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Sheet Formatting

While many sheets look great by default, some configurations may result in too small a font or a cramped, unattractive sheet. Fortunately, there is a lot you can do to improve and customize the appearance of a sheet.

To improve the appearance of a sheet:

Step 1

First, make sure you have a sheet open and that the Answer Key is being displayed. If you do not see answers for the problems, choose Sheet > Show Answer Key. This way you can be sure you do not choose settings that do not leave enough room for answers.

Step 2

Next, make sure the page orientation and geometry makes sense. If you are using horizontal problems or division problems, you should probably have more problems down than across. You may also want to change the page orientation from landscape (horizontal) to portrait (vertical) or vice versa. If you would like to change either of these options, choose Sheet > Change Problem Types & Ranges. The page orientation can be changed in the same place.

Tip: You may also want to play with different page margins. To do this, choose File > Page Setup. The exact wording and location of the margins option may vary between printer manufacturers.

Step 3

After the sheet looks reasonable, you can customize the font face and/or size. The sheet problems and the Name/Date header have separate font settings. To change the font for your sheet's problems choose Format > Change Sheet Font & Size. Then choose a font from the list in the left side of the window. By default the size is chosen automatically. If you have a good reason to override the default size, uncheck "Automatically choose size" and select a size on the right side. You may need to use some trial and error to get the desired appearance.

Step 4

When you are happy with the problem appearance, move on to the Name/Date header. Click anywhere within the header to start editing it. Change the text as desired. The long stretches of underline were created with Shift & the Minus (-) key.

To change the header's font or size, highlight a portion of the text by clicking & dragging (to change all of it at once choose Edit & Select All). Then choose Format > Header Font > Change Font & Size. All common styles (Underline, Bold, Italic) and alignments (Left, Center, Right, or Justified) are available under the Format menu.

Tip: If you manage to make the sheet worse, you can restore the original settings by choosing Format > Restore Default Formatting.

Step 5

If you would like the sheet's difficulty to be immediately obvious, you can have Mathemania insert a summary of the sheet's settings into the header. Simply choose Sheet > Insert Problem Range Summary into Header. Since the summary is just pasted into the header, you can edit the wording, font, and size just like you would any other text.

That's it for this portion of the tutorial. If you are still having problems getting a particular combination of settings to look good, simply email us for help. See Getting Help for contact information. Otherwise, move on to the next session below.

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