Microsoft Word (2007 & 2010) Guide.

Microsoft Word (often called Word) is a graphical word processing program that users can type with. It is made by the computer company Microsoft. The purpose of the MS Word is to allow the users to type and save documents.

Similar to other word processors, it has helpful tools to make documents paper. Some of the important tools are a spelling & grammar checker, word count (this also counts letters and lines), and the newer version includes speech recognition (a technology that lets users control their computers by speaking to it, or telling it what to write). Also, like with other programs, with this program one can make attractive documents, insert pictures in documents, make web pages, graphs etc.Also you can create tables. Also, it displays synonyms (similar words) of words and can read out the text. It also can print in different ways.

It can be bought at shops and normally comes with Microsoft Office, but can be bought separately

How to Open Microsoft Word

If you're not sure how to open up Microsoft Word, then do the following.

Click your left mouse button once on the Start button in the bottom left of your screen. If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, the round Start button will look like this:

If you have Windows XP the start button looks like this:

On the Start menu that appears, click your left mouse button on the All Programs item. On the All programs menu, look for Microsoft Office. If you have Office 2007 (or 2010), you'll see this:

you have an earlier version of Microsoft Word, you'll see something like this:

If you don't see Word 2007 or Word 2010, then you have an earlier version of the software. In which case, your course is here: Word 2000 to 2003

When Microsoft Word opens, you should a screen something like this one (Word 2007):

     Microsoft Word Screen - Study this image - ( 60K )

In Word 2010, you won't see the round Office button in the top left. Instead, you'll have an extra item in the top left - the File tab.

           The main area, all that white space, is the page you type on, just like a piece of paper. The area above the white space is called the Ribbon. The Ribbon contains all the toolbars (known as Tabs) that you can use to brighten up the plain white text on your page. The Tabs are called: Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings,Review and View. (Word 2010 will also have a File tab, which will be the first item.)

Click each of these in turn to see what items are on each tab. When you have finished exploring, click back on the Home tab. The Home tab contains the items you'll use the most, like font formatting, alignment, cut, copy and paste.

Finding your way around

Have a look at the bottom right of your screen and locate the following area:

              If your screen is too small or too large, you can use the zoom slider to increase or decrease the size of your page. Hold down your left mouse button on the slider. Keep it held down and move it to the left to make your page smaller, and to the right to make it bigger. (You can also click the plus and minus buttons.) The default setting is 100%, and the slider is in the middle.

Just above the slider, you'll see some arrows. The two sets of double arrows allow you to move up or down one page at a time:

Clicking the round button between the two sets of double arrows opens up a shortcut toolbar. This one:

           The items on the menu are shortcuts that allow you to browse through various areas of your document. The double arrows then turn blue. So, for example, if you wanted to jump from image to image in your document, you would click the Graphic item on the toolbar, which is the second from the right on the top row in the image above. After the double arrows turn blue, you would click one to move to the next or previous image.

Another area worth exploring is just to the left of the zoom slider. This one:

      These are various page views you can have. The first one, highlighted above, is called Print Layout, and is the default. Click the other four to see what they do. To get out of Full Screen, which is the second one, click the Close button in the top right.

Click back on the first icon, however, when you finished exploring. We'll make a start.

Saving your work

To save your work in Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left of your screen. You should see a menu appear:

In Word 2010, click the File tab at the top of Word:

In both versions, when you click the Save item you'll see a dialogue box appear (This image is from Windows 7. The one for Windows Vista is very similar):

        There are three main areas to the Save dialogue box: Where do you want to save your document? What do you want to call it? What type of document do you want to save it as?

We'll take the three areas in turn, starting with "Where do you want to save your document?"

The "Where" is set right at the top. The default location is in the Documents folder on your computer. You can see where this is by clicking the arrow in the top left:

          The dropdown menu is a list of locations on your computer. The image above is from Windows 7 and shows that we are in the Libraries folder. If you have Windows Vista, you won't see a Libraries entry. It will say Users. There will then be another one next to Users that has the user name you used when setting up your computer. For example:Users > Kenny > Documents.

Inside the Libraries folder is another one called Documents. We're saving it to this folder. The larger area of the Save As dialogue box shows you the folders that are already in the Documents folder:

You can create folders of your own to hold your work. So click the New Folder button at the top:

You should see a new yellow folder appear in the main area of the Save As dialogue box, with some blue highlighting:

     The blue highlighting means that it is ready to be typed over. Type the name My WP Projects. Then press the enter key on your keyboard (or just click away). The folder will then be renamed:

       If you get it wrong, click back onto the folder. Now click again, and you should see the same blue highlighting. Or just right click the folder to see a new menu appear. SelectRename from the menu.

Now that you have created a new folder, double click the folder name to move inside of it. Notice the location area at the top:

       The name of our folder has been added to the right of Documents, indicating that this new folder is inside of the Documents folder. In other words, there is a folder calledLibraries, and inside of that another one called Documents. The folder we have created, the My WP Projects one, is inside of the Documents folder.

File Names

           We now need to come up with a name for this particular document that we're saving. If you have a look at the bottom of the Save As dialogue box you'll see two areas: one called File Name, and the other called Save as Type. The File Name area is where you type a name for your document. The Save as Type means which type of document is will be. Microsoft Word documents from 2007 onwards end with the letters docx. Previously, the letters where just doc. If you sent someone a Word document with the ending docx, somebody with version 2003 of the software would not be able to open your file. Simply because previous Office versions don't know how to handle the newer format. The reverse is not true, though: they could send you a file that ended with the letters doc and you would be able to open it up in Word 2007 or Word 2010.

