Setting up Your PC for Webcasts
Make sure when you are playing tutorials to play the appropriate tutorial for the version of Microsoft Office you are using: 2003 or 2007. If you are unsure of which version you are using, open up a program such as Microsoft Word. If your screen looks like this (with a menu bar and toolbars), you have Microsoft Office 2003.
If your screen looks like this (with tabs like the Home tab), you have Microsoft Office 2007.
If you are using Microsoft Office 2003, you’ll want to make sure that your Standard and Formatting toolbars are showing at the top of your screen. To do this, open Word, Excel, and PowerPoint one at a time, and in each program, click on the View menu, choose Toolbars, and make sure there are check marks next to your Standard and Formatting toolbars (which means they’re already showing on your screen), if not, click on the toolbar in the toolbar list to show it.
Next, click on the Tools menu, choose Customize, click on the Options tab, and make sure there are checkmarks in the boxes that say "Show Standard and Formatting toolbars on two rows" and "Always show full menus":
Regardless of whether you are using Office 2003 or Office 2007, we recommend that you play the tutorial on one PC while you follow along with a copy of the same file on another PC or laptop, so you can try the steps yourself.
If you don’t have 2 computers available, another option is to tile the tutorial and file windows on the same screen. To do this, open the practice file in one window, minimize the window using the minus sign button in the upper right corner of the window, open the tutorial in another window, then right-click a blank area of your Windows taskbar at the bottom of your screen and choose "Tile Windows Vertically."
Note: if the video in the webcast window is not big enough, you can use the zoom feature of your browser to make the video appear larger. In Internet Explorer, this is accomplished by clicking in the webcast window and pressing Ctrl - + on the keyboard before starting the video.
Each tutorial has at least one practice file to download with it (some have more than one). The link(s) to download the corresponding practice file(s) can be found right next to the link to watch the video. To prepare to watch the video, you will open the practice file(s) on the second computer (the one that isn’t playing the tutorial) or in the other window (if you’re tiling windows), so you can do the same things that I’m doing in the tutorial.
You may pause the video at any time (by pressing the pause button in the controls area at the bottom of the video screen) so that you can get files open, catch up, or take a break.
I’ll be available by phone to answer your questions about the tutorials you have watched. My office hours until further notice will be Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. EST. You can reach me at 508-481-9444.