brookcove
Posted : 9/30/2008 12:08:22 PM
Do you have a google account? Make one really quick if you don't, because it will save your bacon in just a second!
Okay, once you are signed on to Google, look up at the words above the banner (top of the page) - there will be some blue words like "News" "Images" "shopping" Gmail" - on mine, G-mail is next to "more". Select "more" and then look for "documents."
Now you'll be in a screen that shows a blue bar, a narrow file menu to the left with stuff about "items", and a blank file menu to the right of that.
Look at the blue bar and you'll see "New". Select that. Select "From Template." this will save you some time. A new window should open up with some choices. What will come up is all the templates, and you don't want all of them. To the LEFT you will see "Narrow by Category". Select the type of document you want to create from the list underneath. I think you said a letter?
When you do that, you'll see several examples of letters that have been already created, in various styles. You can look to see more closely, what the documents will look like, by clicking "preview" under the description.
this will open a new window with a preview of the document which you can examine but not change. Simply close this window when you are done looking at it, because the template selection window will still be up underneath.
When you've picked a template that looks like what you want, click "USE THIS TEMPLATE". It will open in a new window.
If you've worked in Office you should be familiar with how templates work. If you select the text you need to change, it will allow you to type your content without changing the style. You can also change the style or anything else about the document that you want - the document is now yours - the template is just a time saver.
Google docs should look and feel very familiar if you don't do anything fancy with Office typically.
Before you get too far, go up to "file" and select "rename". It saves automatically, but it will have some weird name like "Dear Sir" or something that would be rather hard to remember.
Once you are done, here's the fun part. Go up to "SHARE". Click on it and you will be in a new page. Enter the e-mail address of the person you are sending the document to, and then when given the opportunity, explain that they can download this document from the web page noted in the email. It's 100% secure and you have the choice of giving that person full editing access, or just letting them look at it. You can also give the whole wide world access to it if you want - either to edit or to just look.
After that, it's good to send an email from your usual account if you don't normally use gmail, warning them that they will get the gmail message and that they need to let that through. You can also send them a direct link if you are dealing with a server that doesn't allow gmail to go through (because of spam filters, although gmail has the lowest per capita spam of any major provider out there!).
Google docs ROCKS! You can sign in to any internet-connected computer anywhere in the world, and access this document now, and mess with it. You can also download a gadget that syncs the document to your computer and lets you work with it offline.
Good luck! I'm a newish Mac user too - I'm learning that there is indeed Life After Bill Gates.
I like IWorks just because Pages is really awesome. I do a lot of projects that use mixed media and Pages does a terrific job for such an inexpensive application. the other applications that don't expire are so amazing, too. I love my Mac!