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WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: Microsoft Access is a database creation and management program. To understand Access, you must first understand databases. In this lesson, you will learn about databases and how they are used. You will familiarize yourself with the differences between data management in Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel. Finally, you will get a look ahead at the rest of the Access tutorial. Watch the video below to learn more about databases in Access. WHAT IS A DATABASE? A database is a collection of data that is stored in a computer system. Databases allow their users to enter, access, and analyze their data quickly and easily. They're such a useful tool that you see them all the time. Ever waited while a doctor's receptionist entered your personal information into a computer, or watched a store employee use a computer to see whether an item was in stock? If so, then you've seen a database in action. The easiest way to understand a database is to think of it as a collection of lists. Think about one of the databases we mentioned above: the database of patient information at a doctor's office. What lists are contained in a database like this? To start with, there's a list of patients' names. Then there's a list of past appointments, a list with medical history for each patient, a list of contact information, and so on. This is true of all databases, from the simplest to the most complex. For instance, if you like to bake you might decide to keep a database containing the types of cookies you know how to make and the friends you give these cookies to. This is one of the simplest databases imaginable. It contains two lists: a list of your friends, and a list of cookies. An illustration of two lists - www.office.com/setup However, if you were a professional baker, you would have many more lists to keep track of: a list of customers, a list of products sold, a list of prices, a list of orders, and so on.

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: CHANGING YOUR DEFAULT SETTINGS IN WORD www.office.com/setup Blogs: There may be certain settings in Word that get on your nerves, like default settings that you find yourself changing over and over-the paragraph spacing, the font size-each time you start a new document. Maybe you prefer a different font style instead of the default Calibri. Maybe you like all of your documents to have narrower margins so you can fit more information on the page. Maybe you even work for a company that has very specific document standards-regarding the color scheme or layout-and you're tired of changing these settings every time. Luckily, you can customize many of the default settings in Word. You just have to know where to look. USING SET AS DEFAULT You can't change the default settings for everything in Word, but there are certain tools and features that give you this option. Popular examples include: Font Paragraph spacing Line spacing Margins Page orientation To find out if you can customize the default settings for a certain element, look for an arrow in the bottom-right corner of the group. This will open a dialog box where you can access all of the basic settings, plus some more advanced ones that you won't find on the Ribbon. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Next, look for a button near the bottom of the dialog box that says Set as Default. All you have to do is click this button, and Word will assign your current settings-like the font or font size you've chosen-as the new default for this particular element. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup Finally, Word will ask whether you want to set this as the default for this document only, or for all documents based on the Normal template (in other words, all documents in the future). Choose the second option, and Word will use these settings from now on. Screenshot of Microsoft Word - www.office.com/setup If you don't have a lot of experience with

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: SIMPLE RULES FOR BETTER POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS www.office.com/setup Blogs: Have you ever given a PowerPoint presentation and noticed that something about it just seemed a little … off? If you're unfamiliar with basic PowerPoint design principles, it can be difficult to create a slide show that presents your information in the best light. Poorly designed presentations can leave an audience feeling confused, bored, and even irritated. Review these tips on making your next presentation more engaging. DON'T READ YOUR PRESENTATION STRAIGHT FROM THE SLIDES If your audience can both read and hear, it's a waste of time for you to simply read your slides aloud. Your audience will zone out and stop listening to what you're saying, which means they won't hear any extra information you include. Instead of typing out your entire presentation, include only main ideas, keywords, and talking points in your slide show text. Engage your audience by sharing the details out loud. FOLLOW THE 5/5/5 RULE To keep your audience from feeling overwhelmed, you should keep the text on each slide short and to the point. Some experts suggest using the 5/5/5 rule: no more than five words per line of text, five lines of text per slide, or five text-heavy slides in a row. Screenshot of Microsoft PowerPoint DON'T FORGET YOUR AUDIENCE Who will be watching your presentation? The same goofy effects and funny clip art that would entertain a classroom full of middle-school students might make you look unprofessional in front of business colleagues and clients. Humor can lighten up a presentation, but if you use it inappropriately your audience might think you don't know what you're doing. Know your audience, and tailor your presentation to their tastes and expectations. CHOOSE READABLE COLORS AND FONTS Your text should be easy to read and pleasant to look at. Large, simple fonts and theme colors are always your best bet. The best fonts and colors can va

These days it's all about Sway - the first of many native apps to be rolled out to Microsoft Office 365 subscribers. To put it simply, Sway is a web browser-based storytelling app. It allows anyone with the most basic computing knowledge to create beautiful-looking websites and presentations with images, text, tweets, videos or whatever other media you want to include. It works a bit like Word and Powerpoint combined - and finished products can be used on websites to display family photos, or in a beautiful work presentation.