Microsoft Word allows you to save documents in a wide range of different formats. Click anywhere inside of the Save as Type area to see a list of the different formats:

          The image shows that we have Word 97 - 2003 Document in the Save as Type area. The three letter extension shows .doc. The first one on the list, however, is Word Document .docx, which is the one we want. Make sure this one is selected in your Save As dialogue box.

Now have a look at the File Name area. It should say Doc1.docx. (It might just say Doc1, however, if you haven't enabled file extensions on your computer. If you can't see any file extensions, do the tutorial here on our site: Enable File Extensions.

If you clicked the Save button now, your file will be called "Doc1". That's not a very descriptive name for a document, so we'll change it to something else. To give your document a different name, simply click inside the File Name text box. Delete everything in the text box. Type in a new name, something like Library Letter.

Your Save As dialogue box should now look like the one below. When it does, click theSave button:

       You have now saved your work to your hard drive. To prove that it has indeed been saved, click the round Office button in the top left (or the File tab in Word 2010). SelectSave As. When the Save As dialogue box appears, you should see the name of your file in the big white area:

       Click the Cancel button to get rid of the Save As dialogue box.

You can continue to work on a document that has been saved. But if you add more lines to your letter, or make any changes, you need to keep saving your changes on regular basis. You don't have to use Save As any more. You can just click the Office button or the File tab, then click on Save. Or click on the circled icon in the image below. This will update your document.

Word 2007

Word 2010

       A shortcut for saving your work is to hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard. Keep it held down and then press the letter S.

Remember to save your work on a regular basis. It's not a pleasant experience to have worked on a document for some time only for your computer to break down. When you finally get your computer to work again, if you haven't saved regularly you'll find all that hard work lost forever, with no way to get it back!

OK, now that you know how to save a Microsoft Word document, let's move on.

Opening Microsoft Word Documents

        We'll shortly add an address to the top of our Library Complaint letter. Before we do that, we'll learn how to open a file. After all, you might have closed down Microsoft Word, or your computer might have crashed. The result being that you no longer have your library letter loaded into Word. So here's how to open a file you have saved, and want to work on again.

In Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left of Microsoft Word:

In Word 2010, you need to click on the File tab in the top left of Word:

If you see your file under the Recent Documents heading, you can simply click there to open it. However, if it's not on the list, click the Open item on the menu:

The Open dialogue box appears, and looks like the image below:

       The Open dialogue box looks very similar to the Save As dialogue box. Notice, though, that the File name text box is blank. If you can't see your document in the Documents Library section, you can click where it says All Word Documents. You'll then see a list of file types that can be opened with Microsoft Word:

          This is more or less the same list you saw with the Save As dialogue box, under Save as Type. So if you don't see your file displayed, remember to display this list.

But the File Name text box is empty because no file has been selected. A file is selected from the larger white area in the middle. Clicking on the file once with the left hand mouse button will select a file.

In the image above, the document we want is displayed. But if it's not there, you can use the area at the top to search other folders. Click the My Documents item to see another drop down list:

      The list shows you all the folders you have in your My Documents folder (this gets shortened to just Documents in Windows 7). Select a folder to move inside of it.

You can see more areas on your computer by clicking the double arrows just to the left of My Documents, in the image above. You'll then see another list:

     Again, clicking an item on the list takes you to that location. Have a play about with them, and watch how that dialogue box changes. To get back to where you where, you can either use the drop down lists above, or click the arrow buttons just to the left of the lists:

      Clicking the arrows just below the word Open above will take you either back one folder, or forward one folder. If you get totally lost, just click the Cancel button at the bottom of the Open dialogue box, then start again.

        To open a file, though, select it by clicking the file once with your left mouse button. Its name will then appear in the File Name at the bottom. Once it does, click the Open button.

Spelling and Grammar Checking

        One thing you probably will have noticed is the spelling mistakes in the letter. You should have typed the letter exactly as it was, and left any spelling errors in. More than likely, the spelling mistakes are underlined in red in your document. Anything with a wiggly green line under it is a grammatical error, (or what Microsoft Word insists is a grammatical error).

The easiest way to correct spelling mistakes is to right click any word that has a red wavy underline. You'll then see a menu appear:

          In the image above, we've clicked with the right-hand mouse button on the incorrectly spelt "counsil". The menu that appears shows three alternative words: counsel, council, and counsels. We meant council, of course. Click this option with your left mouse button to replace the misspelt word. The red wavy underline will disappear. (Incidentally, don't worry about the box that appears above the menu as we'll get to formatting options in a later section.)

Do the same with the other two misspellings in your letter, and then save your work.

Spelling and Grammar Options

     To check more than one word at a time, you can bring up the Spelling and Grammar dialogue box. To see it, click on the Review tab at the top of Word. On the Review tab, locate the Proofing section. Then click Spelling & Grammar:

When you click on Spelling & Grammar, you'll see a dialogue box appear. This one:

           This dialogue box allows you to do most of the things you can do by right-clicking a misspelt word. The Suggestions area lists alternatives to the word you're trying to correct. The suggestion for our fictional town of Evercrease is for two separate words,Ever and Crease. To stop Word highlighting our fictional town as an error, click theAdd to Dictionary button on the right. (Or you can click the Ignore buttons.)

When you have corrected a word, the dialogue box will move on to the next one. In our case it will highlight the fictional postcode, insisting that it is a repeated word. ClickIgnore Once and Word will have finished with its corrections. The dialogue box will then go away.

Setting Spelling and Grammar Rules

    Sometimes, however, you want a little more control over what spelling and grammar Microsoft Word highlights. For that, there is a Proofing dialogue box.

In Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left. At the bottom of the menu you'll see a Word Options button:

In Word 2010, click the File tab again. Have a look for the Options item, near the bottom left:

Click the Word Options (or Options) button and you'll see another dialogue box appear. On the left, select the Proofing item. You'll then see the following rather complex list of things you can do:

          The check marks in each box show what options are currently selected. Click a check mark to deselect that option. Click an empty box to select it. So if you don't want Word behaving like a grammar Nazi, uncheck the box that says Check grammar with spelling.

Microsoft Word AutoCorrect

One interesting option is AutoCorrect. Click the button at the top of the Proofing dialogue box that says AutoCorrect Options. You'll see this dialogue box:

     On the AutoCorrect tab, you can see a lot of inbuilt options have been checked. So Word will, for example, automatically capitalize days of the weeks for you as soon as you press the space bar on your keyboard.

     The area at the bottom, "Replace text as you type", has also been check. What this means is that if you were to type a colon followed by a left round bracket Word will change the two characters into a smiley face. If you don't want Word doing this, select that option from the list. Then click the Delete button.

However, you can use the Replace feature to your advantage. If, for example, you didn't want to keep typing your full name all the time, you can type say two characters into theReplace box. In the With box, type your name, as in the image below:

After you click the Add button, your text will be added to the list:

          Click the OK buttons on the AutoCorrect dialogue box, and on the Word Options dialogue box and you'll be returned to Word. Now, whenever we type the initials "KC" and then press the space bar on the keyboard, Word will replace them with the name "Ken Carney".

           And we'll leave the Library Complaint letter, as we're done. In the next section we'll create a new document so that you can learn some formatting.

Bold text in Microsoft Word

           To make any part of your text bold in Microsoft Word, you have to highlight the text. So using one of the highlight techniques you learnt in a previous section, highlight the first line of the report. In other words, highlight the words "Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics". Your page should like this one:

             Incidentally, if your lines have too much space between them, highlight the lines fromJanuary down to Speeding. Click the highlighted text with your right mouse button. From the menu that appears, select Paragraph with your left mouse button. From the dialogue box, select the item that says "Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style":

            The space between the lines should then be reduced.

We're now going to make bold the text we highlighted. There are two very easy ways to make your highlighted text bold. The first is by clicking the "B" icon on the Home tab at the top of Word. It looks like this:

                  With your text highlighted, click the "B" icon. Your text will turn bold. You might not be able to tell because your text will still be highlighted. Click anywhere on your blank page to get rid of the highlight.

The "B" icon will change to this:

          That indicates that you have Bold text switched on. To turn off Bold text, highlight the text and then click the B icon with the left mouse button.

Italics and Underline in Microsoft Word

Again, we need to highlight the text that we're going to change. We'll turn part of the text to italics. So highlight the following line

Does not include Mr Irate's alleged theft from his sweet shop

When you have highlighted the text, click the italic icon in the tool bar. The icon will look like this after you have clicked the letter "I".

You can also click the letter "I" in the shortcut toolbar, once the text has been highlighted:

Another way to turn text to italics is to hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard. With the CTRL key held down, press the letter "I" on your keyboard.

Underline

To underline some text, click the letter "U" icon, on the font panel: (The keyboard shortcut is CTRL plus the letter "U")

In the image above, we have both the underline and the bold switched on.

Look carefully just to the right of Underline icon, in the image above. You'll see an arrow. Click the arrow to see more underline options:

          
      So if you wanted a double underline instead of a single one, select the second one on the list.

In your report, though, underline "Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics". When you have finished, the report should now look like this (don't worry about the red underlines):

    
   Our document is coming along. The next thing we'll do is add some Tabs Stops. The Tabs will help is to push some of the text along.

Working with Fonts

A font is a style and design of text. Examine this letter:

Now examine this one:

          As you can see, the two styles are completely different. Notice how straight and blocky the second one is compared to the first. The first one has little pointy bits on its edges. The pointy bit is called a serif. Fonts are basically split into two types - those that have the pointy edges, and those that don't. The pointy fonts are called serif fonts, and the ones without pointy bits are called sans serif fonts.

The first of the letter Es is the very popular serif font "Times New Roman". The second letter e is the most popular sans serif font "Arial".

        With Microsoft Word 2007 and later, the font you get if you don't make any changes is called Calibri. Calibri is a sans serif font that looks very similar to Arial.
It's common practice to use a sans serif font for headings and a serif font for text. We'll follow that tradition. We'll use Arial for the heading of our report, and use Times New Roman for the body text. To change the font heading to Arial, do the following:

• Select the heading at the top of your report, the one that says "Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics"
• Locate the Font panel on the Home ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word
• Now look for the Font and Font sizes area:

    The font above is set to Calibri, and the size is 11. The big A and the little A just to the right of font size are quick ways to either increase or decrease the size of selected text.

Click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the font box to reveal a list of the all the font on your system:

       Hold your left mouse button down on the vertical scroll bar to the right of the fonts. Move your mouse down to scroll through all of your fonts (you may not have the same ones we have).

If you hover your mouse over a font name your text will change, giving you a preview of what it looks like. Click a font once to select it.

We want Arial so select it from the list.

Use the font size box just to the right of the font name box and change the size to 16. Remove any underline you added for the title. Centre your heading, as well. Your report will then look like this:

Font colours

  You can set a different colour for your font. To do that, highlight the text you want to change. Then locate the red underlined letter A on the Font panel of the Home ribbon:

Click the arrow next to the letter A to see some colours appear:

      Select a colour from the list by clicking one with your left mouse button, or click the "More Colours" link at the bottom.

