Microsoft Office Word Part (A)

Microsoft Office Word 

About this course

This course includes:

·                     Three self-paced lessons and three practice sessions for hands-on experience.

·                     A short test at the end of each lesson; tests are not scored.

·                     A Quick Reference Card you can take away from the course.

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

·                     Create a document, and edit it.

·                     Use menus and toolbars in Word to accomplish basic tasks from changing document margins to undoing changes.

·                     Use basic formatting to make text bold or italic.

·                     Change line spacing, indent paragraphs, and apply basic styles to a document.

Save and print a finished document.

You need to create a document in Word, but you've never worked with Word. Where do you begin?

Or perhaps you've worked in Word a time or two, but you still wonder how to do some of the basics — edit and format text, or change margins.

If you need to learn the skills to get to work in Word quickly, with little fuss, this is the place.

To learn more about this course, read the overview in the center of this page or the table of contents in the left column. Then click Next to start the first lesson.

When you open Word, you're faced with a blank screen with toolbars at the top.

If you're new to Word, you may wonder what to do first as you start to type your letter, report, or list of things to do.

How do you indent a paragraph or adjust margins, and what are those strange red and green underlines in your document?

We'll begin by helping you get comfortable with some Word basics that will guide you when you get to work in Word.

 The first document you open is called Document1 in the title bar at the top of the window.

 The menu bar. The File menu is the first one on the left.

 The Standard and Formatting toolbars.

 The insertion point. 

 

When you start Word, a new file opens. That file is called a document. Above the document you'll see the menu bar and the toolbars displayed across the top of the window, as shown in the illustration.

If you've already started Word, you create a new document by clicking New on the File menu. In the New Document task pane that opens, click Blank document.

 

In the upper-left corner of the document, or page, is the insertion point, a blinking vertical line. The first thing you type will appear there. You can start further down the page if you want to by pressing ENTER until the insertion point is where you want the first line to begin. As you type, the insertion point moves to the right.

If you're typing a letter, you might start by typing the date. After that, press ENTER to move the insertion point down the page one line.

If there's an address, you might add a few empty lines before you type. Press ENTER several times, until the insertion point is where you want it. Then type the first line of the address, press ENTER, type the next line, press ENTER, and so on. Then type the greeting.

When you type the body of the letter, if you want to indent the first line of a paragraph, you can do that by pressing the TAB key on your keyboard to move the insertion point one-half inch to the right.

Go ahead and type. When you get to the end of the first line, you don't have to press ENTER, as you would if you were using a typewriter; Word takes care of that for you. Just continue to type. Whatever you are typing will continue on to the next line.

You do press ENTER to start another paragraph. 

 The Standard toolbar.

 The Save button.

Fig. 2  The Save As dialog box, which appears the first time you save your document.

Perhaps by now you have a finely tuned sentence, or a paragraph of facts and figures that you would regret losing if you accidentally deleted some text, or if a power failure shut your computer down.

To keep your work, you have to save it, and it's never too early to do that.

To save your document for the first time, click Save on the Standard toolbar (see Figure 1). If you prefer to use the keyboard, press CTRL+S (hold down the CTRL key and then press S; this is called a keyboard shortcut).

Tip     Toolbars have all sorts of buttons that you can use to carry out commands. To find out what a button does, move your mouse over it. A word or two is displayed to tell you what the button does.

The Save As dialog box opens next (see Figure 2). A dialog box is a smaller window in which you perform some action. You use this box to tell Word where you want to store the document on your computer, and what you want to call it.

In the practice you'll learn the steps for exactly how to use the Save As dialog box.

After you save your document, and you continue to type, click the Save button, or click CTRL+S, every once in a while. That will save the changes you make as you work. Then, when you finish, save the document once again.

When you are through working, and have saved your work, you close the file by clicking Close on the File menu.

Tip     If you forget to save your document before you close the file, Word will remind you by asking if you want to save changes. You can then click Yes or No.

 The red wavy red underline indicates a spelling error in "Museum."

 The green wavy underline indicates a problem with the grammar.

