Dr. Tom Murray
Professor
School of Business and Economics
Director of Technical Education and Training
Information Technology Services
Lynchburg College
Lynchburg, VA 24501
Phone: (804) 544-8265 Fax: (804) 544-8693
murray_t@mail.lynchburg.edu

ABSTRACT

For the past several years Lynchburg College has developed Microsoft Office tutorials for use with academic classes and faculty, student and staff training. These tutorials are "webbed" and available at no cost to anyone. Their popularity is now international and CD's containing the tutorials are mailed all over the world. At the 1999 ASCUE Conference, Lynchburg College introduced the Microsoft Office 97/98 tutorials. At the 2000 Conference, the FrontPage and Publisher 2000 tutorials were presented. At this year's conference the new Office 2000 tutorials will be previewed. This presentation will review the process for creating and revising the Office 2000 tutorials, and furnish an overview of the features of each tutorial and it's associated Microsoft product. Each participant at this session will receive a copy of the tutorials.

INTRODUCTION

In the early 1990's software tutorials were expensive and not specifically designed for academic use. At Lynchburg College the decision was made to develop specific, general use tutorials that covered the "most used" aspects of each Microsoft Office application - except Microsoft Word. The initial Microsoft Office tutorials were created in 1995.

Last year the FrontPage 98 tutorial was revised and a 2000 tutorial introduced. A Publisher 2000 tutorial was also created. This year the PowerPoint, Excel, Access and Outlook tutorials are available in a 2000 version.

GENERAL OVERVIEW OF OFFICE 2000 - GRAPHICS

The first thing one notices when browsing through the various modules in Office 2000 is that the major innovations seem to be with the more graphic modules: PowerPoint, Publisher and FrontPage. Each of these modules takes advantage of a new Clip Art Gallery that has significantly expanded features, images and sounds. Office 97/98 clip art contained only static graphic images. Clip Art Gallery 2000 retains the static clip art, but also includes high quality photographic images, a sound gallery and animated images. There are also significantly more images. The new gallery takes up almost an entire CD - or close to a gigabyte of information. The standard installation only loads about 10 % of the information because of the number of images. You have to activate the custom installation to load all of the information. If you don't have room for the information on your hard disk, you may insert the installation CD when the software indicates to do so.

The Clip Art 2000 Gallery also has a new feature, which is extremely helpful; a search feature. Now, you may enter a topic and the gallery will search for images, sounds or animations that fit the search criteria.

FRONTPAGE AND PUBLISHER 2000

With FrontPage 2000 Microsoft created a more flexible and powerful web page and web site creation tool. FrontPage 2000 combines the two separate modules form FrontPage 98 - Editor and Explorer - into a single screen with a task bar to move between the two.

Microsoft also recognized that many of the features that FrontPage 2000 creates will only work in the Microsoft Explorer browser. So, there is a feature that may be activated that allows FrontPage 2000 to only create web pages that will load in all browsers.

You will also notice, as soon as FrontPage 2000 loads, that in the lower right corner of the screen there is a small hourglass that indicates 28.8 seconds. This is an indicator of how long the page you are creating will take to load over a 28.8 speed modem! As you increase the length of your page, enhance images, add additional effects, this time will be ever changing to give you and idea of how long it will take other to load your web page. A right click of the mouse on this area will cause a pop-up menu to appear which allows you to change the type of cable or modem speed which you would like to use. As you change them, you notice logically, the load time increase or decrease. The default is the slowest modem that most folks use today.

Publisher 2000 contains a surprising variety of publications from newsletters, catalogs, brochures and flyers to calling cards, award certificates, greeting cards, menus, programs, origami and paper airplanes - and a whole lot more.

All of these features are detailed in the FrontPage and Publisher 2000 tutorials that were provided at the last year's conference.

POWERPOINT 2000

Many of the features of PowerPoint 2000 are very similar to those in the 97 version. The buttons and features are essentially the same. There is a new area down the left side of the screen that is a cross between the Slide Sorter View and the Outline View. It chronicles the presentation in slide order similar to the Outline View. Some find this helpful and some do not. This feature may be removed if it is not desired so that the screen resembles the "old" screen.

