Getting Started Guide

Caution
When resizing a graphic, right-click the picture. Select Position and
Size from the context menu and make sure that Keep ratio is selected.
Then adjust the height or width to the size you need. (As you adjust one
dimension. both dimensions will change.) Failure to do so will cause the
picture to become distorted. Remember also that resizing a bitmap
image will reduce its quality; better by far to create an image of the
desired size outside of Impress.
Adding tables
For displaying tabular data, you can insert basic tables directly into your slides by
choosing the Table contents type. It is also possible to add a table outside a contents
box in a number of ways:
• Choose Insert > Table from the menu bar
• With the Table button on the main toolbar
• With the Table Design button on the table toolbar
• Select a Style option from the Table Design section of the Tasks pane.
Each method opens the Insert Table dialog. Alternatively, clicking on the black arrow
next to the Table button displays a graphic that you can drag and select the number
of rows and columns for your table.
Figure 145: Creating a table with the Insert Table dialog
Note
Selecting from any of the styles in the Table Design section of the Tasks
pane creates a table based on that style. If you create a table by
another method, you can still apply a style of your choice later.
With the table selected, the Table toolbar should appear. If it does not, you can access
it by selecting View > Toolbars > Table. The Table toolbar offers many of the same
buttons as the table toolbar in Writer, with the exception of functions like Sort and
Sum for performing calculations. For those functions, you need to use a spreadsheet
inserted from Calc (discussed below).
After the table is created, you can modify it in much the same ways as you would
modify a table in Writer: adding and deleting rows and columns, adjusting width and
spacing, adding borders, background colors and so on. Detailed information on
working with tables and the Table Properties dialog can be found in Chapter 9 of the
Writer Guide.
By modifying the style of the table from the Table Design section of the Tasks pane,
you can quickly change the appearance of the table or any newly created tables
based on the Style options you select. You can choose to add emphasis to a header
164 Getting Started with OpenOffice.org 3.3