Fig. 2  Right-click a word with a red or green underline. Select an alternative from the menu, and it will automatically replace the word in the document.

Most of us make mistakes sometimes, with spelling or perhaps with grammar. Or we might enter text, such as a proper name or place, that Word doesn't recognize and marks as misspelled.

When that happens, you'll see wavy red underlines for possible spelling errors and wavy green underlines for possible grammatical errors. See Figure 1.

When you see something with an underline, right-click it. As shown in Figure 2, a menu appears with a list of suggested alternatives. Click one, and that word will replace the underlined word in your document. (Every once in a while Word will not be able to offer any spelling alternatives.)

Sometimes Word will add the red underline to a word it does not recognize — like your name. You can add those words to the Word dictionary by clicking Add to Dictionary so that they aren't underlined in the future. You'll see how in the practice session at the end of this lesson.

For possible grammatical errors, Word tries to suggest a revision. It's up to you to decide if Word is right, or if you are.

Tip     When you want to know what's going on in the document window, or if you want to know how to do something, ask about what you want to know in the Type a question for help box in the upper right corner of the window:

For example, to find out about the red and green lines, you could type "wavy lines" or "underlines" to see the Help topic "What do the underlines in my document mean?

Something else you might see from time to time are paragraph marks:  A paragraph mark is added every time you press ENTER.

You'll only see paragraph marks in your document if formatting marks are turned on. You'll also see a small dot between each word in a document; the dots are spaces.

So don't worry if you see paragraph marks and dots, nothing is wrong.

Formatting marks are turned on and off by clicking the Show/Hide button on the Standard toolbar. The advantage of turning paragraph marks on is that they show you where you have extra line spaces, or extra spaces between words. This can be very helpful if you're trying to tidy up a document.

For example, if there are too many blank lines between a paragraph, look for the extra paragraph marks and delete them, which you can do by pressing the BACKSPACE or DELETE key. If there is too much space between words and you can't figure out why, look for extra dots between words. Those are the extra spaces. Delete the extra dots by pressing BACKSPACE or DELETE and you fix the problem.

Paragraph marks and dots do not print in your documents; they are displayed only on the screen. But the extra line spaces and extra spaces between words do print.

A document in print layout view.

A document in normal view.

When you start Word, you see the page in print layout view. This view shows the document as it will look when you print it. For example, you can see the white space around the outside edge of the page that makes up the margins. Also, you see a gray space at the top, bottom, and sides of each page. If you have a multiple page document, the gray space separates each page.

You can also look at the page another way on the screen: in normal view. In this view, you don't see the margins (or the gray space around the page), you just see the body of your document. If you have a multiple page document, the pages run continuously, separated by a dotted line at the end of each page.

You can type in either view. It's up to you to decide which view you best like to work in. If you work in normal view, it's a good idea to switch to print layout view to check your document out at least once before you print or send your document to someone else. There are some elements you can't see in normal view. For example, some graphics do not show up in this view.

You switch views by clicking the View menu. You can easily go between both views as you like. You'll see how in the practice.

Page margins are the blank space around the edges of the page. There is a 1 inch (2.54 cm) page margin at the top and bottom of the page, and a 1.25 inch (3.175 cm) margin on the left and right sides of the page.

These margins will probably be fine for most of the documents you create. But if you want to create a document with different margins, you should know how to change them. When you type a very brief letter, for example, or if you type a recipe, an invitation, or a poem, you might like to set different margins.

For example, you could change the top and bottom margin to 2 or 3 inches (5.08 or 7.62 cm), and the left and right margins to 2 inches (5.08 cm).

Or, if you have a resume that you want to keep on one page, you might change the top and bottom margins to 0.5 inch (1.27 cm) and the left and right margins to 0.75 inch (1.905 cm) to fit more information on the page.

 

To change margins, you click Page Setup on the File menu, and then click the Margins tab. Then you enter different settings in the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right boxes, as appropriate. You'll see how in the practice.

Now it's time to practice what you've learned from the lesson.