As indicated previously, the graphics oriented modules evidence the greatest changes. This is true in PowerPoint as well. A user is now able to include animations in PowerPoint slides. You may use the animations in the 2000 Clip Art Gallery or import your own. PowerPoint 2000 also "handles" AVI (audio-visual movie clips) much better that the previous version.

PowerPoint 2000 also handles a greater variety of sound "types" more effectively. It can accommodate MP3 sounds if there is a player installed. However, when a sound is associated with an image through Custom Animation, PowerPoint 2000 still only uses WAV files. With a few "tricks" you can essentially play any sound you desire with any slide (or slides) in the show.

Background templates are pretty much the same as in PowerPoint 97. There are a few new designs, and you can still access the 97 designs. However, due to the popularity of PowerPoint, there are a number of links to additional Design Templates in the PowerPoint section of the Microsoft web site. Some of these are pretty exotic. It's all a matter of taste.

The PowerPoint 2000 tutorial expands upon the 97 tutorial. Many users have requested that the areas of Custom Animation for text and graphics be expanded and explained in more detail. Also, in the slides where AutoShapes and Text Box are introduced, more detail is furnished about these features. The 2000 tutorial has expanded images to assist with understanding and mastering PowerPoint.

EXCEL 2000

As indicated, there are not a significant number of enhancements to the non-graphic modules. There are a few additional types of charts (graphs) in Excel 2000, but that's essentially the major change.

The Excel 97 tutorial was last revised in May 1998. It was the first tutorial created in the tutorial series. It appears to have withstood the test of time well. However, the 2000 tutorial is also expanded with additional images and text to make the tutorial more easily understood.

ACCESS 2000

As with Excel 2000, Access 2000 appears essentially unchanged from Access 97. There is a new "look" to the main selection screen where the user designates whether they want a Table, Form, Report, etc. But this is only appearance. The Tables, Forms, Reports, Queries, and associated Wizards, still "look" and "work" essentially the same.

The Access 2000 tutorial has also been enhanced with more images and additional explanatory text. Since many users have indicated that they now would like instruction on how to insert images in the database a new section has been created for this purpose. There is also expanded instruction in the area of Report creation. Users have indicated that more information about the Design Views be included. They also mentioned that a section on Mailing Labels would be a meaningful enhancement - so this has also been added.

FILE STRUCTURE

All of the Office modules (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, FrontPage) use the same file structure as their predecessors. So, you may "go back and forth" from 2000 to 97/98 with no problems. Access, as with previous versions however, will not "go back and forth." The same finicky process that was necessary to "move" from one Access version to another still exists. Microsoft indicates that the new structure is necessary for the additional features. So, be warned that, if you desire to move between versions you will need to be prepared for this file structure hindrance.

OUTLOOK 2000

Once again the features of Outlook 2000 are not significantly different than those in Outlook 98.

Many requests have been received to expand the initial "Screen Views" section that allows users to personalize the "look" of their screen. There are also numerous requests to expand the instruction on the Address Book - especially how to include additional addresses to the Personal Address Book and more detail on how to create a Mail Distribution List (for sending e-mail to a specific list of users). Many additional images have been added to the explanatory text in this area of the tutorial. There is also additional attention given to the Out of Office Assistant and the Auto Signature.

CONCLUSIONS

As indicated above, the graphic oriented modules (PowerPoint, Publisher, FrontPage) evidenced the major changes from previous versions. The enhanced graphics and Wizards are significantly better than the 97/98 versions. Also, the "look" of the working screens are greatly superior to assist the user.

Excel, Access, and Outlook have only minor enhancements. However, the tutorials for these early tutorials are greatly expanded to include additional instruction in areas that users have requested.

A copy of the current "edition" of the Lynchburg College-Microsoft tutorials will be available to each participant at this presentation. If a participant desires a CD (which contains all of the tutorials, in both the 97/98 and 2000 formats) it too will be available.

All of the Lynchburg College-Microsoft tutorials (Office 97/98/2000) can be downloaded from:

http://www.lynchburg.edu/userguide/

The tutorials have become so popular internationally that they are being translated into French. So, we have created a CD, which includes all of the tutorials in Microsoft Word (English) - available at no cost to those who desire a copy. Simply contact me at one of the addresses on the first page of this paper if you desire a copy.