What is Word For?

Microsoft Word is the world's most popular word processing program for the simple reason that you can go as far as you want with it. You can apply a little bit of formatting, or go all out with pictures, "3-D" text, and colorful shapes. If your document will be sent to someone else via the Internet, a floppy, or a computer network, you can insert movies and animation as well. You can even add interactive buttons and text boxes and write VB code for them.

Word is a word processor, which is a program used to generate reports, letters, memos, and things like that. Word can do everything your standard yellow legal pad can do and so much more. (Except it can't get drenched with coffee!) Word will automatically wrap the text, meaning when you come to the end of a line, you can keep typing and it will automatically move the text to the next line.

The directions in this book are written for Word 2000, which often comes pre-installed with many computers. However, these directions can be used with the newer versions of Word, the XP and 2003 versions. They can also be modified to work with Word 97, an older version of the program that is still in use on some older computers. If you happen to be using a different version of Word than 2000, the directions may not be exactly inline with your version of Word, but you should be able to get them to work with a little thinking.

Microsoft Word is part of a suite of programs called Microsoft Office. Along with Word, Office includes Microsoft Excel (spreadsheets), PowerPoint (electronic slideshows), Access (databases), and Outlook (scheduling and e-mail). Some special editions of Office contain Publisher (page layouts) and/or FrontPage (web design) - these are often included in the "premium" or "professional" editions which, of course, cost more.

If you don't have Word, you can use Corel WordPerfect or Microsoft Works Word Processor. However, this chapter of the book is not intended to be used with these programs - the commands are usually different. If you own your own computer, you might consider buying Office. Though it is a bit pricey, it is well worth the investment.

NOTE
Word processing is a lot faster and more enjoyable if you know touch-typing, that is, typing without having to look down and squint and search for the "H", or the "I", or the "W" ("hunt-and-peck"). This book's aim is not to teach you how to type; it is to teach you how to learn the software, but if you want to learn to type, there are several books and computer programs designed to impart you with this valuable skill. A classic program is Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing; other good ones are Simon & Schuster's Typing Tutor 7, and Expert Typing For Windows.

Scott, Are You SURE That Command Exists?

You might find that I refer to a command that you can't see. For instance, I say, go to Help > About... and you open up the Help menu and the menu's there, but the About command isn't there. In fact, there's just two or three commands there, and none of them are the right one.

No, I'm not going senile, nor am I having a senior moment - I'm not even a senior in high school yet. What Word is doing is displaying only the most commonly used commands, and hiding the others. This is for convenience - most of the time you won't be using these weird commands, so why have them be in your way? But if you need to see the full menus, click the double-arrow command at the bottom of the menu. There. That helps, doesn't it? Now you can pick your command and get on with your life.

Basic Commands

The Status Bar

Word's status bar displays some very helpful information about the state of the current document, such as page numbers, length, your current position in the document, the national debt, your Social Security number, number of miles away from Bill Gates's sixteenth personal mansion, etc. Well, it does! No, actually, it doesn't really do the last three. But here's what it does do...

Figure 2.1: The status bar in Microsoft Word

Overtype is turned on and off by double-clicking its symbol on the status bar or pressing Insert. In the illustration, note the use of the word character. From now on, instead of using the word "letter", I will use the more general term character, which means a letter (A, B, C), a number (1, 2, 3), punctuation mark (, . ; !), symbol (#, @, &, μ, π, =), or space.

Occasionally, the Status Bar may change to show what a menu option does or tell you what to do next.

Four Different Views

You can look at your document in four different ways. You may access them in the View menu or by clicking the four buttons to the left of the left-right scroll bar, as shown in Figure 2.2.

Figure 2.2: The four different view buttons, located in the lower-left corner of the screen

The default view is Normal View. This displays text as well as pictures that fall under certain rules (which are explored in the next section) and page breaks (they're the lines between pages). From the Word help software: "Work in normal view for typing, editing, and formatting text. Normal view shows text formatting but simplifies the layout of the page so that you can type and edit quickly."

I don't like Normal View much. I like to see what it is I'm doing and ultimately what my final result will be. If this sounds like you, choose Print Layout View. This view resembles a piece of paper and is WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy-wig") - an acronym standing for What You See Is What You Get.

Outline View is for more advanced users, so we won't worry about it until Section 4. Web Layout View is covered in Section 6.

Spell Check and Grammar Check

Two of the most remarkable features of Word are its automatic spelling and grammar checkers. Behind the scenes, Word is constantly checking your document against its "dictionary." If a word isn't in its dictionary, it will underline the word with a red zigzag line. It will also underline grammatical errors with a green zigzag.