About the practice session:-

When you click Practice in Word, a practice document will download to your computer and open in Word, and a separate window with practice instructions will appear alongside (see picture).

Note     You need to have Word 2003 installed on your computer.

Tips

·                     If the practice instructions aren't visible, or disappear when you click in Word, click the Word Help taskbar button and then click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

·                     If the practice instructions cover up Word, click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

Before you begin

Make sure to close Word if it is already running.

Start the practice

Click the Practice in Word button now.

Whether you make a mistake or change your mind, your document is bound to change. You can make those changes either as you type, or later on, but to work quickly and efficiently you'll need to know how to move around in the document.

You do this by using either the mouse or the keyboard. Once you get to the part of the document that you want to edit, you'll need to type the new text you want to add or select the existing text so that you can change it. You can select a word, a sentence, a line, a paragraph, or an entire document. Then you can delete the selected text, or move it to a new location by cutting and pasting.

Click Next to learn how to edit your documents like the professionals do.

 

Fig. 1  You can move the insertion point around a document by moving the pointer and then clicking, or by using the keyboard.

Fig. 2  You can review a document without using the insertion point or keyboard, by using the scroll bars.

 Horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the window.

 Vertical scroll bar on the right side.

Imagine, in the picture on the left, that you want to enter another sentence after the word "civilization" in the letter.

The insertion point is at the top, to the left of "Thank you," so you need to get it next to where you want to type. There are different ways to do that:

·      With your mouse, move the pointer to the right of the word "civilization," and then click. The insertion point, shown as a blinking line, indicates the point at which text will be inserted when you type. Once you start typing, the existing text moves to the right as you enter the new sentence.

Note     If text doesn't move to the right, Overtype mode is on, and each character you type will replace existing text. If this happens, press the Insert key. Then type.

·                     Press the DOWN ARROW key to move the insertion point down one line at a time. Then press the RIGHT ARROW key to move the insertion point forward, one character at a time. Or press CTRL+RIGHT ARROW to move forward one word at a time.

Tip     For a full list of the keys you can use to move around the page, type keyboard shortcuts in the Type a question for help box, in the upper-right corner of the document window.

Using the scroll bars

Perhaps you have a long document that you'd like to read all the way down or across without having to continuously press the arrow keys to move the insertion point one character or one line at a time. You can do that by scrolling.

Scrolling is performed through the use of scroll bars. The scroll bars are on the bottom of the window and on the right side (see picture). Click the arrows at both ends of the scroll bar to quickly move through the document without moving the insertion point.

You can also press the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN keys on your keyboard to do the same thing. We'll try all of this in the practice at the end of the lesson.

You've added a sentence about symphonies to the first paragraph of the letter in the picture, but now that you've read the paragraph again, you think the second sentence would read better if you delete the word "really."

To delete text, first select it. You can do this by using the mouse, or the keyboard. To select the word "really," do one of the following:

·                     Place your pointer over the word "really" and then double-click the word.

·                     With the arrow keys, move the insertion point next to the text. Then, hold down the SHIFT key and press the arrow key that moves the insertion point in the correct direction until all the text is selected.

Once "really" is selected, to delete it, press DELETE or BACKSPACE.

In the practice, you'll see how to select a sentence, and a paragraph, using both the mouse and the keyboard.

 

 Select the text you want to move.

 Click Cut.

 Place the insertion point where you want the text to 

appear.

 Click Paste.

 

Still looking at the first paragraph in the letter, you decide that the sentence you added should be the last sentence in the paragraph.

You don't have to delete the sentence, and then type it again. Instead, you can move the sentence. To move it, you cut the sentence, to delete it from its current location, and then paste it in a new location.

First, you select the entire sentence, as shown in the picture, and then click Cut on the Standard toolbar, or press CTRL+X to the do same thing (think of the X as a scissor).

Then you move the pointer to the end of the paragraph, where you want the sentence to appear, and click to insert the insertion point.

Finally, click Paste on the Standard toolbar, or press CTRL+V. The sentence is pasted in place. You'll learn how to do this in the practice.

