Fundamentals of Microsoft Office Suite free essay sample

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office is a suite of different programs that allows you to create documents, spreadsheets, posters, and presentations; send email, keep track of your life, take notes etc. It is a proprietary commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in 1989. Over the years, Office included applications which are: †¢ Access – create databases, manage large quantities of information, and create reports. Excel – create spreadsheets, charts, tables, graphs, and otherwise organize and present lists or other raw data. †¢ Outlook – email client that includes a calendar, contact manager, and to do list. †¢ PowerPoint – create slideshow presentations with text, images, video and audio with backgrounds. †¢ Word – word processing software, used to create text documents like papers, outlines, and bibliographi es, and format your work for better visual appeal. Microsoft Word? Microsoft Word, or Word as it is commonly known, is a software application that allows you (the user) to perform word processing. It is a text editor that allows us to type, edit and save test. However, it also offers far more features than just editing words, such as spell checking, designing and elaborate formatting features. With Microsoft Word, we can effortlessly change the way a document looks. It is therefore easier to present ideas in a coherent manner. Some important features of Microsoft Word are: Font Size and Shape: With innumerable font style, colors, sizes available, Word makes dull looking data interesting. We can have text in Bold, Italic or normal forms. Bold text helps us to make important information stand out in a clutter of information. Alignment: Alignment is one of the most important features of MS Word. Using this feature, we can make look all text on our Word document neatly aligned one below the other. Paragraphs can all start from a single aligned line. The Indent tab at the top helps us align text easily. We can also Centre, Left or Right align our text according to our preference. Watermarks and Backgrounds: These features have only been added recently to Word. With the use of watermarks and background, we can add graphics to a dull looking word document. These watermarks can then play an important part when we print out word documents. Go to format, click on Backgrounds and here we can add a text or an image as a background for our text document. Watermarks can then appear on every new page we make. Borders: MS Word provides many pre designed backgrounds and borders. A border encompasses any one or two sides or all sides of the Word Document. Spell Check: One of the most important features of MS Word Spell check lets us check if all spellings are in line with the accepted spellings worldwide. If we keep the Spell check feature on, Word lets us know if we have faltered whilst typing it. Grammar Check: Grammar can also be checked on Word. Commas, semicolons, wrongly fragmented sentences would have Word auto-suggesting you a better option. Tables: We can insert tables and charts in our Word document and define how may rows and columns we would like to have in them. These tables can also be imported from other office software. Graphic Fill effects: Words can be graphically filled on MS Word. They can move as we read the document, blink, marquee and other features can be added to important information. Microsoft Excel? Microsoft Excel is an electronic spreadsheet program that can be used for storing, organizing, analyzing and manipulating data. Excel also has features, with the help of which you can easily apply various formulae to calculate and simplify various tedious data. When you look at the Excel screen (refer to the example on this page) you see a rectangular table or grid of rows and columns. The horizontal rows are identified by numbers (1,2,3) and the vertical columns with letters of the alphabet (A,B,C). For columns beyond 26, columns are identified by two or more letters such as AA, AB, AC. Data Types, Formulas, and Functions: The types of data that a cell can hold include numbers, text or formulas. Just as in math class, formulas are used for calculations usually involving data contained in other cells. Excel and other electronic spreadsheets include a number of built in formulas used for common tasks known as functions. Excel and Financial Data Spreadsheets are often used to store financial data. Formulas and functions that are used on this type of data include: * Performing basic mathematical operations such as summing columns and rows of figures. Finding values such as profit or loss. * Calculating repayment plans for loans or mortgages. * Finding the average, maximum, or minimum values in a specified range of data. Excels Other Uses Other common operations that Excel can be used for include: * Graphing or charting data to assist users in identifying data trends. * Sorting and filtering data to find specific information. The information garnered in a spreadsheet can easily be incorporated into electronic presentations, web pages, or printed off in report form. Microsoft PowerPoint? Microsoft PowerPoint is a full-featured desktop presentation program. A presentation can be a collection of slides relating to a specific topic, which may be shown while the topic is discussed or may be shown as a continuous show. PowerPoint uses a graphical approach to help its users create Multimedia presentations in the form of slide shows that accompany the oral delivery of the topic which can be showed on a projection system or even a personal computer. With the help of PowerPoint, we can make tedious data and information look interesting and presentable. This program is widely used in business and classrooms and is an effective tool when used for training purposes. Other features: Slide transition: Helps make transition from one slide to another look interesting. Apart from the normal black screen transition we have zoom in, zoom out features helping us to add flavor in our presentation. Videos: We can add videos in the midst of a slide full of numerical data. We just have to click on the video on the slide and it would start playing. Voiceover: We can add voiceover to each slide or add voice to a single slide. The voiceover can run over the entire slide’s time or just for some time. We can import charts, graphs etc from excel and put them up on our slide in PPT. As such it becomes easier if we are working on a whole project and used both excel and powerpoint. All in all, Microsoft PowerPoint is a one-stop-shop to create successful presentations for the business world, the classroom or just for your own personal use. Microsoft Access? Microsoft Access is an information management tool that helps you store information for reference, reporting, and analysis. Microsoft Access can help you overcome the limitations found when trying to manage large amounts of information in Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet applications. Microsoft Access works in the same manner any database does, by storing related information together and letting you create connections (commonly called relationships) between different things. The relationships between two different things can be very simple (such as a contact at a customer and the customer itself) or complex. MS access is appropriate for meeting end users database needs for rapid application developed in enterprise environments. It is easy enough for end user to create their own queries forms and reports, laying outfield and groupings, setting formula’s etc†¦ This capability allows professional developers, users to develop a wide range of application to fulfill the needs of an organization. MS access is used by many technology departments to create highly focused applications, access is used by people downloading the data from enterprise level database for manipulation and reporting locally, it can also import or link directly to data stored in other application and database.