the Workplace item, the contents of the root directory of your Linux system appear. Subdirectories appear as folders in the Explorer window; files appear in the Beamer window so that you can work with them directly.
Figure 3.6 shows how the Explorer and Beamer windows might look while you are exploring your local filesystem.
Figure
3.6
You can explore your local filesystem from the Explorer window's Workplace
icon.
If you store your documents in the Work Folder (the default when you save a file), you probably won't often use the Workplace item. On the other hand, you might want to import graphics stored on other parts of your hard disk, open text documents that weren't originally created in StarOffice, or drag and drop files to new locations on your Linux system. The Workplace in the Explorer window works well for any of these tasks.
Sams Teach Yourself StarOffice® 5 for Linux in 24 Hours |
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Hour 3: Using the Explorer and the Desktop |
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