www.office.com/setup Blogs: All cell content uses the same formatting by default, which can make it difficult to read a workbook with a lot of information. Basic formatting can customize the look and feel of your workbook, allowing you to draw attention to specific sections and making your content easier to view and understand. Optional: Download our practice workbook. Watch the video below to learn more about formatting cells in Excel. TO CHANGE THE FONT SIZE: Select the cell(s) you want to modify. Selecting a cell - www.office.com/setup On the Home tab, click the drop-down arrow next to the Font Size command, then select the desired font size. In our example, we will choose 24 to make the text larger. Selecting a font size in the dropdown menu - www.office.com/setup The text will change to the selected font size. The selected cell is a larger font size now - www.office.com/setup You can also use the Increase Font Size and Decrease Font Size commands or enter a custom font size using your keyboard. The custom font box, increase font size button, and decrease font size button - www.office.com/setup TO CHANGE THE FONT: By default, the font of each new workbook is set to Calibri. However, Excel provides many other fonts you can use to customize your cell text. In the example below, we'll format our title cell to help distinguish it from the rest of the worksheet. Select the cell(s) you want to modify. Selecting a cell - www.office.com/setup On the Home tab, click the drop-down arrow next to the Font command, then select the desired font. In our example, we'll choose Century Gothic. Selecting a font in the dropdown menu - www.office.com/setup The text will change to the selected font. The selected cell is a different font now - www.office.com/setup When creating a workbook in the workplace, you'll want to select a font that is easy to read. Along with Calibri, standard reading fonts include Cambria, Times New Roman, and Arial. TO CHANGE THE FONT COLOR: Select

www.office.com/setup Blogs: While you can always enter data directly into database tables, you might find it easier to use forms. Forms ensure you're entering the right data in the right location and format. This can help keep your database accurate and consistent. This lesson will address the benefits of using forms in a database. You will review examples of different forms and form components. Finally, you will learn how to use forms to enter new records and view and edit existing ones. Throughout this tutorial, we will be using a sample database. If you would like to follow along, you'll need to download our Access 2016 sample database. You will need to have Access 2016 installed on your computer in order to open the example. Watch the video below to learn more about working with forms in Access. WHY USE FORMS? Many of us fill out forms so often that we hardly notice when we're asked to use them. Forms are so popular because they're useful to the person asking for the information and to the person providing it. They are a way of requiring information in a specific format, which means the person filling out the form knows exactly which information to include and where to put it. Illustration of a paper form - www.office.com/setup This is just as true of forms in Access. When you enter information into a form in Access, the data goes exactly where it's supposed to go: into one or more related tables. While entering data into simple tables is fairly straightforward, data entry becomes more complicated as you start populating tables with records from elsewhere in the database. For instance, the orders table in a bakery's database might link to information on customers, products, and prices drawn from related tables. For example, in the Orders Table below the Customer ID field is linked to the Customers table. The Customer ID field links to the Customers table - www.office.com/setup In fact, in order to see the entire order you would also have to look at the

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: When you're working with longer presentations, it can be difficult and time consuming to locate a specific word or phrase. PowerPoint can automatically search your presentation using the Find feature, and it allows you to quickly change words or phrases using the Replace feature. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about the basics of using Find and Replace in PowerPoint. TO FIND TEXT: From the Home tab, click the Find command. www.office.com/setup A dialog box will appear. Enter the text you want to find in the Find what: field, then click Find Next. www.office.com/setup If the text is found, it will be selected. www.office.com/setup You can also access the Find command by pressing Ctrl+F on your keyboard. TO REPLACE TEXT: At times, you may discover that you've repeatedly made a mistake throughout your presentation-such as misspelling someone's name-or that you need to exchange a particular word or phrase for another. You can use the Replace feature to make quick revisions. From the Home tab, click the Replace command. www.office.com/setup A dialog box will appear. Type the text you want to find in the Find what: field. Type the text you want to replace it with in the Replace with: field, then click Find Next. www.office.com/setup If the text is found, it will be selected. Review the text to make sure you want to replace it. If you want to replace it, select one of the replace options. Replace will replace individual instances, and Replace All will replace every instance. In our example, we'll use the Replace option. www.office.com/setup The selected text will be replaced. www.office.com/setup PowerPoint will move to the next instance of the text in the presentation. When you are finished replacing text, click Close to exit the dialog box. When it comes to using Replace All, it's important to remember that it could find matches you didnâ

