Introduction to Microsoft Word & Its New Interface

Transcription

1 LESSON 1 MS Word 2007 Introduction to Microsoft Word & Its New Interface What is Microsoft Office Word 2007? Microsoft Office Word 2007 is the twelfth version of Microsoft s powerful word processing program. With it, you can create professional looking documents of nearly any type. You can also add tables, charts, art, shapes, photos, and much more. Best of all, Word 2007 s interface is simple and intuitive, so creating great documents is easy! Launching Word To open Microsoft Office Word 2007, click the Start menu and place your mouse over All Programs. You should see a Microsoft Office folder inside the Start menu. Hover over it with your mouse and then click Microsoft Office Word 2007: Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 1 of 10

2 (These steps are for Windows XP users, although most versions of Windows are very similar. If you don t see an All Programs folder, look for a Programs folder.) You will see a blank document: And now you re ready to work with Word! Interface Overview Now that we ve opened Word, let s take a look at what s on our screen. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 2 of 10

3 We have numbered the figure on the previous page for easy reference. Let s take a look at each part. Remember, this is just an overview, so don t worry if you don t understand everything right now. 1 Office Menu When you click the Office logo, you will see a range of commands relating to your document. It s a lot like the File menu in older versions of Word. 2 Quick Access Toolbar Although toolbars have mostly been removed from Microsoft Office Word 2007, you can add frequently used commands to the Quick Access toolbar. 3 Title Bar This bar displays the name of the current document you re working on and the program you re working in. 4 Window Controls To the far left of the title bar, you have buttons to minimize, maximize, or close the window. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 3 of 10

4 5 Ribbon Tabs These tabs each contain a different set of options. So, if you want to change your page s layout, just click the Page Layout tab to see that ribbon: 6 Help Icon Click the question mark to see the help screen. 7 Chunks Each ribbon is divided into various parts called chunks. For example, the Page Setup chunk on the Page Layout tab contains all the commands you will need to configure your page. 8 Rulers To help you line up text and objects, Microsoft Office Word has a vertical and a horizontal ruler. (If you can t see the rulers, use the View ribbon to enable them.) 9 Editing Window This is where you will create your document. 10 Scroll Bar Use this bar to scroll up and down in your document. 11 Status Bar This bar at the bottom of your screen has commands for word count, spell check, and view controls. THE NEW MS WORD INTERFACE One of the biggest changes in Microsoft Office Word 2007 is the interface. In this section, we ll focus entirely on the new interface. We ll start with learning how to use some components of the Word screen. Ribbons and Chunks Ribbons and chunks form the core of the new Office interface, so it s important that we really understand how they work before we look at the individual ribbons and commands. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 4 of 10

5 About Ribbons By default, Microsoft Office Word 2007 has seven ribbon tabs: As you know, each tab has its own set of commands. So, if you wanted to change your view, you would click the View tab to see those commands. As well, you will see special ribbons appear when you create certain objects, such as drawings or tables. We will discuss these ribbons in general in the next section and in depth as we encounter them. About Chunks Each ribbon is composed of chunks of commands. For example, the Home ribbon has Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing commands. These separations are useful as it helps you quickly and easily find commands. About Option Buttons Some chunks will have a small button in their bottom right hand corner. Clicking this button will open a dialogue box with more features related to the chunk. In the example above, clicking the small arrow would open the Font dialogue. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 5 of 10

6 Using the Mini Toolbar In our last section, we learned how to type and select text. You may have noticed the mini toolbar pop up as you were doing so: This toolbar contains the most popular formatting commands, some of which we ve already discussed. Let s take a look at each command. Change the font type and size. Use these buttons to nudge font size up or down. Apply a style to the current text. Toggles Format Painter on and off. Bold text. Italicize text. Center text. Highlight text. Change font color. Indent or out-dent text. Click this button to apply default bullets, or click the down arrow to choose a different style. Applying formatting from the mini toolbar is the same as applying it from the Home ribbon: click to turn the formatting on, type text, and turn the formatting off; or select text and apply formatting. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 6 of 10

