Introduction To Ms Word

Microsoft Word These notes are devised for Word 2003, although most of what is here is the same for other versions of Word. One feature you should be careful of is that the menus initially only display the main options; a double-arrow at the bottom of each menu can be clicked to show further options. If you use any of these regularly, they will be displayed automatically. Opening and Closing Word To start Word from the Program Manager, click on the Start button, then select MSWord from the Program or other menu. Menu bar

Status bar

Ruler

Tool bars

Document window

Scroll bar

Word opens with a blank Document Window, the area in the centre of the screen. At the top of the screen are two tool bars. If you point the cursor at any of the buttons (without clicking), their function appears in a small text box. At the top of the screen, above the

buttons, is the Menu Bar. To close Word, when you are finished, select Exit from the File menu. Before closing, ensure that all your work is properly saved. Creating a File When you start Word, a blank document appears, and you can enter text right away. The vertical bar | on the screen is called the Cursor - it shows the position where anything you type will be input. You can use the cursor keys or the mouse to move the cursor around. Notice how the pointer changes as you move the mouse around, from an arrow (letting you point at things and select them with a mouse click) to an I-beam or text pointer, when it is in the document window. You can use the I-beam pointer to quickly place the text cursor in the position where you want to start typing by clicking the mouse button. The I-beam looks a little different if it is outside the area where you have typed text (but still within the margins). If you make mistakes, you can delete them using the Backspace and Del keys. As you enter text, Word automatically wraps it round onto the line below as it reaches the right hand side of the screen. You should not use the Enter key to mark the end of a line on the screen; only use Enter in this way to mark the end of a paragraph - press it twice if you want a blank line between paragraphs. Saving Text to a File To save your text, choose Save from the File menu or click the toolbar Save button. The first time you save a file the Save as dialog box appears. This enables you to choose where to save your file. a. Select the drive on which you want to save your file (a: for your floppy disc). Use the Save in drop-down menu to find other drives and folders.

There is a default folder which opens whenever you save for the first time. This is My Documents, which is on the C: drive of a home PC but on the networked H: drive on campus cluster PCs.

b. Type in a filename. Press Enter or click the dialog box’s Save button. If you are working on a document, save it regularly in case of a problem such as a power failure, or a human error such as accidentally deleting a big chunk. Every minute or so is probably excessive - every twenty minutes is not often enough. Get into the habit of saving your work every time you stop to think. You should also back up your file regularly, so that you can revert to a previously saved version should you mess something up.

Loading Text from a File Choose Open from the File menu, or click on the picture of the Open folder. Select the drive and folder where your file is located. Double-click on a folder in the list, to display its contents. The default is to open in My Documents but you can choose another folder. To change drives, you must click on the drop-down Look in menu.

Click on a file name to select it and then click the Open button. If you simply want to create a new file from scratch, select New on the File menu. A dialog box will appear offering a choice of templates; choose General and Blank Document. Moving through Text Once you have a document that takes up more than one screenful of text, you need to be able to move through the document as easily as possible. Pressing the Home key takes you to the beginning of the current line. The End key takes you to the end of the current line. Pressing them in conjunction with the Ctrl key takes you to the top of the document (Ctrl-Home), or the bottom of the document (Ctrl-End). You can also scroll through your document with the mouse. On the right hand side of the window is a scroll bar – a sliding vertical bar with arrows at the top and bottom and a rectangular block somewhere between. The block shows you your relative position in the document. If you click with the mouse on the down arrow, you move down a line in your document. Click on the up-arrow to move towards the beginning of your text. To move faster, a screen at a time, click anywhere in the grey area beneath the block marker to move down, anywhere above it to move up. If you click on the block marker itself and hold the mouse button down, you can drag it to another position – release the mouse button and you will find you have moved to that relative point in your document. But remember to click with the mouse pointer in the text window, to place the text cursor in the new position, otherwise it will be where you last left it! While dragging the block, the status bar will tell you which page you are currently at. Editing You can do simple editing with the Backspace key, which deletes the character to the left of the cursor, and the Del or Delete key, which deletes the character to the right of the cursor. However, you will also want to delete or move larger sections of text and to do this you need to highlight the text you are interested in. You can use either the keyboard or the mouse to highlight text. Pointing the mouse cursor on a word and clicking twice rapidly will select just that word. To select a line of text, move the mouse to the left edge, until the point changes from a cursor to an arrow, and click the left

