Binder brings it together


Tip
One of the best things about using an application suite is that it lets you integrate information from more than one application into a single file. Most business reports, for example, include spreadsheet tables, graphs, drawings, and other elements in addition to text. A long-standing dilemma has been how to put all this disparate information into one place for easier organising and sharing. Microsoft Office 95 comes with just the tool.
Office 95's Binder lets you gather worksheets created in Excel, documents written in Word, and presentations assembled in PowerPoint -- as well as files created in some third-party applications -- in one file.

Create your own Binder file

To open binder, select Start--Programs--Microsoft Office--Microsoft Binder. To add an existing document to a Binder file, choose Section--Add from File. In the Add from File dialogue box, select the file and click OK.
Binder displays the section along with the menu from its parent application, plus a Section option. In the Binder's left pane is an icon for each section. Click an icon to load the parent application and the file.
To create a file in Binder, select Section (or right-click inside the left pane), then select Add. You can add any Office document, as well as files from Office-compatible applications, including Visio and Micrografx. Select the type of document you want to create and click OK.

How Binder manages data

When you add a section to a Binder file, the program creates a copy of the source file and stores it inside Binder with an .obd extension. Any changes you make to a Binder section are not passed back to the original file. To keep the copies in sync, choose Section--Save as File. To replace the original with the updated file, select the original, click OK, and confirm that you want to replace that file.

Printing by the numbers

One of the biggest benefits of Binder is that you can print all a Binder file's sections at once. For example, if a Binder file contains a four-page Word document, followed by a one-page worksheet and a three-page presentation, the Print command will print the whole thing and, if you want, number the pages from 1 to 8.
Before you print, you must create headers and footers in each section. In Excel sections, select Section--Page Setup and create your headers and footers as you normally would. In Word and PowerPoint sections, you add headers and footers as you do in the stand-alone applications.
To print all the sections in a Binder file in the order in which they're listed in the left pane, choose File--Print Binder. In the Print Binder dialogue box, select Consecutive and click OK. To print one section, select Section--Print. If you've added page numbers, it will start at 1.
- Richard Cranford


Category: Publishing and presentation, Word processing
Issue: Dec 1996
Pages: 170

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