7 The Quick Access Toolbar Although toolbars have mostly been done away with in Microsoft Office Word 2007, we do have the Quick Access toolbar. This toolbar is right next to the Office menu. It s a place to store your most frequently used commands, to save you from hunting around in the ribbons. In this lesson, we re going to learn all about the toolbar! Using the Toolbar By default, there are three icons on the toolbar. From left to right, they are Save, Undo, and Redo/Repeat. Using the toolbar is as easy as clicking the icon! Adding and Removing Buttons The point of the Quick Access toolbar is to provide quick access to the commands you use most, so it makes sense that you can customize it. To add buttons to the Quick Access toolbar, click the drop-down arrow next to it. Then, click any commands you want to add to the toolbar. If a command has a check by it, it means it s active and on the toolbar. To remove a command, simply click it to remove the check. You can also right-click almost any command and click Add to Quick Access Toolbar. The Home Ribbon Now that we know how to use the different parts of the Word interface, we re going to learn about the Home ribbon. This is probably the ribbon you will use the most often. Remember that we re not expecting you to understand all of these commands. This is just so that you know where to find commands when you go to use them. Clipboard Commands The first chunk of the Home ribbon is the Clipboard section. This offers options to cut, copy, and paste text, and to use the format painter. It also features an option button to open the Office clipboard. We will learn about all of these tools later on in this course. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 7 of 10

8 Font Commands The next chunk is one that we have already worked with: Font. This chunk contains commands to change the appearance of your text. We have covered most of these options already; we will cover the rest of the options later on in this manual. You can also click the option button to open the Font dialogue, which is a one-stop shop for most font settings. Paragraph Commands Our third chunk contains paragraph tools. With this chunk you can indent, align, and justify paragraphs; create bulleted and numbered lists; change spacing; add borders and shading; sort text; and view special characters. (We will talk about some of these tools later on.) You can also click the option button to open the Paragraph dialogue. Styles Commands Our fourth chunk is devoted to the styles available in Microsoft Office Word Styles are preset formatting that help you keep your document consistent. Instead of having to remember what formatting you used for titles, you can simply use the prebuilt styles. Later on in this manual, we will talk about how to apply these styles. (We will save our in-depth discussion for the Advanced manual.) Editing Commands Our last chunk focuses on editing. These options let you find and replace text, as well as select objects. The Page Layout Ribbon The Page Layout tab contains a set of options to change the way your page looks. Some of these options are also on the bottom right corner of your screen, on the status bar. If you want to change your page s layout, just click the Page Layout tab to see that ribbon. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 8 of 10

9 Page Setup Commands This chunk will let you control every aspect of your page. We re going to look at it in depth at the end of this manual, but in summary, there are options for margins, orientation, page size, page columns, page breaks, line numbers, and hyphenation. Page Background Commands As you might expect, this chunk controls what goes on your page, behind your text. You can choose a watermark, a solid color, or a page border. The View Ribbon The last ribbon we re going to look at is the View ribbon. As you might imagine, this ribbon will allow us to view our documents in different ways. Like the other ribbons, right now we re just going to give you an overview of the commands. We ll delve deeper into each command later on in the manual. Document Views Commands This section of the ribbon gives you different ways to view your document. All you have to do is click the view you want. Each view is pretty self explanatory; you can see your document as it will appear on paper (Print Layout), Full Screen, as it will appear on the Web, in an outline format, or in a draft format (which will show less features). We will look at each view more closely later on in this manual. Show/Hide Tools This chunk lets you easily customize your Word screen. If an item is checked, that means it s visible on the screen. If it s unchecked, it s currently hidden. We re going to take a look at using each of these elements later on in this manual. For now, feel free to check and uncheck these items and see what the effect is. Zoom Tools Our next chunk lets us zoom in and zoom out of the page. Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 9 of 10

10 The first button will open a Zoom dialogue which will let you choose specific Zoom settings. (We will take a look at this dialogue later on.) The next button will automatically set your zoom level to 100%. The next three buttons will zoom to show one page, two pages, or the page width. All you have to do is click to zoom! Window Commands This section of the View ribbon will let us control how our windows are arranged. With the first column of commands, you can create a new window, arrange windows, or split the current window. With the second column of commands, you can view documents side by side and control how they appear. The last command is Switch Windows, which we already looked at; it lets you switch between open documents. Keyboard Shortcuts (Optional Section) Another way to implement commands in Word is by using shortcut keys. Shortcut keys are when you press a key (or sometimes a combination of two or even three keys at once) to perform an action instead of clicking on the icon or finding its toolbar command. Sometimes you can see this shortcut in the icon s ScreenTip. There are hundreds of shortcuts in Word, but here s a list of the most common ones: Open a new document Ctrl + N Cut text Ctrl + X Save a file Ctrl + S Paste text Ctrl + V Open a file Ctrl + O Find text Ctrl + F Print a document Ctrl + P Undo last action Ctrl + Z Close Word Alt + F4 Redo last action Ctrl + Y Select All Ctrl + A Check spelling or grammar F7 Copy text Ctrl + C Get Help F1 Vania Yalamova, 5/6/2011 Page 10 of 10