button. Double-click to select the entire paragraph. To highlight a larger selection of text, place the text cursor at your starting point, press and hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse to the point at which you want your selection to end before releasing the mouse button. Word will scroll the screen for you if you move the mouse cursor to the top or bottom of the Document Window. Sometimes the screen will scroll too quickly to catch what you want to select, in which case you can select the first line with the mouse, then scroll down to the last line you wish to select. Press shift and select that line with the mouse to highlight all the text between, including these two lines. When arrow is displayed, press Ctrl and the left button to select the entire document. To clear highlighted text just click anywhere on the text once. You can also use the keyboard to select or highlight: press and hold the Shift key down and then move the cursor with the cursor keys to extend the highlight. Press a cursor key without depressing the Shift key to clear the highlight again.

Cursor Keys

Deleting, Copying and Moving Blocks of Text Once you’ve highlighted a section of text you can remove it by pressing the Del key, or by clicking the scissors button or by selecting Cut from the Edit menu; you can also Copy it. The clipboard is an area of memory which holds recently Cut (or Copied) text. Deleted text is not held in the clipboard – you cannot paste it somewhere else – but you can recover it if you immediately press the Undo button. You can use the Cut option to physically move sections of text around. By cutting text to the clipboard, you can paste it anywhere in the file. Place the text cursor where you want the text to appear, and select Paste from the Edit menu. If you want to copy text, use Copy in the Edit menu. Copy will take a copy of the highlighted text and place it on the clipboard. You can then Paste copies of the text wherever you like in the document. You can also simply use the appropriate buttons on the button bar as shortcuts. The Office Clipboard can hold up to 24 items (this can be text, clipart or any other object that can be displayed in Word. If you copy a 25th item, the first item in the Office Clipboard is deleted. To copy/paste separate items you must activate the Office Clipboard (see illustration, right): do this by selecting Office Clipboard on the Edit menu. Now, when you copy an item, an icon for it will appear on the clipboard. Paste one item by clicking its icon or paste all at once by clicking on the Paste All icon. To clear the clipboard, click the Clear all button. Keyboard short cuts also exist: Ctrl-X for Cut, Ctrl-C for Copy, and Ctrl-V for Paste.

Inserting Text from another Document If you want to insert text from another document, or a text file created using another application, there are two ways of doing it: a. Copy-and-Paste: copy the text you want, then switch to the document you want to insert it into and paste. If you are copying from one Word document to another, click on the filenames at the bottom of the Window menu to switch between documents. b. Insert File: use File... from the Insert menu to insert a whole file. Formatting Text Having selected (i.e. highlighted) some text, it may be that you want to emphasise it in some way – embolden it or italicise it for example (avoid underlining in wordprocessed documents). You can change the format of the selected text by using a series of options found in the Format menu, or by using some of the short-cut buttons. The easiest method is to use the buttons. The letters on the buttons indicate: B for Bold and I for Italics. The buttons act as toggles – press the button once and the text changes to that style, press it again and the text turns back to normal again. You can also change text style easily from the keyboard: highlight what you want to change and use Ctrl-B for Bold and Ctrl-I for Italics. As with the buttons, the key combinations are toggles. Formatting paragraphs can be as simple. Word normally assumes that you will use left-aligned text (i.e. the left hand edge of the text falls on a straight line, the right hand edge does not), but you may prefer text justified (both left and right edges aligned, with spaces added into the text to push it to the edge), or right-aligned. To do this, select the paragraph(s) you wish to change and click on one of the buttons in the alignment group in the button bar. The pictures on the buttons show what results can be expected. This is Left-aligned