    To the left of the font colours option there is a yellow underline with the letters "ab" on top. What this does is to change the background colour behind your text. Have a play around with this to see what it looks like.

When you finished experimenting, click the Undo arrow to get back to how it was before. The Undo arrow is at the top of Microsoft Word, just to the right of the Save icon:

Word 2007

Word 2010

        You can also use the keyboard shortcut combination of CTRL and Z to undo things. Just hold down the CTRL key. Keep it held down and press the Z key.

Setting up Page Margins

         If you look at the ruler bar on the left of your screen, you'll see blue (or grey) areas at the top and bottom of the left ruler, and a white area in the middle. The blue areas are your top and bottom margins. You can't move your cursor above the top margins, or below the bottom one. Quite often, you'll want to change the amount of space used for the margins.
If you can't see a ruler on the left hand side, either select it from the Show/Hide panel on the View ribbon at the top of Word. Or click the ruler icon near the top right:

We'll adjust the Top margin for our report. The ruler bar on the left of the screen currently looks like this:

       As you can see, there's a blue area to the left, and underneath a white area (this is grey and white in Word 2010). If you trace your finger from the bottom of the blue area across and to "Constable Tucker's Crime" you'll find they match up exactly. This is the top of our page. You can't move your cursor above the white area and into the blue area. But you can change the size of the blue area, and therefore your top margin.

There are a couple of ways you can change your margins in Microsoft Word. We'll start with the tricky way!

• Move your mouse pointer half way between the blue area and the white area
• Your mouse pointer will change to the shape of a double arrow:

• Next, hold down your left mouse button
• Your screen should now look like this:

 

Notice the thin dashed line running across the page. This is your current top margin

• With your left mouse still held down drag your mouse downwards
• The thin dashed line will move with your mouse
• Let go of your mouse button when you see about 2.5 at the top of the blue area

      Notice how your top margin jumps down when you let go of your mouse button. You'll have a bigger gap at the top, and therefore more space.

OK, that was the tricky way to adjust a top margin. Let's look at another way to change your page margins in Microsoft Word.

Changing Margins via the Page Layout tab

Another way to change your page margins is via the Page Setup dialogue box. Try the following:

• Click Page Layout at the top of Microsoft Word
• From the Page Layout tab, locate the Page Setup panel:

         There is already a Margins option. Click this to see some pre-set margins. You can select one of these, if they are what you need. But click the Custom Margins option at the bottom to see the following dialogue box:

     Another way to display the same dialogue box is to click the small arrow in the bottom right of the Page Setup panel:

But as you can see from the Page Setup dialogue box, you can set the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margins from here. Try the following:

• Click inside the Top text box, the one highlighted and with 2.25 cm in it
• Use your backspace key to get rid of the 2.25 cm
• Type in the number 5 (1.97 in inches)
• Click the OK button
• This will give you a top margin of 5 centimetres

Change all the margins of your report so that they are the following

Left 3 cm (1.18 inches)
Right 4 cm (1.57 inches)
Top 5 cm (1.97 inches)
Bottom 3 cm

And that's all there is to it! In the next section, we'll look at some Cut, Copy and Paste techniques. Before we leave this section, one extra piece about Tabs.
Remember how you set out the address for Review number one? You used right alignment. So your address looked like this:

Mr Irate
12 High Street
Evercrease
EV1 EV1

If you wanted the left side of the address in a straight line, you could use tabs.

• Highlight all the lines of the address
• Click the left align icon to set the address back to the left hand side
• Bring up the Tabs dialogue box, like you did previously (Home > Paragraphs panel)
• Enter a tab stop position of about 10 cm (3.93 inches) and click the Set button
• Then click OK
• Position your cursor at the start of each line
• Press the tab key on your keyboard

The result is this style of address:

Techinques for Cutting Text

     In this section you'll learn all about cutting text, copying text, and pasting text. Word processors come into their own with Cut, Copy and Paste, and those three operations are the primary reason why the typewriter is now practically a museum piece.

There is a document that goes with this section called CutCopyPaste.docx and can be downloaded by clicking below. It is one of a few documents you need for this course, and all the other files are included in the download as well. However, it is a zip file. If you're not sure how to open zip files then you also need to read the short tutorial below.

Once you've saved the file above, open up the document called CutCopyPaste.docxin Microsoft Word and we'll make a start.

Cutting text

There are a number of ways to cut text, and you'll learn three techniques: using the Word ribbon, using the right click menus, and using the keyboard.
We're now going to chop out the unnecessary bits from the letter you've just opened. The first thing to cut out is the double use of "Dear" in the first line. To cut text, use one of the following techniques:

Technique 1 - Menu Cutting

Highlight the text you want to cut. In the image below, the word "Dear" is highlighted. This is the word we want to cut:

• Make sure the Home tab is selected at the top of Microsoft Word
• From the Home tab, locate the Clipboard panel
• Click the Cut item:

Your highlighted text will disappear:

Technique 2 - Right Click Cutting

Highlight the text you want to cut:

Click on the highlighted text with the right mouse button to get the popup menu below:

Choose "Delete Repeated Word", by clicking it with the left mouse button.

Technique 3 - Keyboard Cutting

• Highlight the word or words you want to cut
• Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard
• Keep the Ctrl key held down
• Press the letter "X" on your keyboard
• Your highlighted text is cut from your document

And that's all there is to cutting text. Keyboard cutting is often the quickest way, as it means your fingers don't have to leave the keys when you're typing.

