Your ideas won't work for balancing the equation because you are changing what the products and reactants are. In order to balance an equation, you need to change the amount of products and reactants. Here's an example. Let's say you want to balance the reaction of calcium hydroxide + hydrochloric acid turns into water and calcium chloride. The first step is to write out the reaction.
1) Ca(OH)2 + HCl -> CaCl2 + H2O
The second step is totalling up the atoms on each side.
2) Left: 1Ca, 3H, 2O, 1Cl. Right: 1Ca, 2Cl, 2H, 1O.
So you can see that on the right side we are short one Hydrogen and one Oxygen, and we have one extra chlorine atom. In order to balance this, we have to adjust the coefficients of the products and reactants we have listed. So how can we add another chlorine atom to the left side? By putting a 2 in front of HCl. This gives:
3) Ca(OH)2 + 2HCl -> CaCl2 + H2O.
Now if we retotal everything, we get Left: 1Ca, 4H, 2O, 2Cl. Right: 1Ca, 2H, 1O, 2Cl. We're almost balanced. On the right side we're short 2H and 1O. That's just one water molecule, so if we put a 2 in front of the H2O on the products side everything will be balanced.
Final) Ca(OH)2 + 2HCl -> CaCl2 + 2H2O
Hopefully that will be of some help. Sorry I can't get to the rest of them any sooner, but I've just been incredibly busy today.