This is Centred

This is Right-aligned

The text in the following paragraph is Fully justified For more control over paragraph formatting, use the Paragraph option on the Format menu. Selecting this option produces the Paragraph dialog box. You will see that there are a series of Alignment options, which you select by clicking on the box and selecting the one you want. You can also change the indentation (and have a different indentation for the first line) by entering measurements in the relevant Indentation box. Spacing can be used to make your text double-spaced by specifying double in the Line Spacing box. The example box will show what the changes you are making look like, so feel free to experiment with the options. Mistakes can be ‘undone’ by clicking the Undo button, the one with the arrow pointing backwards, or by clicking on Undo from the Edit menu.

You can also set some kinds of alignment by using the ruler. This is seen at the top of the document window, just below the toolbars. If you cannot see the ruler, select Ruler from the View menu.

You can draw the indent markers along the ruler to set where the text will begin or end. The upper marker sets the first line indent and the lower marker sets the indent for the rest of the paragraph. The marker on the right sets the end of line indentation. Exact numeric settings can be made, by selecting Paragraph from the Format menu. Using Tabs. The Tab key moves the cursor to the position of the next tab stop. Tab stops are usually set at half-inch intervals, but you can reset them yourself. The simplest way to set tabs is to click on the ruler bar at the required ruler positions.

Ruler bar with Tab settings (L)

A small “L” shaped marker will signify the tab position and you can drag this left or right with the mouse pointer to place it more accurately. To clear a tab marker, double click on it and a dialog box will appear. Click the Clear button to remove that particular tab. If you wish to remove all the tabs you have placed, double click on one of them and then click on the Clear All button. You can also open this dialog box using Tabs… from the Format menu. You can use this to specify a precise measurement for the tabs, but generally the method described above will suffice for most of your needs. Printing To print your document to the printer, use the Print option in the File menu. You can choose to print all, of your document, or only selected pages. Print Preview in the File menu lets you see what your document will look like before you decide to print it. Take care if you work on a document at home, as the page setup may be different from that on the university network. Make sure that the paper size is set to A4 and that the orientation is set to Portrait for standard documents such as essays. To do this select File then Page Setup; in the dialog box select the Margins tab and ensure that the settings are correct. You can of course set the margins here also.

You can also print by clicking the Print button. This will print your whole document immediately however and will not give you the option of selecting a set up or page numbers to be printed. Text Tools You can use Find or Replace in the Edit menu to search for a particular word or phrase in the text and replace it with another if you wish. Using the dialog box, type the word or set of characters you want to search for and, if you are replacing, what you want to replace it with, in the boxes provided. Both options open essentially the same dialog box, and you can switch from one to the other by clicking the appropriate tab. The Go To option is also available – enter a page number and click next and you will be taken to that page. Spell Checking: after selecting the text you want to check (if you do not select any text, it will check the whole document), choose Spelling and Grammar from the Tools menu. The checker will suggest grammar corrections and highlight possible spelling mistakes. You can choose to change to a suggested word or ignore it. It also permits you to add a new word to the dictionary, so that the spellchecker doesn’t keep bothering you about it. It is possible to correct spelling as you type. Choose Options from the Tools menu, then choose the Spelling and Grammar tab and click on the Check spelling as you type checkbox. Word will then underline misspelt words in red and possible grammatical errors in green. Thesaurus: sometimes it is difficult to think of the exact word to use. Word has a built in thesaurus, which can help you. Enter a word, which is close in meaning to the word you are trying to think of then choose Thesaurus... from Language under the Tools menu. A list of alternative words will be offered. If none of them seems correct, select one and press the down-arrow and choose Look Up to see different alternatives. Word Count: to count the words in a document, select Word Count... from the Tools menu. This will display statistical information about the document. This data is also accessible by opening Properties from the File menu, then clicking on the Statistics button. More details about the file are available here.