Clip Art

         Clip art is a picture or graphic that can be inserted into a word processed document. Clip art comes in a wide variety of formats and styles, from a simple cartoon to a photographic image. Microsoft Word comes with its own clip art collection that you can use. We'll see how to do that in this section of the course. When you have finished, you will have produced the document below:

OK, create a new blank document and let's get started.

Inserting Clip Art

       There is a document that goes with this section called ClipArtStory.docx and can be downloaded by clicking below. It is one of a few documents you need for this course, and all the other files are included in the download as well. However, it is a zip file. If you're not sure how to open zip files then you also need to read the short tutorial below.

Once you've saved the file above, open up the document called ClipArtStory.docx in Microsoft Word and we'll make a start.

To insert a piece of Clip Art, do the following:

• Position your cursor at the end of your text
• From the menus at the top of Word, click on the Insert tab
• Locate the Illustrations panel, and the Clip Art item:

When you click on the Clip Art item, you should see a new area appear to the right of Microsoft Word:

        To see all the clip art click inside of the Search For box at the top. With your cursor flashing inside of the textbox, click the GO button. The big white area will then look something like this:

     Use the scroll bars on the right hand side to see more clip art.

You can also narrow down the search by clicking the arrow on the Search In list. You'll then see this in Word 2007:

In Word 2010, you'll see this:

    Select the Illustrations item.

For Word 2007 users, click the small plus symbol next to Office Collections to see a list of categories:

      Click a checkbox to add or remove that category from your search. In the image below we've unchecked all categories except for animals:

     Once you've narrowed down your search, click the GO button at the top. You'll then see only the clip art for your chosen categories:

          We rather like the rabbit image, so we'll use that one. But feel free to select a different one. Word 2010 users will have to scroll down a bit on the Illustrations list before coming across the rabbit. You can use a different graphic, though, if you can't find it.

Once you've located an image, move your mouse over it to see a dropdown option appear:

Click the arrow to see the following menu:

      Click the Insert option on the menu and your chosen clip art will appear in your document. It will appear at the point where your cursor is on your page.

But your article should now look something like ours below:

How to Resize and Move Clip Art

Resizing Clip Art

      If your clip art is too big or too small you can resize to suit your needs.
Click on your image with the left mouse button. You should see some little white squares and circles appear around the edges of your Clip Art. These squares and circles are the sizing handles. The squares are used to change the height or width, while the circles are used to make the whole image smaller or bigger. You can see them in the image above.

      To change the size of your image, move your mouse pointer over one of the circles, the bottom right circle is the best one for our purposes.

      When you move your mouse pointer over a circle or square, the mouse pointer will change to the shape of a double headed arrow.

     When your pointer has changed shape, hold your left mouse button down. The pointer will now change into a cross shape. With your left mouse button held down, drag your mouse outward to make the image bigger, and inward to make it smaller. Let go of the left mouse button when you're happy with the size.

   If you let go of the mouse button and the image is not the size you want, just try again. If your image loses the white squares and circles around the edges, click on the image to get them back.

Moving Clip Art

To move your image to the right hand side, try this:

• Click on your image to get the sizing handles back
• Hold down your left mouse button
• Keep the left mouse button held down
• Drag your mouse to the right

   What happens? Nothing! The image refuses to move to the right hand side! What's going on? And how do you move an image in Microsoft Word?

The reason the image won't move to the right is because of the way it is formatted. The wrapping style is set to "In line with text". What this means is that you can move your image up, and the text will shift to the top and bottom of the image. But it won't move to the right. It will be like this one below:

To move your image anywhere on the page, do the following:

• Click on your image so that it has the sizing handles around its edges
• From the Ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word, make sure the Format tab is selected, if it's not already

At this stage, you could choose a style for your picture, if you wanted. Try some of them out. Move your mouse over any of the Picture Styles to see what happens:

If you find one you like, you can click on it to insert that style.

But leave the style alone, and locate the Arrange panel. The option we're looking for isPosition:

Position means the position of the image in relation to the text. We want it square and to the right.

Click the arrow on the Position option to see a dropdown list:

    Again, move your mouse over each one to see what they do. But don't left click any. Instead, click the link at the bottom that says "More Layout Options". When you do, you'll see this dialogue box (select the Text Wrapping tab if it's not already selected):

Select the same option we have, in the image above:

Wrapping Style: Square
Wrap Text: Left Only
Distance from Text: 1.5 cm Left (0.59 inches)

When you have set the three options above, click the Picture Position tab at the top of the dialogue box.

For the Horizontal alignment, set it Right. Then click OK on the dialogue box. Your article and image should then look like this:

      You should now be able to move your image around the page. Position it on the right, with the top of the image aligned with the top of the article text. Now select the text of the article and change the font size to 14. Change the size of the headings as well, any size you want. Your article will then look something like this:

To straighten the right edge of the text, do the following:

• Highlight all the text from "The remarkable Mr Presto" right down to the end "And they say entertainment is dead!"
• Click the justify icon in the Home tab, on the Paragraph panel:

Your finished article will then look like ours:

     And that's it! You can now insert Clip Art into a document, and wrap text around your image. If you're not too confident about your new skills, go back to the beginning and start this section all over again - practice makes perfect!

How to Insert a Text File

To insert a file into your Microsoft Word document, do the following:

Click on the Insert tab at the top of Microsoft Word
From the Insert tab locate the Text panel
On the Text panel, click the Object item, and then Text from File from the menu:

When you click on Text from File, you'll see the Insert File dialogue box appear:

Navigate to your where you saved your text file to. We kept ours in the Documents folder of Windows 7, and have navigated to there.