Tip     If instead of moving the sentence to another location, you want it to appear in two (or more) places, copy it. Select the text you want to copy, click Copy on the Standard toolbar, or press CTRL+C, and then click Paste. You can copy as many times as you want.

 

You've moved the sentence, but now that you look at it, you're not happy with the change. Fortunately, you don't have to go through the entire cut and paste process again to move the sentence back. Instead, one click will do it.

On the Standard toolbar, click the Undo button. That will undo the very last action you took. Or press CTRL+Z to do the same thing. 

 

And if you immediately decided you didn't want to undo the move, you can click the Redo button to move the sentence back again. Or click CTRL+Y to do the same thing.

Click Play to watch the process of undoing.

If you had done some typing since the move, you can click the arrow on the button to see a list of the most recent actions you can undo or redo. When you undo or redo an action, you also undo or redo all actions above it in the list.

Note     You can save the document, and still undo and redo, but you can only make these changes up until you close the document. Once you reopen the document, you can only start to undo current changes.

Now you'll practice what you've learned in the lesson.

About the practice session

When you click Practice in Word, a practice document will download to your computer and open in Word, and a separate window with practice instructions will appear alongside (see picture).

Note     You need to have Word 2003 installed on your computer.

Tips

·                     If the practice instructions aren't visible, or disappear when you click in Word, click the Word Help taskbar button and then click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

·                     If the practice instructions cover up Word, click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

Before you begin

Make sure to close Word if it is already running.

Start the practice

Click the Practice in Word button now What you type is just the beginning — words alone won't always get your message across.

Before you give your document to anyone else, ask yourself, is it easy to read? Do important points stand out? Would a paragraph read better as a list?

Now it's time to get comfortable with Word formatting, so that you can emphasize certain text, and to learn about style, a tool that helps you format a document.

You'll also learn the final steps to ensure that your document is picture perfect before you print it.

Click Next to get started

. You can change how text looks by changing its format. For example, you can make text bold, italic, or underlined, to make it stand out from the rest.

You do this by clicking a button on a toolbar, or by using a simple keystroke.

The text in the picture is a quote. To make it more noticeable in a paper about the solar system, you can format it in italic. 

 

To do this, select the text, and then on the Formatting toolbar, click Italic. Or you can do the same thing by pressing CTRL+I.

In the practice you'll make text italic, as well as bold and underlined.

This document about the solar system is single spaced. If you want to change its line spacing so that there is more space between the lines, you can do that with the click of a button.

To change the line spacing in an entire document, select the document by pressing CTRL+A. To change line spacing in a single paragraph, place the insertion point beside the paragraph.

 

Then, on the Formatting toolbar, point to Line Spacing , click the arrow, and select the number that you want. Or, on the Format menu, click Paragraph, and then, in the Line spacing box, select the line spacing you want.

Tip If you end up with too much space between paragraphs, look for extra paragraph marks in between the paragraphs. Delete the extra paragraph marks to get rid of the extra space.

Word automatically uses Times New Roman, 12 point, for text. But there are many other fonts and sizes that you can use.

You might want to embellish your document by using more than one font. Do take care if you do. Limit yourself to no more than two to three different fonts in a document. Using too many fonts can produce a cluttered-looking document that may be hard to read.

 

To change fonts, you select the text, and click a font name in the Font box on the Formatting toolbar. Some common fonts are Arial, Book Antigua, Bookman Old Style, Century Gothic, Garamond, Georgia, Tahoma, and Verdana.

If you want to change more than one aspect of the font at one time, such as the font type, the size, and the color, you can use the Font dialog box instead of the individual toolbar buttons. See Figure 2.

Say, for example, that you want to change the font, font size, and font color of the quote in the solar system paper.

On the Format menu, click Font. The Font dialog box opens. Look for options and make your changes in the Font, Size, and Font color boxes.

The Font dialog box is also where you would go if you want to select effects such as superscript or subscript.

