Chapter 1
IN THIS CHAPTER
Getting acquainted with Word
Creating a Word document
Exploring speedy editing techniques
Making Word read aloud
This chapter explains shortcuts and commands that can help you become a speedy user of Word 365. Everything in this chapter was put here so that you can get off work earlier and take the slow, scenic route home. Starting here, you discover how to create and change your view of documents. You find out how to select text, get from place to place, and mark your place in long documents. You also explore how to insert one document into another, have Word read aloud to you, and create data-entry forms to make entering information a little easier.
Book 1, Chapter 2 explains the basics of entering and formatting text in Word 365 and the other Office 365 applications.
Seeing the Word screen for the first time is like trying to find your way through Tokyo’s busy Ikebukuro subway station. It’s intimidating. But when you start using Word, you quickly learn what everything is. To help you get going, Figure 1-1 shows you the different parts of the screen. Here are shorthand descriptions of these screen parts:
Document is just a fancy word for a letter, report, announcement, or proclamation that you create with Word. All documents are created using a special kind of file called a template. The template provides the formats — the fonts, styles, margin specifications, layouts, and other stuff — that give a document its appearance.
When you create a document, you are asked to choose a template to establish what your document will look like. If your aim is to create an academic report, flyer, newsletter, calendar, résumé, or other sophisticated document, see whether you can spare yourself the formatting work by choosing the appropriate template when you create your document. (Chapter 3 of this minibook explains templates in detail and how to create your own templates.)
Follow these basic steps to create a document:
On the File tab, choose New.
The New window shown in Figure 1-2 appears.
Click to select a template.
A preview window appears with a description of the template you chose, as shown in Figure 1-2.
Click the Create button in the preview window.
Your new Word document opens.
Use these techniques in the New window to choose a template and create a document:
Book 1, Chapter 1 explains how to save documents after you create them, as well as how to open a document you want to work on.
A computer screen can be kind of confining. There you are, staring at the darn thing for hours at a stretch. Do you wish the view were better? The Word screen can’t be made to look like the Riviera, but you can examine documents in different ways and work in two places at one time in the same document. Better read on.
In word processing, you want to focus sometimes on the writing, sometimes on the layout, and sometimes on the organization of your work. To help you stay in focus, Word offers different ways of viewing a document. Figure 1-3 shows these views. These pages explain how to change views, the five different views, and why to select one view over another. (Be sure to visit Book 1, Chapter 3 as well; it describes how to view a document through more than one window and how to open a second window in a document.)
Use these techniques to change views:
Switch to Read mode to focus on the text itself and proofread your documents. You can’t enter or edit text in Read mode. Everything is stripped away — the Ribbon, scroll bars, status bar, and all. All you see are the text and artwork in your documents. Read mode is designed for reading documents on tablet computers. (To leave Read mode, select View on the menu bar and the top of the screen and choose Edit Document on the drop-down list.)
Switch to Print Layout view to see the big picture. In this view, you can see what your document will look like when you print it. You can see graphics, headers, footers, and even page borders in Print Layout view. You can also see clearly where page breaks occur (where one page ends and the next begins). In Print Layout view, you can click the One Page, Multiple Pages, or Page Width button on the View tab to display more or fewer pages on your screen.
Switch to Web Layout view to see what your document would look like as a web page. Background colors appear (if you chose a theme or background color for your document). Text is wrapped to the window rather than around the artwork in the document. Book 9, Chapter 2 explains how to save an Office file, including a Word document, as a web page.
Switch to Outline view to see how your work is organized. In this view, you can see only the headings in a document. You can get a sense of how your document unfolds and easily move sections of text backward and forward in a document. In other words, you can reorganize a document in Outline view. Chapter 8 of this minibook explains outlines in torturous detail.
Switch to Draft view when you’re writing a document and you want to focus on the words. Pictures, shapes, and other distractions don’t appear in this view, nor do page breaks (although you can clearly see section breaks). Draft view is best for writing first drafts.
Besides opening a second window on a document (a subject of Book 1, Chapter 3), you can be two places at one time in a Word document by splitting the screen. One reason you might do this: You’re writing a long report and want the introduction to support the conclusion, plus you want the conclusion to fulfill all promises made by the introduction. Achieving both goals can be difficult to do sometimes, but you can make it easier by splitting the screen so that you can be two places at one time as you write your introduction and conclusion.
Splitting a window means to divide it into north and south halves, as shown in Figure 1-4. In a split screen, two sets of scroll bars appear so that you can travel in one half of the screen without disturbing the other half. Follow these steps to split the screen:
On the View tab, click the Split button.
A gray line appears onscreen.
Drag the gray line until the gray line is where you want the split to be.
You get two screens split down the middle. You can also split the screen by pressing Ctrl+Alt+S.
When you tire of this split-screen arrangement, click the Remove Split button on the View tab or drag the line to the top or bottom of the screen. You can also double-click the line that splits the screen in two.
Book 1, Chapter 2 explains how to enter text and change its appearance and size. After you enter text, you inevitably have to copy, move, or delete it, but you can’t do those tasks until you select it first. Table 1-1 describes shortcuts for selecting text.
TABLE 1-1 Shortcuts for Selecting Text
To Select This |
Do This |
A word |
Double-click the word. |
A line |
Click in the left margin next to the line. |
Some lines |
Drag the mouse pointer over the lines or drag it down the left margin. |
A sentence |
Ctrl+click the sentence. |
A paragraph |
Double-click in the left margin next to the paragraph. |
A mess of text |
Click at the start of the text, hold down the Shift key, and click at the end of the text. |
A gob of text |
Put the cursor where you want to start selecting, press F8, and press an arrow key, drag the mouse, or click at the end of the selection. |
Text with the same formats |
On the Home tab, click the Select button and choose Select Text with Similar Formatting (you may have to click the Editing button first). |
A document |
Hold down the Ctrl key and click in the left margin; triple-click in the left margin; press Ctrl+A; or go to the Home tab, click the Select button, and choose Select All (you may have to click the Editing button first). |
Besides sliding the scroll bar, Word offers a handful of very speedy techniques for jumping around in documents: pressing shortcut keys, using the Go To command, and navigating with the Navigation pane. Read on to discover how to get there faster, faster, faster.
