Documentation/OOoAuthors User Manual/Impress Guide/Adding and formatting notes

OpenOffice.org 2.x Impress Guide

Chapter 8: Slides, Notes, and Handouts

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• Adding, renaming, and removing slides
• Creating slides from an outline
• Modifying slides
• Adding and formatting notes
• Creating handouts

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Adding and formatting notes

Notes view provide a convenient way to create reminders or add extra information to the slides of the presentation. Notes are not displayed during a slide show, so with the dual monitor support feature available since OOo 2.1, you can use notes as a presentation cue. You can also print the notes pages and use them as handouts.

To add notes to a slide:

1. In the Slides pane, select the slide to which you want to add notes.
2. Switch to Notes view (click the tab in the main work area or select View > Notes from the menu bar). The main work area looks like the figure below.
3. Click in the text box showing “Click to add notes” and type or paste text or graphics as needed.
4. To add notes to another slide, select it in the Slides pane. The Notes view changes to show the selected slide.
5. When done entering notes, return to Normal view.

The work area in Notes view.

Formatting notes

It is highly recommended to use the Notes Master and the Notes Presentation style to format the appearance of notes, rather than formatting them for each slide individually.

All the formatting guidelines given in this section can be applied to either the Notes Master or to the Notes Presentation style.

To open the Notes Master, choose View > Master > Notes Master from the menu bar.

Notes Master View.

Formatting the Notes page

To format the Notes page:

1. Switch to Notes view (click the tab in the main work area or select View > Notes from the menu bar).
2. Select Format > Page from the menu bar, or right-click and choose Page Setup from the pop‑up menu to open the Page Setup dialog.
3. Set the desired parameters. The Page Setup dialog for notes is the same as the dialog for slides. Refer to Formatting the slide or page area for a description of this dialog. The only difference is that by default the Notes page orientation is set to portrait and the format is A4.
4. Click OK to close the dialog.

The Page Setup dialog for notes.

Setting automatic layout options

In Notes view, Impress creates four areas where you can put information about the presentation:

• Header area
• Date and Time area
• Footer area
• Slide number area

To customize these fields, proceed as follows:

1. Switch to Notes view from the corresponding tab in the work area or by selecting View > Notes from the main menu, or open the Notes Master (View > Master > Notes Master).
2. Select Insert > Date and Time from the main menu to display the Header and Footer dialog. Select the Notes and Handout tab.
3. Select the checkboxes to activate the corresponding areas.
   For the Header and Footer, type the text in the edit fields.
   For the Date and time, select between Fixed (enter in the edit box the date and time that should be displayed) or Variable (the date and time of the slide creation will be inserted in the notes pages). Use the two drop‑down menus to select the format of the date and the language.
   If the Page number checkbox is activated, to format the type of numbering refer to Formatting the Notes page).
4. Click the Apply to All button to save these settings and close the dialog.

The dialog to set up header and footer for notes.

Text formatting

When text is inserted in the Notes text box, it is automatically formatted using the Notes style from the Presentation styles. The best way to format the notes text is therefore to modify this style to suit your needs. Refer to Chapter 2 to learn how to work with styles.

If manual formatting is required, for example to highlight a particular section of the notes, the guidelines given in Chapter 3 apply.

Advanced Notes formatting

You can make other changes to the Notes pages. For example, you can:

• Move the text box and the slide image around the page
• Resize the slide image and text box
• Add other text boxes to the page

Printing notes

1. Choose File > Print from the menu bar.
2. Click the Options button on the Print dialog.
3. In the Contents section of the Printer Options dialog, make sure that only the Notes checkbox is selected.
4. Make any other adjustments needed on the Printer Options dialog, then click OK to save the changes and return to the Print dialog.
5. On the Print dialog, make any needed changes and then click OK to print.

Select Notes for printing.

For more about printing slides, notes, and handouts, see Chapter 9.

Exporting notes to PDF

1. Choose File > Export as PDF from the menu bar and name the file.
2. In the PDF Options dialog, choose the General tab.
3. Under General, make sure that Export notes is checked and then click OK.

Exporting Notes to PDF.

The notes pages follow the presentation in the PDF (that is, if your presentation has 10 slides, the PDF contains 10 pages, each with one slide, followed by 10 pages with notes formatted for paper). If you want only the Notes pages, you will need to use some other program to remove the unwanted pages of slides from the PDF.