10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes 4.0

Lesson 18

Formatting Text and Pages

In this lesson, you learn to change fonts, set spacing and alignment, use page breaks, and add headers and footers to a document.

Character Formatting

In Notes, you can change character formatting in any of the documents you create. Using character formatting, you can make your documents more interesti ng and attractive or you can emphasize important text. Character formatting includes working with all of the following characteristics:

Font Apply a typeface to text in the document. For example, you can make a title stand out by assigning it a font different from that of all other text. And you can set the tone of the d ocument or make body text easier to read simply by choosing certain fonts.
Type Size Apply a size (say, 24-point size) to the text so titles are large and easy to read, and less important text is smaller (10-point, for example).
Attributes Apply emphasis to text by making it bold or italic.
Styles Apply preformatted characteristics (such as bulleted text or headlines) for quick and easy formatting.

Figure 18.1 shows a document that contains examples of each character formatting trait.

Font

/ Typeface A font is a style of type applied to text; Times New Roman, Courier, and Helvetica are common fonts.

Point

A measurement of type; there are 72 points in an inch. Body text is generally 10- or 12-point, and headlines or titles are usually 14-, 18-, or 24-point.

Bulleted Text

Text, usually in list form, that is preceded by a small black dot, an arrow, a check mark, or another item that makes the text stand out.

Figure 18.1 Make your documents more attractive with character formatting.

Formatting Text

To format text, follow these steps:

Select the text you want to format (as explained in Lesson 17).
Use the following methods to apply any text formatting you want:

Font On the Status bar, click the Font button. A popup menu appears, listing the fonts that are available on yoursystem. Select the font you want to use.

Size On the Status bar, click the Type Size button andchoose the point size you want from the popup menu shown in Figure 18.2.

Style Click the Style button and choose the style you wantto assign to the selected text.

Attributes Click the Bold or Italic SmartIcon to apply the corresponding attribute.

Figure 18.2 Use the Notes tools to format characters.

Alternative Method

You also can set font, type size, and attributes using the Font tab in the Properties for Text InfoBox. To display the InfoBox, right-click the text and choose Text Properties from the shortcut menu. The Font tab is the first tab (the one showing when you open the InfoBox). To learn more about the Properties InfoBox, see the nex t section.

Setting Spacing and Alignment

You can adjust the spacing between lines of text in a document and the alignment of text i n a document using the Properties for Text InfoBox. To display the InfoBox, right-click the text you want to align and choose Text Properties. The Properties for InfoBox appears. To use the spacing and alignment features (shown in Figure 18.3), click on t he second tab in the InfoBox. For more information about InfoBoxes, refer to Lesson 3.

Figure 18.3 The Properties for InfoBox provides tools for governing how text in a paragraph looks.

To set alignment, select the text and click the appropriate alignment button. Left-aligned text has a flush left edge and a ragged right edge. Center-aligned text is arranged so that the distance from the left and right margins to the edge of the text is the same. Right-aligned text is text with a flush right edge and a ragged left. Justified text is text with flush left and right edges.

To set spacing, select the text and then choose from one of the following:

Interline Determines the space between the lines of text in a paragraph.
Above Determines extra space added above a paragraph.
Below Determines extra space added below a paragraph.
Single, 1 1/2, or double Sets the spacing for the selected paragraph.

Paragraph

In Notes, a paragraph is defined as a line with a hard paragraph return (which you create by pressing Enter) at the end of it. A paragraph may contain several sentences, several words, or one word or letter, or it may even be a blank line.

Using Page Breaks

Notes automatically breaks pages for you, but you might not always like where the page break falls. You can insert page breaks to organize the pages in your document to su it yourself.

Can’t See Breaks?

If you cannot see the page breaks that Notes creates, choose View, Show, Page Breaks.

To insert a page break, follow these steps:

Position the insertion point where you want a page break.
Choose Create, Page Break. Notes displays a thin black line across the page to show the page break (see Figure 18.4).

Figure 18.4 Separate pages for organization and printing purposes.

Adding Headers and Footers

You use the Properties for Document InfoBox to insert page headers and/or footers. Headers and footers appear on the document only when it’s printed.

Headers and Footers

A header appears in the top margin of every page of the document, and a footer appears in the bottom margin of every page. Headers and footers often include such information as the creation date, author, title, page number, or company name. You can include any information you want to add to the document.

Follow these steps to add a header and/or a footer to your Notes document:

In the document, right-click the page and choose Document Properties from the shortcut menu.

No Document Properties?

If Document Properties does not appear on the shortcut menu but Text Properties does, choose Text Properties. When the InfoBox open s, click the drop-down arrow in the title bar and choose Document.

Select the printer tab in the InfoBox (see Figure 18.5).

Figure 18.5 Header and footer options appear on the printer tab because they appear only in a printed document.

Choose Header or Footer. (You can always enter one and then come back and choose the other if you want to use both a header and a footer in your document.)

In the text box, enter any text you want in the header or footer, or click an icon below the text box to insert one of the following items:

Page Number Inserts a symbol representing the page number; Notes replaces the symbol with the correct page number when the document is printed.

Date Inserts a field that displays the date of the day you print the document.

Time Inserts a field that displays the time you print the document.

Tab Sets a right tab in the header or footer.

Title Adds the document title to the header or footer.

In the Font, Size, and Style list boxes, choose the formatting for the header or footer.

(Optional) Choose the Print header and footer on first page check box. (By default, neither the header nor the footer is printed on the first page.)

Close the InfoBox and then save the document.

To view the header and/or footer, print the document by choosing File, Print and clicking OK in the File Print dialog box.

Print?

For more information about printing, see Lesson 6.

Figure 18.6 shows a header printed on the first page of a document. The date and the document title appear in the header.

Figure 18.6 Insert any information you want in the header or footer of a document.

In this lesson, you learned to change font characteristics, set spacing and alignment, use page breaks, and create headers and footers in a document. In the next lesson, you’ll learn to create, edit, and format tables.