One of the fastest ways to go from place to place is to press the keys and key combinations listed in Table 1-2.
TABLE 1-2 Keys for Moving around Documents
Key to Press |
Where It Takes You |
PgUp |
Up the length of one screen |
PgDn |
Down the length of one screen |
Home |
To the start of the line |
End |
To the end of the line |
Ctrl+PgUp |
To the previous page in the document |
Ctrl+PgDn |
To the next page in the document |
Ctrl+Home |
To the top of the document |
Ctrl+End |
To the bottom of the document |
In lengthy documents such as the one in Figure 1-5, the best way to get from place to place is to make use of the Navigation pane. Click a heading or a page in the Navigation pane, and Word takes you there in the twinkling of an eye.
To display the Navigation pane, go to the View tab and click the Navigation Pane check box (you may have to click the Show button first). Then select a tab in the Navigation pane and go to it:
Another fast way to go from place to place in a document is to use the Go To command. On the Home tab, open the drop-down list on the Find button and choose Go To (you may have to click the Editing button first). You see the Go To tab of the Find and Replace dialog box, shown in Figure 1-6. You can also open this dialog box by pressing Ctrl+G or F5.
The Go to What menu in this dialog box lists everything that can conceivably be numbered in a Word document, and other things, too. Click a menu item, enter a number, choose an item from the drop-down list, or click the Previous, Next, or Go To buttons to go elsewhere.
Rather than press PgUp or PgDn or click the scroll bar to thrash around in a long document, you can use bookmarks. All you do is put a bookmark in an important spot in your document that you'll return to many times. To return to that spot, open the Bookmark dialog box and select a bookmark name, as shown in Figure 1-7. True to the craft, the mystery writer whose bookmarks are shown in Figure 1-7 wrote the end of the story first and used bookmarks to jump back and forth between the beginning and end to make all the clues fit together.
Follow these instructions to handle bookmarks:
One of the beautiful things about word processing is being able to recycle documents. Say that you wrote an essay on the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher that would fit very nicely in a broader report on North American birds. You can insert the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher document into your report document:
On the Insert tab, open the drop-down list on the Object button and choose Text from File.
You see the Insert File dialog box. (The Object button is located in the Text group on the right side of the Ribbon.)
Click the Insert button.
You can insert more than one file with the Text from File command. Select more than one file in the Insert File dialog box and click the Insert button. Files land in the document in the order in which they appear in the Insert File dialog box.
Rather than read it yourself, you can get Word to read it aloud. Word can read you a bedtime story if you open it onscreen first. Follow these steps to hear Word read all or part of a document:
Switch to Print Layout view or Web Layout view, if necessary.
Earlier in this chapter, “Getting a Better Look at Your Documents” explains views.
On the Review tab, click the Read Aloud button.
A toolbar appears with buttons you can click to make Word pause or stop reading. Click the Settings button on the toolbar to change reading speeds or choose a different reading voice.
To start reading in the middle of a document, click where you want the reading to start before you click the Read Aloud button. To read a passage, select it before clicking the Read Aloud button.
A form is a means of soliciting and recording information. You can use forms like the one shown in Figure 1-8 to enter data faster and to reduce data-entry errors. Instead of entering all the information manually, which takes time, you or a data-entry clerk can choose entries from combo boxes, drop-down lists, and date pickers. Information you enter manually is more likely to be accurate because you choose it from prescribed lists instead of entering it yourself.
To create a form like the one shown in Figure 1-8, start by creating a template for your form and putting data-entry controls — the combo boxes, drop-down lists, and date pickers — in the form. To fill out a form, you create a document from the form template and go to it. These pages explain how to create a form and use forms to record information.
The first step in creating a data-entry form is to create a template for holding the form. After that, you design the form itself by labeling the data fields and creating the data-entry controls. Better keep reading.
Follow these steps to create a new template:
On the File tab, choose Save As.
You see the Save As window.
Click the Browse button.
The Save As dialog box opens.
Enter a descriptive name for your template and click the Save button.
Word stores your template in the Default Personal Templates Location folder. Chapter 3 of this minibook explains templates in detail, as well as where this folder is located.
Your next task is to create the form and data-entry controls for your template. Enter labels on the form where you will enter information. The form in Figure 1-8, for example, has five labels: Name, Phone, Fee Paid?, Association, and Date. After you enter the labels, follow these steps to create the data-entry controls:
Display the Developer tab, if necessary.
If this tab isn’t showing, go to the File tab, choose Options, and on the Customize Ribbon category of the Word Options dialog box, look for the Developer check box on the right side of the screen, select this check box, and click OK. (Book 9, Chapter 1 explains in detail how to customize the Ribbon.)
Click where you want to place a control, and then create the control by clicking a Controls button followed by the Properties button on the Developer tab.
Here are instructions for creating three types of controls:
Click the Save button to save your template.
Now you’re ready to use your newly made form to enter data.
Now that you have the template, you or someone else can enter data cleanly in easy-to-read forms by following these steps:
On the File tab, choose New.
You see the New window.
Click the Personal tab.
This tab lists templates stored on your computer.
Double-click the name of the template you created for entering data in your form.
The form appears.
Enter information in the input fields.
Press the up or down arrow, or press Tab and Shift+Tab to move from field to field. You can also click an input field to move the cursor there.