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THE OFFICE LETTER
STANDARD EDITION
Tips, Tricks, Tools, and Techniques for Microsoft Office
Volume 4, Number 10 August 23, 2004
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IN THIS ISSUE
1) Word: View Your Outline without Formatting
2) Word, Excel, PowerPoint: Rotating Drawing Objects
3) Review: New Crop of DVD Recorders
Premium Edition Extra:
Access: How to Create Parameter Queries
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1) WORD: VIEW YOUR OUTLINE WITHOUT FORMATTING
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We've written extensively about creating, manipulating, and pushing
the limits of Outlines in the Premium edition. Here's a tip we
haven't shared yet.
In Normal view, Word displays as close to what-you-see-is-what-you-
get as it can. However, the purpose of an Outline is to quickly
view the structure of a document (and rearrange large sections of
text quickly). In this case, formatting can just get in the way
(unless you want to make sure it's consistent throughout the
outline).
The good news is that you can temporarily turn formatting off in
Outline view. The text maintains the formatting properties you've
assigned -- you just won't see them in an outline.
Move your cursor to any position within the outline and switch to
Print Layout view. (Use the View/Print Layout command from the
main menu.)
Word should display the Outline toolbar; if it doesn't, use the
View/Toolbars command and choose Outlining.
On the toolbar you'll find a Show Formatting button. (It has an A,
a slash, and a bold, underlined A on the face of the button.)
Click the button to toggle between formatting and plain text.
-- James E. Powell
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2) WORD, EXCEL, POWERPOINT: ROTATING DRAWING OBJECTS
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It's easy to create a simple arrow using the drawing tools built
into Office. After I make sure the Drawing toolbar is displayed
(use the View/Toolbars command), I click on the AutoShapes command,
pick a category (Block Arrows), pick an arrow, then move the mouse
to the document area and draw the shape.
The Block Arrow group already has left-, right-, up-, and down-
pointing arrows, but it's also easy to select and draw a right-
pointing arrow and flip it in any direction. Select the arrow,
then click on the Draw option on the Drawing toolbar, choose Rotate
or Flip, and then choose the direction you want to flip the image.
"Rotate Left" turns the object 90 degrees counterclockwise; "Rotate
Right" turns it 90 degrees clockwise. "Flip Horizontal" spins the
object on its vertical access -- a 180-degree spin (a right-
pointing arrow is now left-pointing). "Flip Vertical" spins the
object around its horizontal axis (an arrow pointing down and to
the right will now point up and to the right).
If increments of 90 degrees aren't what you want, then use the
rotate feature. Select the arrow, choose the Draw option on the
Drawing toolbar, choose Rotate or Flip, then pick Free Rotate. The
mouse pointer turns to a circular arrow; move it over one of the
small green dots surrounding the drawing object, and drag your
mouse to spin the object. (If your object is an arrow, the
rotation reminds me of a spinner used in children's games.)
Now here are two tricks that enhance rotation.
1. Before you rotate the object, hold down the Shift key. You'll
notice that the rotation jumps -- it's not smooth. Every movement
is actually a rotation of 15 degrees.
2. Before you rotate the object, hold down the Ctrl key. Instead
of the center of rotation being the middle of the object, the
object will rotate around a point at the opposite end of the
object. For example, if you rotate on one of the green dots at the
head of the arrow, the arrow will rotate around a point at the tail
of the arrow -- not the middle of the arrow.
-- James E. Powell
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3) REVIEW: NEW CROP OF DVD RECORDERS
SONY DUAL-LAYER, PLEXTOR 12X DVD DRIVES
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Just when you thought you were content with DVD's capacity (how
were we ever satisfied with CDs?), Sony introduces a double-layer
(DL) DVD+R drive that boosts storage to 8.5GB per disk. If your
prime use is to convert personal video into DVD movies, you can
squeeze more onto a disk just as Hollywood does.
The Sony DRU-700A comes as an internal drive with standard ATAPI
connections. It records at 2.4X when writing to double-layer media,
8X for DVD+/- media, and 4X for DVD+/-RW disks. For CDs it can
read at 40X and write at 24X for rewriteable media. I tested using
a variety of blank media, including double-layer media provided by
Verbatim. All worked flawlessly.
Dual-layer disks contain two dye levels, with each layer having its
own groove pattern that controls rotation speed and how the laser
addresses the layer. The drive writes to the first layer (L0) from
the inside out (like single-layer DVDs do now); when that layer's
full, the drive writes to the second layer (L1) from the outside
in. Because of that, the laser takes a little time to jump between
layers -- that's the hesitation you see when watching commercially
manufactured films. During playback, the cutover between layers
was about average; for data retrieval, it was imperceptible.
The DRU-700A drive comes bundled with a variety of recording
software that works with CD and DVD media, most of it from Ahead
software. For example, Nero Burning ROM 6/SE (and its compact
interface, Nero Express 6) creates data and audio disks. Nero
Vision Express 2 is a video capture, author, and edit program for
creating VCD and DVD videos or slideshows. InCD4 packet-writing
software, Nero ShowTime (video playback software), and Nero
BackItUp (an easy-to-understand backup program that can span CDs or
DVDs), Nero MediaPlayer (jukebox software), and a cover designer
(for creating disk labels) are also in the box.