A chart is a tool you can use to communicate data graphically. Including a chart in a presentation allows your audience to see the meaning behind the numbers, which makes it easy to visualize comparisons and trends. Optional: Download our practice presentation for this lesson. Watch the video below to learn more about using charts in PowerPoint. TYPES OF CHARTS PowerPoint has several types of charts, allowing you to choose the one that best fits your data. In order to use charts effectively, you'll need to understand how different charts are used. Click the arrows in the slideshow below to learn more about the types of charts in PowerPoint. Slide 1 - www.office.com/setupPowerPoint has a variety of chart types, each with its own advantages. Click the arrows to see some of the different types of charts available in PowerPoint. Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup Slide 1 - www.office.com/setup IDENTIFYING THE PARTS OF A CHART In addition to chart types, you'll need to understand how to read a chart. Charts contain several different elements-or parts-that can help you interpret data. Click the buttons in the interactive below to learn about the different parts of a chart. Book sales chart - www.office.com/setup LEGEND The legend identifies which data series each color on the chart represents. In this example, the legend identifies the different months in the chart. INSERTING CHARTS PowerPoint uses a spreadsheet as a placeholder for entering chart data, much like Excel. The process of entering data is fairly simple, but if you are unfamiliar with Excel you might want to review our Excel 2016 Cell Basics lesson.

Office 365 for business allows small and large companies to use the power of SharePoint Online. In this week's webinar, you'll learn some of the basics and we'll answer your questions. Can't view this video? Watch it on Microsoft Showcase. Need a sneak peek? Here's a 30-seocnd trailer. What you will learn at Tuesday's webinar Logging on the first time What's that there? A look around Where can I put my stuff? Sites: for your company and your customer References for this webinar Office 365 for business (includes SharePoint) Video training courses for SharePoint What is SharePoint? (article) Get started with Office 365 business (video) Start using SharePoint sites, SkyDrive Pro, and Newsfeeds (video & links) Set up Office 365 for your business (site) What's new with SharePoint, a top 10 (blog post) New SharePoint mobile offerings (blog post) Sample SharePoint consumer site SharePoint Online for small businesses (index of articles) SharePoint Online for midsize/enterprise (index of articles) NEW: SkyDrive Pro App

New to Visio? This tutorial will help get you started with Visio 2016. We'll take you through starter diagrams to give you an idea of what diagrams look like. Then we'll take you through the four basic steps to creating your own diagram.

You can access and share Office documents with browser-based versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Learn some of the basics and the latest features of these free tools. Note: Office Online was formerly known as Office Web Apps. There is an updated webinar about Office Online at http://aka.ms/online123.

If you're a fan of PowerPoint, you may have heard about Microsoft's latest presentation tool, Microsoft Sway. With Sway, you can create and share presentations like never before! In today's blog, we'll give you a basic overview as to what Sway can do as well as some of our personal favorite features. Let's dive in!

In this tutorial, you will lean a quick way to calculate percentages in Excel, find the basic percentage formula and a few more formulas for calculating percentage increase, percent of total and more. Calculating percentage is useful in many areas of life, whether it is restaurant tipping, reseller commission, your income tax or interest rate. Say, you've been lucky enough to get a 25% off promotion code on a new plasma TV. Is this a good deal? And how much will you eventually have to pay?

WWW.OFFICE.COM/SETUP BLOGS: INTRODUCTION www.office.com/setup Blogs: A theme is a predefined combination of colors, fonts, and effects. Different themes also use different slide layouts. You've already been using a theme, even if you didn't know it: the default Office theme. You can choose from a variety of new themes at any time, giving your entire presentation a consistent, professional look. Optional: Download our practice presentation. Watch the video below to learn more about applying themes in PowerPoint. WHAT IS A THEME? In PowerPoint, themes give you a quick and easy way to change the design of your presentation. They control your primary color palette, basic fonts, slide layout, and other important elements. All of the elements of a theme will work well together, which means you won't have to spend as much time formatting your presentation. Each theme uses its own set of slide layouts. These layouts control the way your content is arranged, so the effect can be dramatic. In the examples below, you can see that the placeholders, fonts, and colors are different. The Frame theme and the Integral theme - www.office.com/setup If you use a unique slide layout-such as Quote with Caption or Name Card-and then switch to a theme that does not include that layout, it may give unexpected results. Every PowerPoint theme-including the default Office theme-has its own theme elements. These elements are: Theme Colors: There are 10 theme colors, along with darker and lighter variations, available from every Color menu. Theme Colors - www.office.com/setup Theme Fonts: There are two theme fonts available at the top of the Font menu under Theme Fonts. Theme Fonts - www.office.com/setup Theme Effects: These affect the preset shape styles. You can find shape styles on the Format tab whenever you select a shape or SmartArt graphic. Theme Effects - www.office.com/setup When you switch to a different theme, all of these elements will update to reflect the new them

Ideas and links to other sites with great smartboard ideas. Excellent site for teachers with access to this technology.