Using the Symphony office suite

Visit the Lotus Symphony homepage and click the orange Download button to visit the Lotus Symphony 3.0 download page, then click the Proceed without an IBM ID link. Type in your name, email address and country, then tick all three boxes beneath to protect your privacy. Scroll down, read the licence agreement, tick the box labelled I agree then click the I Confirm link followed by Download now. Click the Download using http tab followed by Download now once again. If the File Download Security Warning dialogue box appears, click Save and then choose a location for the downloaded file. Firefox users should select Save File to save the download to Firefox’s default download folder. The download measured 258MB so, even on a fast broadband connection, it could take a good while to complete.

When it’s finished, locate and double-click the downloaded file (called IBM_Lotus_Symphony_w32.exe) and follow the setup wizard. When Lotus Symphony has finished installing, leave the Open Lotus Symphony box ticked and click Finish. The program will open revealing its first unique selling point: unlike other office applications, all documents – whether text, spreadsheets or presentations – are opened as a series of tabs within the main Lotus Symphony window, making it easy to switch between them. Click Create a new Document to open a new text document in a separate tab; click the Home tab at any time to return to the main window.

Another unique feature is the way Symphony’s user interface is laid out, with a right-hand panel aping the ribbon found in later versions of Microsoft Office. Note though that the traditional menus remain intact at the top of the Symphony window. Four tabs are available in the right-hand panel: Properties (selected by default), Style List, Clip Art and Navigator. Each panel is split into sections, which can be collapsed or expanded using the ‘- ‘and ‘+‘ buttons to the left of the section title. Move between panels by clicking the appropriate icon on the right-hand side of the panel. The panel itself can be hidden by clicking the selected icon again.

Inserting and editing images in any type of document is simple: position the cursor where the image will be placed, then choose Graphic from File, or Clip Art from the Create menu. Once inserted, a limited number of options are available from the Properties pane. Double-click the image to open the Graphic Properties menu for the full range of options: resize, position and align the image, wrap text around it, crop and flip the image and even add border effects and a background colour. When finished, lock the image using the protection settings on the Options tab.

Charts can be created from scratch or from existing data in a table (text documents) or spreadsheet. Create one from a spreadsheet by clicking and dragging the mouse pointer over the cells containing the data to be included, then select Chart from the Create menu. A chart will appear accompanied by a four-step wizard, which has options for choosing the type of chart, fine-tuning the data to include, and setting up labels, a title and subtitle. The chart will automatically update as changes are made, making it easy to see what’s happening. Click Finish to create the chart.

The chart can be resized or moved like any other window or frame. Double-click the chart to edit it. Its border will turn grey. Then right-click the chart to access available options. Charts can also be copied and pasted into any other type of document. Click outside the chart to deselect it, then right-click the chart and choose Copy. Switch to the other document, right-click and select Paste. This chart is an exact copy of the original, and can be edited separately in the same way (choose Chart Data to edit its contents in a text or presentation document).

Spreadsheets in Lotus Symphony can make use of a feature called Detective, which can trace relationships between different cells – useful if a cell’s figure is based on the content of many other cells. Click on the cell in question, open the Tools menu, point to Detective and then choose either Trace Precedents or Trace Dependents to view blue arrows linking up the cells. If a cell contains an error, choose Tools followed by Detective, then Trace Error to track it down. Remove these lines by selecting Remove All Traces on the same menu.

Creating dynamic slideshow presentations is easy: from the Home tab click Create a new Presentation. Each slide can contain a mixture of text, graphics, video and sounds – add these from the Create menu. Use the Properties sidebar to choose between different slide layouts. More than 200 animation effects have been added to Lotus Symphony 3: select an element such as a graphic or block of text, then switch to the Animation Effects sidebar and click Add. Click on an effect to view a preview, then click OK to include it. Repeat for other slide elements.

A Master Document makes it possible to combine separate text documents – such as chapters of a book – into a larger document without creating a single, unmanageable super-document. Create one by opening the File menu from the Home tab and choosing New followed by Master Text Document. Click and hold the Insert button on the Navigator sidebar to bring up the Insert dropdown menu. Choose File to insert the first text file then repeat for the other files. If they don’t appear in the correct order, click and drag their filenames into the desired positions on the Navigator sidebar.

The Master Document acts as a container for these files, so they can’t be edited from within it: instead, double-click the document name in the Navigator sidebar to open it in a separate tab. Once edited and saved, return to the Master Document and update it to reflect these changes by clicking and holding the Update button and selecting Links. Use the other options on the Insert dropdown menu to add specially written text, such as a linking passage between two documents, or an index/table of contents, both of which can be edited from within the Master Document. Note also that Lotus Symphony saves its documents in the Open Document Format (ODF) but, if you want better compatibility, you may wish to save in Microsoft Office (.doc, .xls and .pps) formats instead. To make this the default setting, open the File menu and choose Preferences. Select Load and Save, click the Open Document Format dropdown menu and choose Microsoft Office 97-2003 before clicking OK.