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This article is where you get your feet wet with Microsoft Word. Don’t be shy. Walk right to the shore and sink your toes in the water. Don’t worry; no one will push you from behind. This article explains how to create and open documents, save documents, and change the look of the text. If you aren’t the greatest typist or speller, this article also tells you how to spell check a document.
Getting Acquainted with Word
Seeing the Word screen for the first time is sort of like trying to find your way through Tokyo’s busy Ikebukuro subway station. It’s intimidating. But when you start using Word, you quickly learn what everything is. To see the Standard toolbar and Formatting toolbar and two separate rows, click the Toolbar Options button and choose Show Buttons on Two Rows. You will find the miniscule Toolbar Options button on the far right side of the Standard or Formatting toolbar.
Creating a New Document
Document is just a fancy word for a letter, report, announcement, or proclamation that you create with Word. When you first start Word, you see a document with the generic name “Document1.” Apart from the new document that appears when you start Word, the program offers a bunch of ways to create a brand-new document:
- Starting from a blank document: Click the New Blank Document button, press Ctrl+N, or click the Blank Document hyperlink in the New Document task pane. Go this route and you get a blank document made from the Normal template. For most occasions, the blank document is a fine place to start.
- Starting with a sophisticated template: Click the On My Computer hyperlink in the New Document task pane to open the Templates dialog box and choose a template there, You’ll find the On My Computer hyperlink under the “Other Templates” in the New Document task pane. If you don’t see the task pane, press Ctrl+F1 or choose View -> Task Pane. Select a tab in the dialog box, select a template or wizard, and click the OK button. Each template comes with its own sophisticated styles so that you don’t have to create fancy layouts yourself. A wizard is a series of dialog boxes in which you make choices about the kind of document you want. If you are in the market for a fancy document, you can save a lot of time by doing it with a template or wizard because you don’t have to do most of the formatting yourself.
- Starting with a template from the Microsoft Web site: Click the Templates Home Page hyperlink on the New Document task pane to go to Microsoft.com and choose a template there.
Speedy Ways to Open Documents
Rooting around in the Open dialog box to find a document is a bother, so Word offers these handy techniques for opening documents:
- File menu: If you want to open a document you worked on recently, it may be on the File menu. Check it out. Open the File menu and see whether the document you want to open is one of those listed at the bottom of the menu. If it is, click its name or press its number (1 through 4).
- Document list in New Document task pane: The same documents that are listed on the File menu can also be found at the top of the New Document task pane. Click a file there to open it.
- My Recent Documents button in the Open dialog box: Click the My Recent Documents button in the Open dialog box to see a list of the last three dozen documents and folders that you opened. Double-click a document to open it; double-click a folder to see its contents.
- My Documents button in the Open dialog box: Click the My Documents button to see the contents of the My Documents folder. Double-click a document to open it. The My Documents folder is a good place to keep documents you are currently working on. When you’re done with a current document, you can move it to a different folder for safekeeping.
- Windows Documents menu: Click the Start button and choose Documents to see a list of the last 15 files you opened (in Word and in other programs). Choose a Word document on the list to open it in Word.
- Open the Recent Documents Menu: Click the Start button, choose My Recent Documents, and select from the last several files you opened. This way, you open a file and a program at the same time. To list more than four documents at the bottom of the File menu and the top of the New Document task pane, choose Tools -> Options, select the General tab in the Options dialog box, and enter a number higher than 4 in the Recently Used File List text box.
All about Saving Documents
Everybody, or nearly everybody, knows how to save a document. All you have to do is press Ctrl+S, click the Save button, or choose File -> Save. The first time you save a document, you are asked to give it a descriptive name and choose the folder where it belongs. Word also offers the File -> Save As command for saving a file under a different name or in a different folder.
Changing the Font and Size of Text
Font is the catchall name for type style and type size. When you change fonts, you choose another style of type or change the size of the letters. Word offers a whole bunch of different fonts. You can see their names by clicking the down arrow next to the Font drop-down list and scrolling down the list. To change the font:
1. Select the text or place the cursor where you want the font to change.
2. Click the down arrow on the Font drop-down list and select a font name. Word puts all the fonts you’ve used so far in the document at the top of the Font drop-down list to make it easier for you to find the fonts you use most often. To quickly scroll down the list, press a letter on your keyboard. Press S, for example, to scroll to fonts whose names begin with an S. Fonts with TT beside their names are TrueType fonts. Use these fonts if you can because they look the same on-screen as they do when printed on paper. Type is measured in points. A point is 1⁄72 of an inch. The larger the point size, the larger the letters. To change the size of letters:
1. Select the letters or place the cursor where you want the larger or smaller letters to start appearing.
2. Click the down arrow on the Font Size drop-down list and choose a Font size. Enter a point size in the Font Size list box if the font sizes on the list don’t do the trick. You can also change font sizes by selecting the text and pressing Ctrl+Shift+< or Ctrl+Shift+>. Doing so increases or decreases the font size by the next interval on the Font Size drop-down list. Press Ctrl+] or Ctrl+[ to increase or decrease the font size by 1 point. To change fonts and font sizes at the same time, choose Format -> Font and make your choices in the Font dialog box. What do you do if you look at your screen and discover to your dismay that you entered characters iN tHe wRONg casE? You can fix uppercase and lowercase problems by selecting the text you entered incorrectly and pressing Shift+F3. Keep pressing Shift+F3 until the text looks right. Shift+F3 first changes the characters to all lowercase, then to Initial Capitals, then to ALL UPPERCASE, and then back to all lowercase again.
Spell Checking a Document
Don’t trust the spell checker it can’t catch all misspelled words. If you mean to type middle but type fiddle instead, for example, the spell checker won’t catch the error because fiddle is a legitimate word. The moral is: If you’re working on an important document, proofread it carefully. Don’t rely on the smell checker to catch all your smelling errors. The spell checker is great, however, for taking care of the majority of spelling errors. Red wiggly lines appear under words that Microsoft Word thinks are misspelled. Right-click a misspelled word and choose the correct word on the shortcut menu. Otherwise, go the whole hog and spell or grammar check an entire document or text selection by starting in one of these ways:
- Click the Spelling and Grammar button.
- Choose Tools -> Spelling and Grammar.
- Press F7. The Spelling and Grammar dialog box appears. Options in this dialog box are self-explanatory, except for these beauties:
- Ignore Once: Ignores the misspelling, but stops on it again if the same misspelled word appears later in the document.
- Ignore All: Ignores the misspelling wherever it appears in the document. Not only that, the spell checker ignores the misspelling in all your other open documents.
- Add to Dictionary: Adds the word in the Not in Dictionary box to the words in the dictionary that Microsoft Word deems correct. Click this button the first time that the spell checker stops on your last name to add your last name to the spelling dictionary.
- Change All: Changes not only this misspelling to the word in the Suggestions box, but also all identical misspellings in the document.
- AutoCorrect: Adds the suggested spelling correction to the list of words that are corrected automatically as you type them.
- Undo: Goes back to the last misspelling you corrected and gives you a chance to repent and try again.
- Check Grammar: Deselect this check box to run the spell checker and ignore what Word thinks are grammatical errors. You can click outside the Spelling dialog box and fool around in your document, in which case the Ignore button changes names and becomes Resume. Click the Resume button to start the spell check again.
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