- Browsing Your Library
- Reading NOOK Books on Your NOOK Tablet
- Reading Magazines and Comics on Your NOOK Tablet
- Reading Newspapers on Your NOOK Tablet
- Reading Microsoft Office and Other Documents on Your NOOK Tablet
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Reading Microsoft Office and Other Documents on Your NOOK Tablet
Beyond the NOOK Books, magazines, ebooks from other sources, and newspapers you can read, on your NOOK Tablet you can also read Microsoft Office documents, HTML files, and PDFs.
Reading Microsoft Office Documents
Your NOOK Tablet has Quickoffice Lite installed, which is an application running on your NOOK Tablet that can open and read Microsoft Office documents.
A great thing about this is you don’t have to worry about which version of Word or Excel you have, you can open them up so long as they are valid Office documents. Have Word 2010 DOCX files? You can open these as easily as you open Word 2003 DOC files. No worries either between Mac or PC.
To open an Office document, tap Library from the Quick Nav Bar and tap My Files. You can then navigate to the location on either the NOOK Tablet or microSD card where your Office document is located. (Generally, these are in the My Files\ Documents folder.)
You see a listing of files. You have two options at this point. Tapping the File icon opens the file. Pressing and holding the File icon displays a menu with Read, View Details, and Add to Shelf options, which are familiar options previously described in the chapter.
The different types of Office documents have some similar and some different options available when you open them, so now look at them individually.
Word
After the Word document opens, the Status bar adds two icons: Return and Reading Tools (see Figure 3.31). Tap the Return icon to undo the most recent action. (For example, if you tap it immediately after opening the document, you return to the folder from which you opened it.)
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Figure 3.31 Reading Word documents on your NOOK Tablet.
Tap the Reading Tools icon to see a list of options:
- Search: Searches for words or phrases in the document.
- Page View: Displays individual pages versus continually flowing text. This option is available only when you are in Reflow view.
- Reflow View: Displays the text in continually flowing text. This option is available only when you are in Page view.
- Go to Page: Tap this and type the page number you want to go directly to. This option is available only when you are in Page view.
- Information: Offers three choices: Properties, which displays some basic information about the document, Upgrade to Edit, which takes you to the B&N app store to purchase a full version of Quickoffice Pro, and About, which displays information about Quickoffice Lite.
While reading Word documents in either Page or Reflow view, you can use pinch and zoom to zoom in and out of the document. If you tap the reading screen, two zoom control buttons appear at the bottom of the page.
Excel
After the Excel document opens, the Status bar adds two icons: Return and Reading Tools. Tap the Return icon to undo the most recent action. (For example, if you tap it immediately after opening the document, you return to the folder from which you opened it.)
Tap the Reading Tools icon to see a list of options (see Figure 3.32):
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- Search: Searches for words or phrases in the document.
- Go to Cell: Opens a text entry screen. Type the cell (for example, D1) that you want to go to. The cell is then selected.
- Information: Offers three choices: Properties, which displays some basic information about the document, Upgrade to Edit, which takes you to the B&N app store to purchase a full version of Quickoffice Pro, and About, which displays information about Quickoffice Lite.
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Figure 3.32 View Excel spreadsheets on your NOOK Tablet.
While reading Excel documents, you can use pinch and zoom to zoom in and out of the document. If you tap the reading screen, two zoom control buttons appear at the bottom of the page.
The FX row at the top shows the formula or text in the selected cell. You cannot modify it, but you at least can see what is going into that cell.
If the spreadsheet has more than one sheet, at the bottom, tap the sheet you want to go to.
PowerPoint
After the PowerPoint document opens, the Status bar adds two icons: Return and Reading Tools. Tap the Return icon to undo the most recent action. (For example, if you tap it immediately after opening the document, you return to the folder from which you opened it.)
Tap the Reading Tools icon to see a list of options (see Figure 3.33):
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- Go to Slide: Tap this and type the slide number you want to go directly to. This option is available only when you are in Page view.
- Start Slideshow: Start the slideshow. During the slideshow, which advances automatically through the slides, if you tap the screen, a slide control bar appears. Use this to pause or restart the slideshow or advance to the beginning or end slides or back and forth to the next slide. The Reading Tool icon also shows a Stop Slideshow button.
- Information: Offers three choices: Properties, which displays some basic information about the document, Upgrade to Edit, which takes you to the B&N app store to purchase a full version of Quickoffice Pro, and About, which displays information about Quickoffice Lite.