To have Word show the closest matches in its dictionary, right click the word. A menu appears out of nowhere - this is called a pop-up menu. The closest matches are shown at the top of the menu. You can also tell it to ignore the word or add the word to the dictionary. This is because many proper nouns and slang are not found in the dictionary. "Goldsby" - my hometown - will be changed into "Godlessly." Hmph.

Suggested grammar changes can be shown in the same way. Sometimes Word will not be able to give a grammar change but will at least tell you what caused it to alert you. Please be aware, though, that the grammar checker is not very good and is often wrong. For example, it does not seem to understand the concept of the "understood you" syntax used in many imperative sentences.

The Spelling and Grammar Status on the Status Bar shows you the overall status of the document. If there is a checkmark, the document checks and there is nothing wrong. If there is an "X", there is at least one spelling/grammar error in the document. Double-clicking the Spelling and Grammar Status will jump to the next spelling error.

If you want to check the whole document at once, you may want to click the Spelling and Grammar button on the Standard toolbar (the one that starts with New, Open, and Save). This will display a more advanced dialog.

TIP
Try clicking the "?" button in the dialog. This will explain in detail what's wrong and why it's wrong.

Indenting And Lining Up Perfectly

Look in the small bit of space between the ruler and the typing area. Every ½", there is a small gray mark. Pressing TAB will move the insertion point to the next mark. In this way, you can indent the beginning of a paragraph, or create two columns of data that lines up perfectly. Instead of using SPACE for long distances, use TAB.

Displaying All Characters

If you click the button on the Standard Toolbar, more characters will pop up on the screen. There will be dots wherever you hit SPACE, a right arrow where you hit TAB, and a ¶ character where you hit ENTER. This can be useful for checking spacing, but distracting at other times. You can turn it back off by clicking the button again.

Select All

To select everything in a document, select Edit > Select All or press CTRL + A.

Automatic Bullets and Numbering

When typing a numbered list, you don't have to type the numbers. Just click the Numbering button on the Formatting (second) toolbar. Word will create a numbered list that has another number each time you hit ENTER. To end the list, click the Numbering button again.

You can use a small picture, called a bullet, rather than a number. By default, the bullets are small black circles. Click the button on the Formatting Toolbar. A new bullet will be created every time you press ENTER.

There can be several bullet or number lists, all nested inside each other. You can "promote" or "demote" a line by clicking the Increase and Decrease Indent buttons on the Formatting Toolbar. You can also demote by pressing TAB. The numbering or bullets will be changed according to the nesting level. Example:

Figure 2.3: An example of lists nested inside each other.

Using nested levels, you can see a category and break it down into smaller and smaller subcategories. This is especially good for class or meeting notes.

Changing Font Color

To change the color of the text, click the arrow next to the button. Pick the correct color. If you just click the button, instead of the arrow, the text will be changed to the last used color, displayed in the box under the "A." What color would the text be if I clicked the button shown here?

Highlighting

When you use a highlighter on a freshly printed page, it often smears and the text becomes illegible. To have a highlighter effect, click the arrow next to the button, select the correct color, and select the text you want highlighted. As with the font color button, if you just click the button instead of the arrow, the color will be the last used color, displayed in the box under the highlighter box. You can keep highlighting until you click the highlighter button again.

Quick Formatting

To quickly bold a word, surround it by *asterisks*. To quickly italicize a word, surround it by _underscore_ characters. (Underscore characters are at Shift+Hyphen key, right next to the 0.) This is called AutoFormatting. If you need to, you can quickly undo it by pressing BACKSPACE. AutoFormat also will change (R) to &174; and (TM) to ^TM.

NOTE
If this doesn't appear to work, look at Tools > AutoCorrect..., "AutoFormat as You Type" tab.

Changing The Margins and Orientation

Choose File > Page Setup.... A tabbed dialog is shown. The Margins tab shows the width of the four margins of the paper: top, left, right, and bottom. A margin is the space between the printed data and the edge of the paper. The default margin widths are 1" for top and bottom, and 1.25" for the left and right edges. A default is the setting the computer is set to automatically without you changing it.

The Paper Size tab contains options for the size of the paper and the orientation. The orientation has two options: portrait and landscape. Portrait is the setting used most often. This prints the paper with the rows parallel to the narrow edges of the page. The other setting, landscape, prints the rows parallel to the long edges. See the picture below.

