AppleWorks 6 -- What's new?

The Tabs at the bottom will assist you in creating new documents from scratch (Basic tab), or from Assistants or Templates starters. Recent Items keeps track of documents you have created.

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Although Starting Points is a nice feature of AppleWorks 6, you may get a bit tired of closing this window after completing each document. You can control this in the preferences!  

• From the Edit menu, select Preferences -> General
  Select Nothing for the "At Startup, Show" selection.
  (Starting Points can always be accessed from the File menu!)

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There are other preferences you may wish to change as well. Choose Files from the Topic: pull-down menu. You may want to deselect the Old Version Alert and [v6.0] Suffix. Keep the .cwk Suffix if you are sending files to anyone using AppleWorks 6.0 for Windows. Your speed may increase if you also deselect Recent Items and Auto-Save.
   

The Button Bar is quite different from earlier versions. Less buttons appear, but not to worry, your favorites buttons are still available! You can customize your button bar so that buttons you use most often are close at hand. The button bar is also scrollable, so that you can navigate to the additional options.  In the Edit menu, select Preferences -> Button Bar to customize your button bar! Double-click or ìDragî new buttons to the button bar! At any time, existing buttons can be moved or relocated while holding down the Option key.

AppleWorks has a nifty new table feature!

Tables allow you to display data in a grid, similar to a spreadsheet but with the advantage of powerful text-formatting capabilities for tabular data. Use spreadsheets to organize numerical data that requires calculations; use tables to display other types of content, such as text.

You can easily add a table to any type of AppleWorks document. A table is a type of frame -- it may help to think of a Table cell as a miniature word processing document.

Creating a table
You can create a table frame in any type of document. (In a database document, you must be in Layout mode to create a table.)

To add an inline table to a word-processing document:

• Choose Insert Table from the Table menu.
• Enter the number of rows and columns you want.

To add a floating table to a document of any type:

• If the Toolbar is not showing, choose Show Tools from the Window menu, or click the red toolbox icon at the bottom of the active document:
• Click the table frame tool:
• Drag to indicate where you want the table to appear and how big you want it to be.
• Enter the number of rows and columns desired.

You can easily add and delete table cells individually, in ranges, or in entire rows and columns. You can customize the appearance of table elements such as lines and line segments, cells, rows, and columns. Within each table cell you can apply the full range of text-formatting options, including word-processing options such as outlines. Customizable table appearance: Look at all the features in the "Table" menu! Cells can span multiple rows or columns. When you type in a cell, it will expand downward to accommodate the text. Cells can be Merged or Subdivided. Each cell has a Vertical Alignment command to control the placement of text. There are varying Line Styles available -- even a Diagonal Line can be added!

Here are some handy hints for working with tables:

Re-sizing Table Cells
Do this:	What happens:
Click on row or column border	Selects the border Click and drag position
Shift + click on row or border	Adds borders to the original selection Click and drag several at once
Option + click on row or border	Select border of a single cell Click and drag single border
Click and drag several cells	Merge, Delete, Sub-divide, Distribute evenly Choose from the Table menu
SECRET HINT #1	With the border selected, you can ìnudgeî with the arrow keys on your keyboard!
SECRET HINT #2	Hold the Command key () when dragging. Contrains adjustment to current cell only!
Navigating Table Cells
Hold down the Command key, then press the arrow key	Hold the Command key () and press the arrow key to move the text cursor to the top, bottom, right, or left cells. (The tab key does not move the cursor from cell to cell!)

What's New in AppleWorks 6?!
Charlene Chausis, Technology Trainer
Adlai E. Stevenson High School
Lincolnshire, IL

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