Gobe Productive User's Guide - Word Processing Tutorial

- Designing graphics
- Building a Word Processing document
- Developing a spreadsheet
- Creating a chart
- Laying-out a presentation
- Touching up a picture
- Being Productive: Tips for Integrating and Getting the Most from Gobe Productive

# Building a Word Processing Document

In this section, you will learn how to work with a simple word processing document. Word Processing is quite easy in the Gobe Productive suite.

This section contains the following exercises:

Type! | Selecting Text | Character vs. Paragraph Formatting | Formatting Text Appearance
Paragraph Alignment | Paragraph Indents | Using Tabs | Checking Your Spelling
Making a Text Style | Printing Your Document | Conclusion

## Launch Gobe Productive and Begin a New Document

- Run Gobe Productive.
- When the New Document window displays, select Word Processing and click OK. A new word processing document is started.

## Type!

So you have some text to work with, type in your favorite poem, letter, or technical reference manual. You do not need to use the [ENTER] or [Return] key when you get to the end of a line. The program automatically "wraps" lines of text for you. You only need to press [ENTER] or [Return] when you want to end a paragraph or insert a "hard return" in the text flow.

## Selecting Text

Before you change text, you must select it. To do this, position the cursor at the beginning of the text you want to change.

1. Click and hold the primary mouse button.
2. Drag the cursor over the text you want to change. When you have selected all the text you want to change, release the mouse button.

## Character vs. Paragraph Formatting

There are two "levels" of formatting: paragraph formatting and character formatting.

Changing the size, color, and font of individual letters and numbers is character formatting. Changing the indentation, alignment, and line spacing is paragraph formatting. Character formatting only affects the characters you select to format. Paragraph formatting affects an entire paragraph, regardless of how many characters you select in the paragraph.

## Formatting Text Appearance

Needless to say, the default font is probably a little plain. Let's dress up the color, size, and text style. Font formatting is character formatting so only the characters you select are formatted.

1. Select a block of text.
2. Click and hold on the Text Font tool in the FormatBar.
3. A list of all the available fonts is displayed. Notice how the display shows how each font looks. Select the font you like and release the mouse button.
4. The selected text changes to the font you selected.

Next, change the size of that text.

1. Make sure the text is still selected.
2. Click and hold on the Text Size tool in the FormatBar. A list of point sizes is displayed.
3. Select a point size for the text and release the mouse button.
4. The selected text changes to the point size you selected.

Last, add some color to the text.

1. Make sure to select some text.
2. Click and hold on the Text Color tool in the FormatBar.
3. Beside the button, a small popup menu appears. The menu displays three buttons that represent different types of text fill.
   - Color
   - Pattern
   - Gradient .
4. If you position the cursor over these buttons, a palette of default colors is displayed. Select a color, pattern, or gradient from the palette.

If you want to fine tune a color, pattern, or gradient, "tear-off" the text color tool and create a floating palette. You may then customize any color, pattern, or gradient. See the Customizing Inks topic in the graphics section for more information.

## Paragraph Alignment

Alignment is a paragraph formatting feature, so that when you change the alignment of any word or letter in a paragraph, the entire paragraph is aligned that way.

1. Position the I-beam cursor anywhere in a paragraph.
2. Using the alignment buttons on the word processing PartBar , click the alignment you want. By default, all paragraphs are left aligned.

You can also set these and other paragraph formatting options using the Paragraph format dialog box. To access this dialog box , select Paragraph from the Format menu.

## Paragraph Indents

Like alignment, paragraph indents are also a paragraph formatting feature. Changing the indent properties of one word or letter in a paragraph will change the entire paragraph.

- If you drag the Left Margin Marker, all selected paragraphs move to be aligned to that marker.
- If you drag the First Line Marker, the first line of all selected paragraphs will move to align to that marker.
- Likewise, the Right Margin Marker changes the right alignment of all selected paragraphs.

You can also set these and other paragraph formatting options using the Paragraph format dialog box. To access this dialog box , select Paragraph from the Format menu.

## Using Tabs

Tabs are an easy way to display text in a columnar format or offset text with some extra white space. Moreover, you can use tabs to align text in different ways.

For example, one of the most common uses for tabs is to create a left and right aligned header for pages. This looks like this:

1. From the Document menu, select Insert Header. A header frame is inserted at the top of the page.
2. Position your cursor in the header frame.
3. Type My Report, and press [TAB].
4. From the Format menu, select Insert Page #. This inserts the current page number.
5. Position the cursor in the rule and click once. A small triangle appears. This is a tab stop.
6. Double-click on the new triangle. The Edit Tab dialog box is displayed. This dialog box allows you to modify the location and alignment of tab stops.
7. In the Tab Type box, select the Right option In the Tab Fill box, make sure none is filled.
8. Click OK.
9. Lastly, drag the tab stop triangle over to the far right margin. The text moves and aligns to the right side of the page.

This is one simple example of how to use tab stops. Using the Tab Fill and position you can create all types of layouts.

| NOTE: By default, the application places left-aligned tab stops every 1/2 inches.

## Checking Your Spelling

The Gobe Productive spelling checker helps clean up your text.

1. From the Document menu, select Spell Check.
2. From the Spell Check submenu, select how you want to begin checking your spelling. The Start From Top option will begin spell checking at the very first line of the document (or text frame). The Start from Cursor begins the spell checking at where ever the cursor is located.
3. The Spell Checking Bar is displayed. This bar contains buttons to control the spell checking process.
4. Click Begin to start spell checking.
5. When a a misspelled word is discovered, suggestions are displayed in a drop-down list beside the Replace button.
6. Select the replacement you want and click Replace. The misspelled word is replaced and the spell checking resumes.

Not all words the spell checker identifies as misspelled are truly wrong. Technical words, jargon, acronyms, and other terms may not be in the Gobe Productive dictionary. If you want to add a word to your user dictionary, click Learn when the system highlights the word.

## Making a Text Style

Professional writers never write a long document without using styles. Styles are a great way to define a common look for a document. For example, when you start a new section in a document, you probably want to have a heading for the new section. By defining a Heading style, you can have a pre-defined format to apply to text so all your headings will look the same.

- Type some text and format it exactly as you want. Remember to set all the paragraph and character settings.
- From the Styles menu tool . select New Style...; A New Style dialog box is displayed.
- Type in a Style Name.
- Click and hold Style Type. If you want the style to appear in ALL document types, select Basic. If you want the style to appear in only word processing documents, select Basic Paragraph.
- Check the Copy formatting from selection box. This instructs the application to copy the formatting properties from the text you selected. If you leave this option unchecked, the application creates a new "blank" style.
- Click OK.

The Style tool now lists your new style. You can now select any text in a document, apply the style, and all the formatting options you had established for the style are applied to the selected text.

## Printing Your Document

See the Printing a Document topic for more information about how to print.

## Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned the basics for creating a text document. If you want to know more about the word processing features of the Gobe Productive suite, see the Word Processing section of this User's Guide.

In the next tutorial, you will learn how to work with spreadsheets.

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