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Figure 3.33 Watch PowerPoint presentations on your NOOK Tablet.
While reading PowerPoint documents, you can use pinch and zoom to zoom in and out of the document. If you tap the reading screen, two zoom control buttons appear at the bottom of the page. Advancing through the slides is either done by either swiping (in portrait mode) or scrolling (in landscape mode).
Reading HTML Files
After you tap to open an HTML file, the HTML file is opened in the web browser. For more information about using the web browser, see Chapter 9 for more information.
Reading PDFs
This section is specifically about PDFs outside of Adobe Digital Editions PDFs (ADE PDFs). ADE PDFs operate like regular ebooks.
On the NOOK Tablet, when you open a PDF, you have two options for reading that PDF (see Figure 3.34). If you have installed an app that also reads PDFs (for example, ezPDF Reader Pro), the option to open the PDF appears here as well. The Reader and Quickoffice Lite offer slightly different reading options, so now explore both.
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Figure 3.34 Which app do you want to read your PDF in?
Reading PDFs with Quickoffice Lite
Similar to Office documents, when a PDF opens, the Return and Reading Tools icons appear on the Status bar.
Tap the Reading Tools icon to see a list of options (see Figure 3.35):
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- Fit Page: Tap this to have the page of the PDF fit within the entire screen. This works in either portrait or landscape mode.
- Fit Width: Shows the PDF page to fit the width of that page. (In general, this means that you get a closer view of the page, particularly in landscape mode.)
- Go to Page: Tap this and type the page number you want to go directly to.
- Send: Tap this to email the PDF. After you tap it, an email with the PDF attached opens up. See Chapter 9 for more information about email.
- Updates: Takes you to the B&N app store to purchase a full version of Quickoffice Pro.
- More: Offers two choices: Properties, which displays some basic information about the document, and About, which displays information about Quickoffice Lite.
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Figure 3.35 Reading a PDF document.
While reading PDF documents, you can use pinch and zoom to zoom in and out of the document.
Reading PDFs with Reader
When you use Reader to read PDF documents, it mirrors more reading NOOK Magazines and NOOK Books.
If you tap the page, you display the Reading Tools (see Figure 3.36):
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- Thumbnails: You can scroll through the PDF like you can a magazine. Tap the thumbnail of the page you want to go to.
- Scroll Bar: Drag this to quickly slide through the PDF.
- Go to Page: Tap this to enter a specific page number to go directly to that page.
- Go Back: When you use the Go to Page option, after you have advanced to that page, you can tap Go Back to take you back to the location where you just were—kind of like flipping back and forth between two channels on your TV remote.
- Reading Tools Bar: This bar has five buttons: Content, Find, Share, Brightness, and Discover. The buttons function just like they do for NOOK Books.
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Figure 3.36 Reading a PDF document with Reader.
While reading PDF documents, you can use pinch and zoom to zoom in and out of the document. Finally, while reading, you can press and hold on a word. The Text Selection Toolbar appears (see Figure 3.37). If you want to select more than that single word, drag the selection highlight to the end of the block of text you want to select. For the Highlight, Notes, and Look Up buttons, see Chapter 6. For the Share button, see Chapter 10. The “Looking Up Words” section of this chapter discusses looking up and finding words.
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Figure 3.37 Highlight text in a PDF.
The options function just like the corresponding functions in the NOOK Books. In addition, you can freeze the orientation of a PDF just like a NOOK Book: When you flip the NOOK Tablet, you see a small Lock icon. When you shift it back and forth, tap the Lock icon to lock reading in that mode. This applies to all NOOK Books. To unlock, just rotate the NOOK Tablet until you see the Unlock icon and tap that icon.
Reading Page Perfect Books
With the release of the NOOK Tablet and the update to the NOOK Color, B&N introduced Page Perfect books. When you download the latest thriller, normally, what text appears on what page is not all that important. But some ebooks require that the presentation in ebook format not shift based on the size of the text the reader wants, where images fall, and so on. Thus, Page Perfect books preserve exactly how the book is supposed to appear. These books function in many regards like the PDFs read with the Reader in the previous section.
You open a Page Perfect book like any other. If you double-tap the screen, it zooms into that portion of the book. Double-tap again to zoom out to the original size. If you tap once, you see the Reading Tools along with a thumbnail of the pages like a magazine (see Figure 3.38).
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Figure 3.38 Reading a Page Perfect book.
All other functions of a Page Perfect book mirror reading a PDF in Reader.