Click on the file called Little Thumb to select it. If you can't see this file, click the dropdown list to the right of the File name textbox at the bottom. Set it to Text Files:

     Once you have selected the Little Thumb text file click the Insert button. The file will be inserted into your new document.

     You cursor will be flashing at the end of the story, on page seven. To get back to the top, you can hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard. Keep it held down and press the Home key on your keyboard (usually just above the arrow keys on a standard keyboard. On a laptop, the Home key may be found on the top row, to the right).

   Another quick way to get back to the top of the document is to right click one of the scrolling arrows on the right hand side of Microsoft Word:

        Select Top from the menu to move the cursor to the start of the document.

What we'd like to do to this document is to change the style. At the moment, all the text is set to a font called Courier New, and the font size is 10.5. We'll change the body text to one font, and the heading text to something else.

Select just the heading of your story. Use the Font dialogue box to choose a font and font size for your heading. Now select all the text of the story, but not the heading. With the story text selected choose a font and font size again.

With a heading font and a different body text font set, we'll move on and have a look at Headers and Footers

Print Preview

To see what your headers and footers look like, you can preview them.

Print Preview in Word 2007

Click the round Office button in the top left of Word, in Office 2007. Then select Print. From the Print options, select Print Preview:

When you click on Print Preview you're left with just a single tab. This one:

To get back to the normal Word ribbons, click the Close Print Preview button on the right.

But have a look at your headers and footers. Use the Zoom control on the tab to zoom in and out.

Print Preview in Word 2010

In Word 2010, there is no Print Preview tab. Instead, click on the File tab then on Printfrom the left menu:

   You should see some settings for your installed printer appear. To preview what you're about to print, have a look just to the right of the printer settings area. You should see your document. Use the zoom tool at the bottom, or the next page icons.

OK, we're done with the story now. So save your work and we'll move on to creating a booklet in Microsoft Word.

Word Shapes - A Logo

In this section you'll learn all about Shapes. You'll use them to produce the following logo:

Start a new document for this, and save it with an appropriate name. Give yourself some space on the page by holding down the enter key on your keyboard. Let go when about half way down the page. This will make it easier to drag things around.

Now let's get started. We'll do the T first.
The Shapes are all on the Insert tab on the Word ribbon, so click this to select it. Now locate the Illustrations panel and the Shapes item:

Click the Shapes item to see the following list of shapes:

        The one we want is the rectangle, which is under the Basic Shapes heading, the second one along. (In Word 2010 there is a separate Rectangles section.) Click the rectangle shape to select it. Now move your mouse pointer to your blank page. The pointer should change to a large cross. Hold your left mouse button down. Keep it held down and drag outwards. Let go when you have a rectangle.

You should notice a new tab appear in the Word ribbon, the Format tab. As its name suggests, this tab is used for formatting your shapes.
You can change the size of your rectangle via the Size item on the Format panel. It only has two items, Height and Width:

Click the small arrows on the Height and Width and change them both to 3 cm. (Use 1.18 if your sizes are in inches.) Your shape should then look like this in Word 2007:

In Word 2010, however, the shape will look like this:

   Notice the sizing handles around the shape in both versions. (If you can't see them, click your shape to select it.) The square ones change the height and width, while the round ones scale the shape. The green round circle at the top is used to rotate the shape.

    You can change the colour of a shape by using a Fill. To do that, locate the Shape Styles panel on the Format tab. Now click the Shape Fill item to reveal a list of colours:

Select black for the fill colour and your shape will look like this:

    
 In Word 2010, if you have a blue border around your rectangle, click the Shape Outlineitem to reveal a colour menu. Change it to black. You may also need to change the weight of the outside lines, because the default is set to 2. This gives you slightly rounded corners. To change the weight, again click on Shape Outline, then the Weightitem. Change it to 1 pt:

Word Art

In the previous two lessons, you created the letters T and E using Word Shapes. For this lesson, we'll use Word Art for the letter X.

Click on the Insert tab again. From the Insert tab, locate the Text panel and the Word Art item:

Click on Word Art to reveal the following list in Word 2007:

In Word 2010, the list looks like this:

       With Word Art you can type some text and turn it into any of the styles you see above, such as curved text (Word 2007 only), 3D text, etc.

We only want the letter X, and in a plain style. So click on the first one on the top row, if you have Word 2007.

     When you click an item on the Word Art list you'll see the following dialogue box appear (Word 2007 users):

    Type the letter X in the Text area, and then change the Font to Arial Black. Set the Size to 48 so it's nice and big. Then click OK. Your X should look like this on the page:

Change the height and width of your letter X to 2 cm for each one. Set the Fill colour to black.

Word 2010 users only

For Word 2010 users, click the first item on your menu (top left). You'll then see this appear on your page:

On the WordArt Styles panel set the Text Fill to black:

      Now click on the Home tab and set the font to Arial Black size 48. Delete the default text of "Your text here" and type a letter X. Your Word Art will then look like this:

          If you look closely, however, you'll see the letter X has a drop shadow. To get rid of it, select your letter X. Then locate the Text Effects item on the WordArt Styles panel. Set the Shadow to "No Shadow":

Your letter X should now look like this:

      Use the Size panel to change the height and width of your letter X to 2 cm for each one. To remove any blue outline around your letter X use the Text Outline menu just above the Text Effects item on the WordArt Styles pane. Set the Outline to black.

