week 9 10-12

Welcome to another blog for NCT. This week we are looking at some advanced techniques for using MS Word. Strangely though I shall be using OpenOffice but it's still a writer program so it shouldn't be much different. We have a multitude of exercises to get through so lets get started.

Exercise 1- Opening, Typing & Saving.

First exercise was to open a document, type up a job application letter and save it. This was simple and I had no troubles as I had done similar things before. This exercise is useful as it is completely basic and most people should know how to do such things. Also, to get jobs & to complete letters and the like you need those basic skills.

Exercise 2- Bold, Italics, Underline & Bullets.

The next exercise was to change some of the letter into bold, italic, underline & to add some bullet points. Once, again this was simple and useful for people to know because it makes the text more appealing for people to read.

Exercise 3- Headers, Footers & Double Spacing

This exercise was to add a header and a footer and to make the text in double line spacing. The header and footer was easy but it took me a while to find spacing options on openoffice but I eventually found it. This once again is useful because it makes the text more professional and appealing.

Exercise 4- Track Changes

This exercise required me to do some track changes to my document. I don't really understand why this is useful, but I'm sure it is in some way but I can't see it. This once again required me to go to the help menu to find out how to do because Openoffice is different to MS Word. Once I found out though it was simple.

Exercise 5- Mail Merge

This exercise was to do some mail merging. This exercise was much more advanced than the others and took me a little while to do. I had to go through the help quite a few times to overcome the problems I encountered. This exercise is useful for someone sending letters to more than one person & allows for mass emailing.

So there was the fun I had while while learning some basic & advanced techniques for using a word processor. Not long left in the semester so NCT is coming to a close. So far the subject has been really enjoyable and enlightening.