Headers and Footers It is often very useful to put certain pieces of information, such as your name, the date and page numbers on every page of a document. If you select Header and Footer in the View menu, you will see a new screen layout, just like the one you are typing into, except that the main text will be greyed out and areas will be outlined at the top and bottom of the page for you to type in a header or a footer. A floating menu bar will appear in mid-screen which contains special symbols. inserts page numbers

inserts current date

switches between header and footer

inserts current time.

There are also options for inserting the number of pages and formatting page numbers. Inserting Symbols You may need to make use of symbols, which do not normally appear on the keyboard: for instance, accents, Greek characters, or less well-used mathematical signs. You can insert these into your text, using Symbol... from the Insert menu. You can choose the font you want to use, then the symbol you want. Short-cuts can be set up for those symbols (perhaps ç or €) which you use often. Use the Symbol font for scientific symbols including Greek characters and pictorial symbols in Monotype Sorts or Wingdings for attention markers. Inserting Non-text Objects Word offers the facility to insert non-text objects into a document. The first of these we will look at will be Equation Editor objects. This demonstrates most of the features you will come across when working with non-text objects. In the following sections we will look at other illustrative objects you can add to documents.

To access Equation Editor choose Object... from the Insert menu and select Microsoft Equation 3.0. This opens a floating menu bar with buttons offering symbols and equation structures. A new menu, with the option Style, will appear on the main menu bar. Using these new options, and the numbers and other characters available from the keyboard, you can write an equation in the “object box” area which will appear on screen wherever you placed your cursor. To get back to your document when you have finished with Equation Editor, click on the close button (the “X” box in top right hand corner of the equation menu bar). The “object box” with the equation in it may be rather small, but while the box outline is highlighted you can resize with the mouse, just as if it was another window.

Clip Art Clip Art is another example of an object. It is found as a collection of images available from the network or on a hard disc or CD, and is a simple way of inserting illustrations into your document. You can find clipart by selecting Picture... from the Insert menu and then choosing Clip Art. You can check for clipart on a subject by choosing to Search in a particular collection (e.g. Food, Medicine, etc.). Or you can type in a search word in the Search for box and then click the Go button. Your search results are displayed as thumbnail images of the clipart available. Click on one of these to display miniature images of the clipart available under each category. When you select an image, a down-arrow bar appears beside it: click on this to display a menu; you then click on the first option (Insert) to insert the clipart into your document. Once inserted you can move and resize it or edit in other ways. Text Wrapping Applying Text Wrapping to an image allows you to move it around the page by dragging with the mouse, and wherever you leave it, text will flow (or wrap) round it. (You will have seen how this looks with the many of the images shown in this document). You may find that the default setting for wrapping is not what you require. In this case, select the picture by clicking on it – a border will appear around it – and the Picture toolbar will appear.

Amongst the various options (e.g. colour, contrast, brightness) there is a small square icon with an outline of a dog in it. Clicking on this displays a number of text wrapping options. Click on the one you wish to apply. Square, for instance wraps the text all the way round the image. If you require more options, after selecting the image choose Picture (or Object) from the Format menu. Selecting the Layout tab and gives you same options but if you click the Advanced button more are available. These include selecting the sides text will wrap around and the distance text will be kept from an image

Drawing Tools Word offers a range of drawing tools to prepare diagrams and forms and to put boxes round text. Click on the Drawing Tools button – it shows a cylinder, cube and WordArt symbol (A) - and you get a new toolbar at the bottom of the window. Drawing Tools button

Drawing in a Word document

The new toolbar displays a series of buttons which give you basic graphic shapes, colours for line and fill, and other drawing features, including Textbox which allows you to draw a box into which text can be inserted. You can draw directly onto your screen using your mouse; to edit a drawing later, click on the Drawing Tools button and then click to select the drawing you wish to edit.