Word 2007 and Word 2010 users

So that you can move your letter X around the page, click the Text Wrapping option on the Arrange panel (Format tab). From the menu that appears, select the Square item:

You should now be able to move your letter X to the right of your letter E. Your page should now look like this (if your letter X is too small, change the font size):

Saving Word documents as a template

Saving a document as a Word template is fairly straightforward in Office 2007 or 2010. So, from the round Office button in the top left of Word 2007, select Save As. You should the following options appear:

Click on Word Template from the list and you'll see the Save As dialogue box appear
:

   In Word 2010, click on the File tab, then the Save As item from the left menu. You'll see the same dialogue box as above. Click the Templates item in the top left of the dialogue box.

       The first thing to notice is which folder we have switched to. (This dialogue box is from Windows 7, but Vista users should see more or less the same thing.) If you look in the top left of the dialogue box you will see an item for Microsoft Office Word. Underneath this is a Templates folder. The Templates folder is the one we have selected.

       When you have selected the folder, you should see the area to the right change. Ours has two folders, Document Themes, and SmartArt Graphics. Word 2010 users will also see a LiveContent folder.

       The second thing to notice is the File Name and Save as Type areas at the bottom of the dialogue box. The Save as Type area says "Word Template". In round brackets you can see the Type of file it is - a DOTX file. The DOTX signifies a template file. If yours says DOCX instead of DOTX then click on the Save as Type box to see the file type menu. Select DOTX from the list:

       For the file name we have typed letterhead. But you can call it anything you like. Note that the extension is also showing - letterhead.dotx.

(If you can't see a file extension then see this tutorial on our site:

How to Enabled File Extensions

Once you have chosen a file name, click the Save button at the bottom.
To check if it worked, click the round Office button in the top left (Word 2007). Click New and a dialogue box should appear:

From the left, under Templates, click on My Templates.

In Word 2010, click the File tab then the New item on the left menu. Then click on My Templates from the ones that appear:

In both version, when you click on My Templates, you will see another dialogue box appear. This one:

        You should then see the template you have created, letterhead.dotx in our case. Click this item to select it, and then the OK button at the bottom of the dialogue box. You will then have a new letterhead document, complete with the logo you created.

And that's just about it for templates. You should now be able to create a template from any Word document that you create.

       Before we leave the subject, however, be aware of all the inbuilt templates that you can use. If you click on Installed Templates instead of My Templates, you'll see the ones immediately available to you, ready to adapt to your own needs. There are also a lot of templates available under the heading Microsoft Office Online, or Office.com Templates in Word 2010. These are ones that you download from the internet. Again, you can adapt them to your own needs. 

Word Tables

Tables allow you to present figures and statistics in an easy-to-read manner. In this section, you'll design two tables. The first one will be fairly simply, and will look like this:

Off we go then.

   Create a new blank document and add the title and subtitle as above. To add a table to a page, click on the Insert tab on the Word ribbon. From the Insert tab, locate theTables panel, and the Table item:

Click on Table to see the following menu:

      If you wanted a quick table, you could select the bottom item in the menu above. You'd then see a list of inbuilt table designs.

      There are three other ways to add a table using the menu above. The first one is with the white squares. Move your mouse over the squares and you'll see them highlighted. Highlight the same ones as in the image below (6 columns and 2 rows):

    Once you've highlighted the correct squares left click to add the table to your blank page. It should look like this:

     The squares in the table that Word has drawn for you are called Cells. Your cursor will be flashing in the first cell. You can go ahead and type into the cells. Type the following into the first row of your table (without the commas):

USA, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Japan, Others

To get the cursor into the next cell you can either press the tab key on your keyboard, or just click inside the cell with your left mouse button. When you're finished, your table will look like this one:

If you move your mouse pointer up to the top left of the table, you'll notice that a little cross appears in a box. While in the bottom right of the table a white square appears. Like in the image below:

The cross in the box is the table Move symbol. To use it, hold down your left mouse button and drag the table somewhere else on your page. But the process is a bit fiddly. The white square, bottom right, is the resize symbol. It works in the same way as the other white resize squares you have met.

You now need to enter some figures into your tables. So enter the following numbers into the second row of the table (you don't need to insert the commas):

12, 24, 20, 32, 7, 10

Your table should now look like the one below:

As you can see, it's not very tidy at the moment. Let's centre the text and the numbers.

To centre all the table data, you first need to select it. You can do that either in the normal way of just highlighting everything in the cells. Or try this:

• Click inside of your first cell, the USA one
• Look at the Word ribbon and you'll see a new tab has appeared, called Layout
• From the Layout tab, locate the Table panel, then the Select item
• Click on Select to see a menu appear
• From the menu click on Select Table:

Your table will then look like this:

With your data highlighted, locate the Alignment panel on the Layout tab:

From the Alignment panel, choose the Align Centre option:

All your table data will then be centred:

It's looking a bit better. We can format the table some more, though. We'll add a background colour to the bottom row. To add a background colour, do the following:

• Click inside any cell on the bottom row (the one with numbers)
• From the Select menu again, click on Select Row:

(You can also just use your mouse to highlight the row. Click once to the left of the first cell, outside of the table border. Or just highlight text in the usual manner.)

With the bottom row highlighted, click on the Design tab on the Word ribbon. From the Design tab locate the Shading item, which is on the Table Styles panel (you'll see how to use table styles shortly). From the Shading menu, select any colour that takes your fancy (we clicked on "More Colors" to get the softer yellow):

The final result should then look like this:

  

Word Table Styles

We'll use Table Styles to format the second table. Along the way, you'll learn how to delete rows and columns, how to change the height and width, and how to create a table using the table dialogue box. The table you'll design will look like something like this:

First, we'll create the blank table itself. So give yourself some space on your page by hitting the Enter key on your keyboard a few times. Type the heading for the table. Now click on the Insert tab at the top of Microsoft Word.

