|
|
USING THE OFFICE PROGRAMS WITH FRONTPAGE
By Linda F. Johnson
Though Microsoft claims you can create files with the other Office programs and
save them as web pages which you can easily import into FrontPage, I have found
this to cause more problems than it's worth, in most cases, and NOT user
friendly AT ALL. So, when I want to make something in another Office program and
add it to my web, I prefer to copy and paste between the programs. And, there
are indeed many times that I need to do this because FrontPage falls short for
me. Here are some examples:
Though FrontPage 2002 now includes WordArt, when I used
FrontPage 2000, I often created my WordArt in PowerPoint and then just
copied it and pasted it into FrontPage. I prefer using PowerPoint, rather than
Word or one of the other Office programs, because PowerPoint handles objects
better than the others. The steps to do this are simple:
In PowerPoint, open up a new blank presentation and select a blank slide.
Go to the Insert Menu and choose Picture>WordArt, or simply click on the WordArt
icon on your Drawing Toolbar.
When the box comes up, choose the basic style of WordArt that you want, then in
the next box, type the text you want.
When the WordArt appears on your screen, use the WordArt toolbar that appears to
change the color, shape, orientation, depth, or whatever you want.
Once you are finished formatting it in PowerPoint, just right click on the
WordArt and choose "Copy", then place your cursor on your FrontPage page where
you want the WordArt to appear and right click and select "Paste".
Now you have text that is really a graphic, so don't forget to right click on it
and select Picture Properties and add some alt text to it.
NOTE: If you do this with PowerPoint/FrontPage 2002, I
recommend you copy the WordArt from PowerPoint, then paste it into a graphics
program, then save it as a gif and insert it the way you normally insert
pictures into your web. Otherwise, FrontPage will add a lot of unnecessary code
to your html that you will have to clean up.
See a sample
here.
Another thing lots of people want to add to their site is a
calendar. Now, you can create your own calendars in FrontPage by making a
table and putting the info in there. Or, you can use Microsoft Publisher
to do it much more easily and here's how:
Open Publisher and select Calendar from the list of choices for new publications
on the left. Then choose the Calendar of your choice on the right.
Format the parts of the Calendar to suit your fancy then go to the Edit menu and
choose Select All.
With all of the parts of the Calendar selected, click on the grouping button you
see at the bottom of the Calendar to group it, so all the parts become one
object.
Once it's grouped, right click on it and choose Save As Picture and browse to
save it into your Web's Images folder or wherever you store all the other
pictures for your website, then add it to your page the same way you would add
any other picture.
See a sample
here.
Let's try one more. Let's say you have a large table full
of data on one of your web's pages and you've been adding entries to the table,
but now you want to sort (alphabetize) them, based on what's in the first
column. The fastest way to do this is to use Excel and here's the steps:
Click inside your table in your FrontPage page and go to the Table menu and
choose Select>Table then copy or cut it.
Inside Excel, in a new blank workbook, click into cell A1 and paste. Your data
will now be in Excel.
Click in any cell within your data, then go to the Data menu and choose Sort.
Choose the column you want to sort by and click OK.
Now your data has been alphabetized by that column's contents. Highlight all the
cells and copy them and paste them back into your FrontPage page.
NOTE: One of the quirks here is that you may lose some of
the formatting of your original FrontPage table and you will need to re-apply
that. But, I still find this process a lot faster than manually changing the
order of all the items in the table, especially if it's a very large table.
See a sample
here.
These are just a few things you can do with the other Office programs. I would
recommend you experiment with a new web in FrontPage until you understand how
this works and don't go messing up your existing web. Once you get the hang of
it, it's not so hard. Though, you will need to examine your html code to see how
the other Office programs may change it. Lots of the code that is added when you
paste from these programs can be removed without any consequences, so you need
to play around with it until you see what works for you. |
Color Palette
Cool Clock
Dropdown List
FP Forms
Link Hooks
Navigation
OfficeTo FP
ResizePics
Swish To FP
FP Shortcuts
Resources |
.
