Same Song, Another Verse (NeoOffice)

        John Carter to the rescue.  A question on NeoOffice brought this speedy reply. "Documents written with Pages will not come up in NeoOffice, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, or MS Office.

        "Documents written with MS Word will come up in NeoOffice, but there may be some formatting changes.

        "The only reason to use NeoOffice is if you don’t have MS Office and you want to create a document that can be shared with MS Office users in the .doc format — but you have to keep the formatting simple and use only standard fonts like Arial, Courier, Times, Helvetica, etc.

       "Personally, I have MS Office but only for tutoring purposes. I use Pages for PMUG documents and NeoOffice for everything else. Pages is not a real document processor and NeoOffice is."  So, now we know more than we did.  Thanks, John. 

Your Surprise for Your Family

With your handy Mac computer you can easily make a nice surprise present for your family.  Here’s three things that only YOU can do for your kids, grandkids, even the old folks!  

1. Make an “Old Time Favorites” cookbook from recipes handed down to you -- probably handwritten! Collect enough for 24 pages, some from each category.  Write something about who originally made that yummy stuff.
2. Make an “Shortcut Recipe” cookbook.  This is where you’ve updated and simplified your own favorites.  Instead of feeding 10, maybe change to feeding 2 or 4.  Use modern ingredients, the microwave, convection oven. 
3. Make a “I Remember When” booklet.  This is not your entire lifetime on 24 pages! Just some interesting highlights that you do recall.  Describe what makes those events significant in your memory. 

Jot down the first ideas that come to mind.  Let it rest a few days.  Reread and then rewrite. 

        Can you picture this as a 5 ½ x 8 ½ booklet which you’d staple?  Would it work better on full size pages, 3-hole punched, in a notebook? Or, a spiral-bound booklet? 

        In Pages go to File > New from Template Chooser.  See if you get any bright ideas after looking at these examples.  

That’s the screen shot pasted here to the left side. 

        With Microsoft Word: Mac 2011 you can go to File >  New from Templates and click to view Online Templates.  There are a lot from which to choose.  

        If you use the Blue Squirrel program, Click Book will do the layouts for various kinds of booklets.  http://www.bluesquirrel.com    Here’s the link for Mac ClickBook: http://www.bluesquirrel.com/products/cbmac/  It’s $49.95 for OS X, compatible with Lion and Mountain Lion.  Note special pricing on Print to iPad, iPhone, Android, or Kindle. They have more than 70 custom layout styles.

        You might even scan and paste in some photos.  Be creative! Picture the compliments!

        Help us spread the PMUG info,  www.pmugnews.blogspot.com   And write and tell us what you’re learning and doing:  edpr@commspeed.net   We want our PMUG to be helpful and friendly. It’s a time to enjoy and participate. 

 

Words, More Words, and Lots-a Words!

Yes, you use the Mac Dictionary.  How handy to have it on the dock, and easily look up definitions, the Thesaurus, Apple dictionary and Wikipedia.  But what about specialized dictionaries?  There’s a bunch!  

http://www.classicalworks.com/html/glossary.html  musical terms

http://www.epicurious.com/tools/fooddictionary   cooking terms 

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/hp.asp   medical

YourDictionary  http://www.yourdictionary.com/  lists most misspelled words,  how to do wild card search, brain training games, etc.

http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml  know the idea you want to convey but are fishing for that certain word?  Describe the concept and up comes pages of suggested terms.  Good for generating a list of words in some category.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/  extra features make this a helpful site to check on. 

Going to Apple’s webpage brings up www.Dictionary.com/ , a free app for your iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  

http://www.freebyte.com/dictionary/#specialized_dictionaries   lists some specialized dictionaries, free thesauri, translation tools, spellcheckers, games, images, reference desk. 

       Here’s fun with the Mac’s Apple dictionary.  Open it and type in “a” and up comes a list of every entry beginning with that letter.  You’ll find things you didn’t know! Explore and learn. 

       Today, smile at that person sitting next to you and introduce yourself.  Maybe they just moved here from  Last Chance, Iowa or Beanville, Vermont or Fort Necessity, Louisiana.   (Yes, I found those listed in http://www.accuracyproject.org/towns.html  Your birthplace listed there?)  

        See you next time? 

(This is the handout for 11-17-12 from Elaine) 

Microsoft Office Issues to Consider

Thinking of upgrading to Lion?  A careful look at the known issues may underscore the idea of waiting for upgrades in Lion, according to this article about Microsoft Office.  Thanks to Prez Art Gorski for this information.

Changing Documents from Word to Pages

        With a huge file of things accumulated that I wrote with Microsoft Word '97 and then Word 2004 holding up my upgrade to Lion the question is: how to change every document to Pages. More recently I’ve gone from Pages ’08 to Pages ’09, which is currently v. 4.1.
        Here’s the solution, unless you can come up with something easier that doesn’t cost $$$.  Click on the title of a document in the folder to highlight it, then Control Click on the title. On the little drop down menu choose Save As and select Pages.
        (Pages is a good writing tool for me, with one exception:  it doesn't know how to alphabetize a list, or "sort" as Word refers to the procedure under the heading Tools.)