Click the Table item again. This time, select Insert Table from the menu:

When you click on Insert Table you'll see the following dialogue box appear:

      Enter 7 for the number of columns and 7 for the number of rows. Then click OK. You'll see your 7 by 7 table appear on your page.

However, we've made a mistake because we only need 6 columns. To delete one of them, click in any cell of the final column. Click on the Layout tab at the top, then click the Select item. From the Select menu, choose Select Column:

Your table will then look like this:

To delete the column, make sure the Layout tab is selected at the top of Word. Locate the Rows & Columns panel and the Delete item:

Click on Delete to reveal the following menu:

    Select Delete Columns from the menu. The column or columns you have selected will then be deleted.

     (Note that from the Rows & Columns panel you can also add a new column to the left or right of the one you have selected. You can add a new row in the same way.)
Now that we have a bare table of 6 columns and 7 rows, we can add the data. For the top row, type the following, one item to each cell (without the commas). Leave the first cell blank, though:

Castle, River, Town Hall, Museum, Gardens

For the first column, type the countries: 

USA, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Japan, Others

For the data, type the following into the cells:

When you're done, your table should look like this:

       Now align the text and the numbers so that they are centre aligned. You did this for the previous table. (Select the whole table using the Layout panel, then use the Alignment panel to centre everything.)

     Now that everything is nicely centred, we can increase the height and width of the cells. To do that, select your entire table again. Still on the Layout panel, locate the Cell Size panel:

Change the Height to 1 cm and Width to 2.5 cm (in inches 0.4 and 1).

Your table should now look like this:

Now that we have all the text and numbers finished, we can apply a style. This is quite easy.

   Click anywhere inside of your table. Now click on the Design tab at the top of Word. Locate the Table Styles panel:

   You can click on any of the styles and your table will update itself. To get back to no style at all, select the first item, the one highlighted in the image above.

But click the bottom arrow on the styles area to see more appear:

   The one we chose at the top of this lesson was "Medium grid 1 accent 2". Feel free to select one that catches your eye, though. You don't have to go with ours. Try them all out to see what they look like.

  Note the menu items at the bottom. If you designed your own table style, like we did for the first one, you can click New Table Style. You can then add that style to the list above.

Here's our finished table, with a different style chosen:

     And that's it for tables. There's a lot more you can do with them, so have a play around with the various options and see how you get on. You should have enough information to create something very impressive!

Add or Remove items from the Quick Access Toolbar

You can customize the Quick Access toolbar in Microsoft Word. The Quick Access toolbar is the one just to the right of the round Office button (or just above the File tab in Word 2010). This one:

The three items currently on the Quick Access toolbar above are the Save icon, Undo, and Redo. If you look closely at the image above, you'll see an arrow pointing down:

Click the arrow to reveal a menu. This one:

           The items with check marks next to them are the ones currently in the Quick Access toolbar. Clicking the More Commands option brings up the Customize tab on the Word Option dialogue box (the Quick Access Toolbar tab will be displayed in Word 2010). This one:

      The idea is that you select an item from the left-hand list, then click the Add button. When you click OK, the item gets added to the Quick Access toolbar. To remove an item, select it from the right-hand list, then click the Remove button.

But click on Popular Commands at the top. You'll then see a list of items appear:

 Select Commands Not in the Ribbon and the list box underneath will change. In the image below, we've chosen Microsoft Excel as something we want on the Quick Access toolbar. That way, we have a fast way to open Excel:

The next image shows that our chosen item has been added to the list on the right:

In the next image, we've chosen the Excel item from the list box on the right:

     The two arrows allow you to move your selection up and down. So, if we wanted to have the Excel item as the first one, we left-click to select it. Then click on the UP arrow to move it to the top of the list. Notice, too, that we've also added the Change Case item to appear on the Quick Access toolbar.

Have a look at the list of items and add your own choices. Click OK when you're done. Your Quick Access toolbar will then look something like this:

The Quick Access toolbar comes in very useful and saves you hunting around all the different tabs for the item you want.

How to Set Up Keyboard Shorcuts

Another useful item on the Customize tab is the Customize button just to the right ofKeyboard Shortcuts:

In Word 2010, you need to click on the Customize Ribbon tab to see the keyboard shortcuts.

Click the Customize button to see the following dialogue box:

        An example of a keyboard shortcut is to press the CTRL key on your keyboard. Keep it held down and press then letter F. This will bring up the Find and Replace dialogue box.

       In the image above, this very shortcut has been selected. Under Categories we selected the Home Tab, which is where the Find and Replace dialogue box is located. Under Commands, we've select EditFind. The shortcut itself then shows up in theCurrent Keys text box (Ctrl + F).

   A lot of the items on the Commands list don't have shortcuts, however. So you need to set your own, if one hasn't been assigned. Examine the Image below:

          The Insert tab in Word is where you'll find the Picture item. Clicking this brings up a dialogue box. You then select the image you want to insert into your Word document.

         We use the Picture item a lot so have set up a shortcut key for it. After selecting the items we want in the first two boxes at the top (Categories and Commands) we then click into the text box below "Press new shortcut key". After holding down the CTRL key and the question mark key these then appear in the text box. The Current keys text box is blank, and this tells us that our chosen shortcut keys are not being used (Currently assigned to: [unassigned]). If you see shortcuts already in the Current keys text box then it means those keys are already in use. When we were happy with our shortcut keys we then clicked the Assign button in the bottom left. After returning to Word we were then able to press Ctrl + ? to bring up the Insert Picture dialogue box.