10 Minute Guide to Lotus Notes Mail 4.5 - 7 - Formatting Text In this lesson, you learn about rich text fields how to format text, and how to add special characters in your mail messages. Understanding Rich Text Fields Until now, most of the fields you've been working with have been text fields. In a text field, you can enter text or numbers, but you can't format the text. To format text is to make your text bold, italic, and underlined. You can also change the font and the font size. The body field of the mail memo is a different kind of text field; it's a rich text field. You can also add graphics, attachments, objects, hotspots, pop-ups, special characters, and tables to this field. Timesaver Tip: No Size Limit A rich text field has virtually no size limit. However, if your message is longer than one screen, consider typing your message in a word processing program. You can then attach this file to your Mail message. You can identify a rich text field by looking at the Lotus Notes status bar. When your cursor is in a rich text field, the font name, font size, and paragraph style assigned to that field appear on the status bar. Additionally, red square brackets surround the field. Figure 7.1 shows the Mail Memo form with the cursor in the To field, which is a text field, but not a rich text field. No formatting information appears in the status bar. Figure 7.1 The status bar indicates a text field. Figure 7.2 shows the cursor positioned in the body field, which is a rich text field. The status bar displays information about the font name, font size, and paragraph style. Figure 7.2 The status bar indicates a rich text field. Methods of Formatting Text To change your text's appearance, you can add headings, subheadings, bullets, numbers, bold, and italics. You can also underline your text, change the fonts and colors, and use strikethrough, superscript, and subscript. You can also use these formatting options in combination, such as bold and italic, or bold and underlined, or italic and underlined. You can format text using two methods. With the first method, type your text and then use your mouse or keystrokes to select the text you want to format. After you select the text, apply your formatting options. With the second method, you select the formatting options first and then type the text. Timesaver Tip: Selecting Text Place your mouse pointer to the left of the word(s) you want to select, hold down the left mouse button, and drag the mouse across the words. Release the mouse when the word(s) you want selected appear highlighted. To deselect the text, click anywhere in the window. Changing Types of Text Formats Like most word processing programs, you can find text formatting options in the toolbar, the menu bar, or by using keystrokes. To change text formatting using buttons on the toolbar, follow these steps: 1. Place your cursor in the rich text field where you want the new formatting style to begin. 2. In the toolbar, click one of the following buttons: 3. Begin typing your mail message. 4. To end formatting, click the toolbar button again. Timesaver Tip: Changing Existing Text To change existing text, select the text, then press one of the formatting buttons on the toolbar. Lotus Notes also offers text formatting options through the Text Properties box. Plain English: Strikethrough Use this to show text that has been struck from a document, such as this. Use Superscript to place text above the line, such as a trademark&tm; notation and Subscript to place text below the line, such as in the H20 chemical symbol. To change text formatting options using the Text Properties box, follow these steps: 1. Place the cursor in the area of the rich text field where you want to begin your new formatting style. 2. Click the Properties SmartIcon in the toolbar. The Text Properties box appears, as shown in Figure 7.3. 3. (Optional) If you don't see the word Text next to Properties for: in the title bar, click the drop-down list and choose Text. 4. In the Style: list, click the formatting style you want to apply. A check mark indicates that a style is active. You can choose more than one style. (Use the scrollbar on the right to locate styles that are not displayed.) 5. Click the Close (X) button in the upper right corner of the Properties box to apply the formatting style. 6. Begin typing text. Figure 7.3 The Text Properties box. Timesaver Tip: Shortcut Another way to access the Properties box is to place your cursor in the rich text field and right-click. Select Text Properties from the pop-up menu. Fonts and Special Characters The default font for the mail message body field is Helvetica, which appears on the status bar as Helv. To change your font, click the Helv font button on the status bar and select a new font from the pop-up list (see Figure 7.4). You can also change your font through the Text Properties box. (The steps for accessing and selecting options from the Text Properties box were described earlier in this lesson.) Figure 7.4 The font pop-up menu located on the status bar. Timesaver Tip: Be Conservative Lotus Notes supplies a large list of fonts, but don't use them all in the same mail message. Many available computer fonts are decorative and fine to use for a couple of words, but difficult to read in large blocks of text. Additionally, not everyone shares the fonts you have on your computer. Sometimes, you might want to include special characters in the body of your mail message, which don't appear on your keyboard, such as a copyright mark (c). You can find these characters in the LMBCS (Lotus MultiByte Character Set) table. Table 7.1 shows a partial listing of special characters. To enter any of these special characters into the body of your mail message, place your cursor at the insertion point where you want the character to appear, hold down the Alt key, and type the character sequence listed in Table 7.1. Table 7.1 Special Characters Character Type This [sterling] L= ® RO 1/2 12 1/4 14 (c) CO cents c/ [yen] Y= deg. ^O Size Font size, or type size, is measured in points. A larger point number results in larger text. The default size of the text in Notes is 10 points. To change the font size, click the Size button on the status bar, and select one of the sizes from the pop-up menu (see Figure 7.5). Figure 7.5 The font size pop-up menu located on the status bar. If you want a size other than the ones listed in the pop-up menu, follow these steps: 1. Open the Properties dialog box and select Text from the drop-down list in the title bar. The Text tab appears (see Figure 7.3). 2. Click the up or down buttons below the Size list, to change to a nonstandard font size. Timesaver Tip: Closing the Properties Box You do not have to close the Properties box to apply formatting. Formatting options you select will take effect even with the Properties box open. You might want to leave the box open if you are performing several formatting options at one time. You can move the Properties box by dragging the title bar. Color One of the best ways to add emphasis and emotion to your text is with color. To add color to text, choose Text, Color from the menu bar, and then select a color name from the list. To see more color choices, click the Other button. The Properties box opens; you can choose a color from the Text color drop-down list by clicking the color swatch you want to apply to the text. The Permanent Pen The permanent pen (a Lotus Notes term) allows you to add text in another color or font. This is especially useful for making comments that contrast with the regular text. Why would you use this instead of changing the text attributes the normal way? With the permanent pen, you don't have to change the text formatting every time you move the cursor. To turn on the permanent pen, choose Text, Permanent Pen or click the Permanent Pen SmartIcon. Then type the text you want to appear in the permanent pen style. To stop the permanent pen style, click the Permanent Pen SmartIcon again. To set the look of the permanent pen, open the Properties box and choose Text in the Properties for: field. Select the first tab (labeled AZ). Make all of your selections for the permanent pen; make sure you don't have any text selected before you do this. Click Set Permanent Pen font. In this lesson, you learned about rich text fields and how to format text. You also learned how to insert special characters and apply the permanent pen. In the next lesson, you learn how to use the address books.

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