There are a couple of nice touches. The package includes a
replaceable black bezel for installation in black-colored PC cases
(like the Dell in which I tested it). The drive uses what Sony
calls a short-length form-factor -- the drive is an inch shorter in
length, which may make installation easier in some systems where
space is tight.
The drive itself, which needs Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP (Home
or Pro) to work, installed without a problem, and programs
instantly recognized its full capacity. There's no doubt about the
attraction of DL's capacity: four hours of MPEG-2 video (you can
finally transfer your VHS tapes to disk without running out of room
so quickly), 17,000 images, 2000 songs (seven days' worth of
uninterrupted music), compatibility with almost all consumer DVD
video players or DVD-ROM drives (the kind installed in computer
systems and offering playback only).
When Sony released dual-format drives, I was enthusiastic -- no
longer did you have to worry about what type of recording standard
(DVD- or DVD+) you needed; the drive could do it all. Now Sony has
given consumers the ability to record longer video in the same
format used in all of today's Hollywood hits. So am I ready to
jump at this double-layer model?
That depends -- and it's purely an economic issue. There's no
doubt that Sony has built a high-quality drive. I've never had a
lick of trouble with their hardware. But for me, the decision
about double-layer drives comes down to money. Several double-
layer drives are available from hardware manufacturers; one I saw
recently was offered for $70 after rebates, though it came nowhere
close to having the rich set of software that Sony offers (and the
Nero suite is quite good). Sony isn't blind to this competitive
pricing; it recently reduced the list price to $159 (and there's a
$30 rebate to drop the price to that of most name-brand DVD
recorders). The sticking point: the recordable disks currently
sell for about $15 each. With the price of single-layer media at
less than a dollar each (and quickly approaching 50 cents for some
no-name generics at large electronics stores), I'm hard pressed to
recommend media that carries such a premium. Further, the media is
write-only at this point. As a backup medium, write-only is fine;
for my photo-album projects, it's not.
For more information, visit http://www.sonystyle.com.
PLEXTOR
Plextor's 12X drive might be a good compromise in the meantime --
after all, you can't have too much speed when it comes to recording
data on DVDs, and the PX-712A, an internal drive, writes DVD+R/RW
disks at 12X and DVD-R/RW disks at 8x. All DVD media can be
rewritten at 4x and read at 16x. CDs are read and written at 48X
and rewritten at 24X.
The PX-712A is a quiet drive, but the Silent Mode operation slows
the writing, reading, spin-up/spin-down, and tray open/close speeds
so things are quieter still. The drive comes with some unique
features which, like Silent Mode, are controlled from a utility
software suite called PlexTools Professional. SecuRec lets you
password protect a disk. VariRec is the most interesting -- it
allows you to manually adjust the drive's laser power by up to four
degrees during recording, for making minor adjustments based on the
type of media you're using. (You may be able to actually hear the
quality difference when recording music, for example.) VariRec must
be supported by your recording software, and only works with DVD+/-
R and CD-R disks. Another utility in the suite reports on the
drive's performance, measuring such things as tracking and focus
errors, read and write transfer rates, and jitter.
Also part of PlexTools Professional is GigaRec, which lets you
increase the capacity of a standard CD-R disk from 60 to 130
percent of its standard capacity, assuming you use CD-DA or data
writing at 4X or 8X disk-at-once (but not session-at-once
recording). I wouldn't recommend GigaRec, simply for compatibility
reasons.
The Plextor also comes with a variety of Roxio software titles,
including Roxio Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 - DVD Edition and Roxio
PhotoSuite 5 SE. Roxio's Drag-to-Disk utility lets you drag files
to a desktop panel to write files to disk; I found it convenient
but exceptionally slow. A 8200-file copy (1.9 GB in all) took all
afternoon, literally (nearly five and a half hours); using the
Roxio Classic interface to its burning software took a much more
reasonable 9 minutes 47 seconds to complete.
At $149, the Plextor PX-712 may be a bit on the expensive side, and
I did find a site offering a $30 rebate off the $160 it was
charging. Plextor builds their drives with quality, and PlexTools'
ultimate control over your recording may be worth the drive's price
premium.
For full details, visit
http://www.plextor.com/english/products/712A.htm
-- James E. Powell
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PREMIUM EDITION EXTRAS THIS WEEK
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This week Premium Edition subscribers are reading a lengthy
discussion of parameter queries in Access. Learn how to prompt
your user for field values using a pop-up window instead of Access'
ugly and awkward query screen.
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----------- THE OFFICE LETTER ----- www.officeletter.com ----------
Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Office - Published Weekly
Copyright 2004 Masterware, Inc. All rights reserved
Now In Our Fourth Year - ISSN: 1543-5768
Editor in Chief: James E. Powell
Contributing Editors: Jim Boyce (www.boyce.us)
Dick Archer (www.diseno.com)
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