Tip     In the Font dialog box you can also change the default font that is used each time you open Word. Once you select a font and font size, click the Default button in the lower left corner and then click OK.

 The heading "Mercury" without a style.

 To add a style, click the arrow in the Style box and then select the heading style you want.

 A Heading 2 style makes "Mercury" stand out.

If you can see a lot of places where you want to apply formatting, do you have to press a lot of buttons?

Not to worry, Word comes with one-click styles, prepackaged collections of formats that make it easy to change text font, font size, and other formatting all at once.

This document, for example, includes planet names as the titles for sections. They don't stand out, but you can easily take care of that by applying a heading style.

To add a style, place the insertion point in front of the heading, and then click the arrow in the Style box near the top of the document window, as shown in the picture. Headings come in different levels: Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. We'll pick Heading 2. Now "Mercury" announces itself.

Tip     Styles aren't just for headings; they're used in entire paragraphs, too. You can learn more in a course about styles. You'll find the link in the Quick Reference Card at the end of the course. You can create numbered or bulleted lists to show stepped out instructions or to call attention to certain points. Or, simply, to type a grocery list, school supplies to buy, or tasks to complete at work tomorrow.

You can create numbered or bulleted lists either as you type, or to text that already exists.

Create a list as you type

To start a numbered list as you enter text, you type 1, then a period (.), and then press the SPACEBAR to enter a space. To type a bulleted list, type * (asterisk), and press the SPACEBAR to enter a space. Then type the text you want, and press ENTER to add the next list item.

Word automatically inserts the next number or bullet. To end the list, you press ENTER twice, or press BACKSPACE to delete the last number or bullet in the list. 

 

Note     If the list doesn't start as you type, the feature may be turned off. On the Tools menu, click AutoCorrect Options, and then click the AutoFormat As You Type tab. Make sure the Automatic bulleted lists and Automatic numbered lists check boxes are selected.

Create a list from existing text

Select the text you want to add numbering or bullets to. On the Formatting toolbar, click Numbering or Bullets. You'll see exactly how this works in the practice.

Tip     You can continue a numbered list between unnumbered paragraphs. For example, if the last number in the list is 4, and you then type a paragraph, and want to start the list again after the paragraph, just type 5, a period, and a space, and you can continue the list.

Before you print, you should check the spelling and grammar in the document. Even though Word checks spelling and grammar as you type, something might have been missed.

 

Make sure the insertion point is at the beginning of the document. Then, on the Standard toolbar, click Spelling and Grammar. When Word finds a possible spelling or grammatical problem, the Spelling and Grammar dialog box appears where you can accept or reject Word's suggestions.

Preview your document before printing.

Save time and save paper by previewing your document in print preview before you print.

On the File menu, click Print Preview. This view gives you a more distant view of your document; a chance to step back and see exactly what it will look like when it prints.

If you see anything you want to revise, you can work on it in this view, too. To get back to your document, click Close. You'll see it all in the practice.

Print your document

 

On the File menu, click Print. If more than one printer is available to print from, you can select the one you want in the Name box. If you want to print more than 1 copy, choose how many under Copies, in the Number of copies box. Then click OK, and you're done.

Now you're ready to practice what you've learned. For something new, you'll learn how to center text, indent several lines of text at the same time, and use the Find and Replace dialog box to find some specific text in the practice document.

About the practice session

When you click Practice in Word, a practice document will download to your computer and open in Word, and a separate window with practice instructions will appear alongside (see picture).

Note     You need to have Word 2003 installed on your computer.

Tips

·                     If the practice instructions aren't visible, or disappear when you click in Word, click the Word Help taskbar button and then click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

·                     If the practice instructions cover up Word, click the Auto Tile button on the upper-left corner of the instructions.

Before you begin

Make sure to close Word if it is already running.

Start the practice

Click the Practice in Word button now.

Have you completed all the lessons that you're interested in? A checkmark appears in the table of contents next to each completed lesson's title.

When you've finished all the lessons, please rate the course and give us your feedback. Ratings and feedback help us to create useful courses and to make existing ones better.

 

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