The Draw toolbar options are (from left to right): Draw menu (Order and Change Autoshape), Select Objects, Auto Shapes, Line, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Textbox, WordArt, Free Rotate, ClipArt, Insert Picture, Fill Colour, Line Colour, Font Colour, Line Style, Dash Style, Arrow Style, Shadow, 3-D. A useful guide to using the Draw tools can be found at: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/ISWebsiteDocs/Guides/Computer/XP2003/DrawingToolsinWord2003.pdf

Tables in Word Word allows you to create tables of text or data very easily. Position the cursor where you want the table to be and select Insert Table from the Table menu. A dialog box will ask you how big you want the table. When you click OK the blank table will be inserted in your text. Alternatively, you can select Draw Table from the same menu and draw your table using the mouse. The final way to create a table is to use the Insert Table button on the Word toolbar. This does not call up the Insert Table dialog window which results in from using the Table → Insert menu. Instead it displays a window of cells, representing the cells of a table. By dragging across these with the mouse you can define your table size. As you drag, the cells window expands to allow you to define a larger table. Once the table is inserted, you can use the arrow keys to move around it and insert data. Consider carefully beforehand what the table will contain, so you can set it up properly at the start and avoid having to make changes. When the cursor is anywhere within a table, the cell divisions will be shown on the ruler bar, with small grey “blocks” marking the divisions.

Ruler bar with Table cell settings.

These “blocks” can be moved using the mouse pointer to change the width of the columns in the table. The depth of a cell will automatically expand as you type to allow the text/data entered to fit inside it. When you select a table it displays a small “handle” icon at each corner. You can drag from the top corner icon to move the table to another position on the page. Dragging from the bottom right resizes the table. To format the table, drag over it with the mouse then select Borders and Shading… from the Format menu. You can also access the same options from the Tables and Borders toolbar (This appears when you click the Tables and Borders button). As well as allowing you to create a table, this toolbar allows you to set line (border) styles, line weights (how thick a line will be), line colour, and where borders will appear in the table. (All these options are on the top row of the toolbar). You can choose to have a border round every element of every cell in every row and column or you can have only certain parts of your table with full borders while others have borders only in one area. It is also possible to use pre-set Borders and Shading formatting by clicking on the Autoformat button when you select Insert Table from

the Table menu. You will be given a preview of table styles, which you can select from. Different fonts and alignment can be set for individual cells or selections of cells. Fonts can be set by selecting the table data and using the normal Format
Font menu. Other formatting can be set by selecting Table Properties from the Table menu. This allows you to adjust such things as text alignment within table cells, cell margins, row height, etc. Cell margins are useful - click the Options button as they allow you to force a little space between the cells, so that text or other data in the columns and rows do not run into each other. If you remove gridlines from a table, they will still be displayed on screen, even though they will not be printed out. You can remove them from screen view also, by choosing Hide Gridlines from the Table menu. Borders and Shading The addition of a border, including areas of shading, to a section of text can be a very effective way of making important text stand out. Examples of this could be a heading or a list of key points that need to be clearly distinguished from the surrounding text. It is best to add text first and then the border and/or shading, as this allows you to see what area will be included in the border/shaded area. To add a border, select the area of text that is to have the border round it, then choose the Borders and Shading option from the Format menu. If no area is selected the border or shading will be applied to the paragraph the cursor is currently placed within. To add a border, select the Borders tab then click on one of the box icons. Next, choose the style of line that the box will consist of. You must also select whether the border will appear around each line of the text or whether it will be a single border around the whole paragraph. Do this by selecting the option you want from the Apply to menu in the bottom-right corner. Click OK to close the dialog box and the border will appear around the text. To remove a border, select the area of text within the border and open the Borders and Shading dialog box. Click None, then OK, to remove the border.