Figure 2.4: Portrait vs. landscape

Preview the Document

Select File > Print Preview or click the button on the toolbar. You see the something similar to Figure 2.5.

Figure 2.5: Print preview

Figure 2.6 shows the special Print Preview Toolbar that appears.

Figure 2.6: The Print Preview toolbar.

Printing

When you are finished typing your document, you will probably want to print it. The Print command may be activated from both the Print Preview and Standard toolbars. Printing commences immediately. However, selecting File > Print... displays a dialog with several options. Only when you click OK does printing commence.

Figure 2.7: The Print dialog (File > Print...)

The top "Printer" frame contains options about the printer. The "Name" combo box lets you choose between printers if there is more than one connected. "Properties" displays options about your printer setup. This is different for every kind of printer, so see your printer manual. Most printers let you select a draft mode here, which is best for early copies and conserves ink. The "Print to file" checkbox allows you to "print" to a printer file, which can then be exported to other computers for printing, even if those computers do not have Word.

The "Page Range" frame lets you print what you want: the entire document, just the current page, just the selected text, or the pages you specify. The "Copies" frame lets you select how many copies you want, and whether you want them collated. If you choose to collate them, the pages will be printed in order. For example, without collation, two copies of a three-page document will be printed in the order of 1-1-2-2-3-3. If you collate them, they will be printed 1-2-3-1-2-3.

The "Zoom" frame contains two combo boxes. The first of these is the "Pages Per Sheet" box. If you want to create a book, you could set this to 2 Pages. You can also create pamphlets in this way. The other combo box is the "Scale to Paper Size" box. Here you can scale down the page to fit on different paper sizes. This way you get all the roominess of, say, letter size paper, but you can print on legal size.

The "Print What" combo box shows different things to print, such as only the whole document, document properties, or inserted comments. (The document properties can be viewed from File > Properties.) You will learn to insert comments in Section 2-5. The "Print:" combo box lets you print the even or odd pages or the entire document.

"Options" shows the Print tab of the Tools > Options dialog.

Saving and Opening

The standard saving and opening procedures work in Word. Also, under the File Menu, right above Exit, are the four most recently used files. Clicking them brings up the file listed.

Please note that Word is what a programmer would call a Multiple Document Interface, or MDI. When a program has MDI capability, you can open several documents at once and work on them side by side. To switch between them, go to the Window menu. This is good if you are working on several related documents at once. Try it out!

In addition to the default *.doc format, Word documents can be saved as *.rtf (Rich Text Format) and as a Web page (*.html, more about this in Section 6). Normally there will be no reason to do this, unless you will be using a computer which does not support MSWord (and even Linux users can open Word documents, so this is really just FYI).

Introducing Templates

Using a template can really speed your work. A template is a special kind of Word document with a *.dot extension, rather than a *.doc extension like a normal document. A template creates a new Word document with some stuff already in it, and you fill in the blanks. The neatest part about a template is after you save it, if you select it from the Templates dialog, it will still come up like you never changed it.

In Word, select New > More Word Templates. Here they are. If you want a memo, for example, you select the Memos tab and click Contemporary Memo. The new document that appears isn't blank like normal - it has some text written in already (see below). You can change it and add more text as needed.

You can make your own templates by selecting "Document Template" from the File Type box on the Save dialog. The directory will change to the directory where the rest of the templates are stored.

CAUTION
DO NOT CHANGE THE DIRECTORY because then you may not be able to access the template later.

NOTE
The standard blank document uses a template called Normal.

If you want to modify the actual template, choose it from the Open dialog.

Introducing the Office Assistant

In many of the screenshots you've seen in this book, there has been a small paper clip or dog in one corner of the screen. This is one of Microsoft's most ingenious contraptions. It's called the Office Assistant, and it's designed to help in a friendly way.

To turn the Assistant on, press F1 or select it from the Help menu. Whenever you need help, just click the Assistant, type your question into the box provided, and click Search. A range of topics appear, from which you can select the most appropriate one.

The Assistant will watch you as you work and suggest ways to work more efficiently. When the Assistant has a tip, it will display a small light bulb. Click the bulb, and the assistant shows a tip.

There are several different Assistants available: Clippit, the paper clip (shown below), Rocky the dog, Links the cat, F1 the robot, Albert Einstein, the Dot, Mother Earth, and the Office Logo. To change the Assistant and its options, right-click it and choose Options.... You can also have some fun with the Assistant by clicking Animate! from the pop-up menu.

Figure 2.8: Asking the Office Assistant a question