A border can be added which surrounds every page on a document, or a specified part of a document. Click on the Page Border tab and choose your border; then, from the Apply to menu in the bottom right hand corner of the window, select what parts of the document the border will appear in. To add shading to an area of text, open the Borders and Shading dialog box. Select the Shading tab to see the shading options. From the menu select the degree of shading you wish; you can even change the background colour. Note that if you choose heavy shading it will probably be necessary to change the font colour (Format
Font) so that the text will remain visible. Shading can be effective by itself and it can also be combined with a border to produce various effects. Bullets and numbering The simplest way to create a bulleted list is to click on the bullet button on the toolbar. This will insert a bullet and the cursor will be indented. You can add a line or paragraph of text here and, when you press return, the bullet will automatically be repeated on the following line. When you have completed the bulleted list, press return twice and the normal text formatting will reappear. A numbered list can be created in the much same way, by clicking the numbering button on the toolbar. It is possible to modify the list so that, for instance, different bullet or numbering styles can be used and the list can be set with different indentation and spacing. To do this, use the Bullets and Numbering option from the Format menu. There is an immediate choice of bullet styles, which can be selected by clicking with the mouse. More choices are available by clicking the Customise button, which opens a dialog box that allows you to alter the size and colour of the bullet and the text indentation. By clicking the Bullet button in this, the Symbol dialog box is opened and you can select a new bullet from this, or from any other available font. Word 2000 offers the option of a Picture bullet. You can choose from a selection of bullet-sized images by clicking on the Bullet button. Clicking the Numbering tab at the top of the Bullets and Numbering dialog box allows you to select different numbering styles. You can select a different numbering style from a drop down menu, and by clicking on the Font button, change the font of the numbering system. You can mix different bullet and numbering styles together in an Outline numbered list using the menu, which appears when you click the appropriate tab. This should not be attempted until you have fully mastered the normal bullet and numbering options.

Footnotes To insert a footnote in a document, place the cursor at the end of the word or sentence you wish to make a reference to and then select Insert
Reference
Footnote. In the dialog box which opens, you can choose Footnotes or Endnotes, and which numbering format you prefer. Footnotes are always automatically updated so that they will almost always begin on the same page as their reference in the text regardless of any later editing such as cutting and pasting. To delete a footnote, select its reference number and press the Delete key. Getting Help Word has a comprehensive built-in Help system. To get into the Help system, select Help from the menu bar. Use the Search for text box: simply type in the term/terms which best describes the topic you wish information on. The Help window will display matches to your term/s, in the form of links to the actual information. Click on the best match to see the information displayed in a larger, side window. This may contain more links to more detailed or further, related information. When you’ve finished, click on the Close button (the “X” box in the top right hand corner) to return to close the Help window. Closing Word To leave Word, select Exit on the File menu. If you have not saved your work, Word will ask you if you want it saved before leaving the program. The Close option on the File menu will simply close the current document, but leave you in Word. Using Word Sensibly Word is a powerful word-processing package with a great many features. However, to produce a good document, it is not enough just to have a powerful word processor. You also need to have something to say, since advanced word-processor features will not disguise rubbish. And you need to develop a feel for how you wish your work to look on the page. Here are some final suggestions:
Do take time to check spelling and grammar. This will catch most of your typing errors too. Remember to proof read as well: some mistakes will produce a proper word, but not the one you wanted.


Leave enough white space to help the reader – otherwise your text will be cluttered and difficult to read. You may like a blank line between each paragraph, for example.
Use the structure of the layout to reflect your content. Use headings where they are really needed, and don’t overdo them. With too many headings the structure begins to disappear.
Keep the layout simple in terms of special effects. Don’t use lots of different layouts and fonts: three on a page is quite enough.
Be consistent in your use of different effects across the document.
Use punctuation properly. There should be no space in front of a punctuation mark. Normally a full stop is followed by two spaces and other punctuation marks by one.
Use a footer or header to identify the document. Some people like to use the filename, others the title. A cover page is often a good way to inform people clearly about your document. Put on it your name and matriculation number, the title of the document, and other useful information. A list of headings or abstracts can also be added.