Jefferson Parish Library Computer Training Team Basic Computer Skills-With Office 2010 August 2011 1
Basic Computer Skills with Office 2010 Desktop with Icons Icons Task Bar Icons on the desktop represent shortcuts to programs which are on your computer. You would double click on these icons programs such as Word or the Internet. You can also access programs by left clicking on the round Microsoft button in the lower left hand corner of the task bar. When you click a menu (below) will appear. Point to All Programs to access all programs on your computer. All Programs gives you a list of all the programs on your computer. 2
Windows 7 Taskbar Taskbar Icons on this taskbar represent items which have been pinned to the taskbar for quick access or programs which are running on this computer. When you point to the icons of programs that are minimized, they show up for you to click on and make active. (See above, Word.) Putting Icons on Your Desktop To put icons on your desktop, left click on the round Microsoft button in the left hand corner of your taskbar. When the menu appears point to all programs. Then, right click on the program you wish to have easily accessible on your desktop, and the menu above will appear. Point to Send To and when the submenu opens to the right, point to Desktop (create shortcut) and left click. The icon should 3 appear on your desktop. You can also Pin an icon to the taskbar (See list above.)
Quick Access Toolbar Windows Interface Minimize, Resize, and Close Buttons Ribbon Tabs Title Bar Ribbon Groups Ribbon Vertical Scroll Bar Programs Pinned to Taskbar Programs running on Computer Task Bar 4
Mouse Basics Left click button Scroll button Right click button If you are left handed, you can customize your mouse to fit your needs. Left click on your round Windows start button on your task bar., Select Control Panel from the list. Then left click on the mouse icon to see your mouse properties dialogue box (left). 5
Windows 7 View of Mouse click button Configuration 6
Holding the Mouse Hold the mouse firmly in your right hand with your hand straight on the mouse from front to back. Rest your pointer (index) finger on the left mouse button, your middle finger on the right mouse button and let the palm of your hand rest on the hump of the mouse. Use your pointer finger to roll the wheel between the buttons if your mouse has a scroll wheel. The scroll wheel moves your view of a page up and down once you have opened a program or are on the Internet. Use your thumb, ring finger and pinkie finger to hold onto the sides of the mouse. Moving the Mouse The mouse should be placed on a flat surface, preferably a mouse pad. To move the mouse use your arm; do not rotate your wrist. Just glide the mouse to the right, left, up, down or diagonally. The mouse pointer moves on the screen when the roller ball on the underside of the mouse moves due to being in contact with a non-slick surface such as a mouse pad. If you reach the edge of the mouse pad and need to keep moving in that direction, just pick up the mouse, place it back on the pad in an area that will allow more room to move in that direction. 7
Click Press the left mouse button once, very softly. When you click, you need to make sure that the mouse does not move, even a millimeter. If you click an icon on the desktop, it will become selected. If you click inside a program like Microsoft Word, the insertion point (vertical blinking line) moves to that point on the page. Double-click Hold the mouse still, and quickly, yet softly click the left mouse button twice. A double-click can be used to do things such as opening a program from an icon on the desktop, selecting a word or sending aces to the top row in Solitaire. Highlighting or Selecting Press the left mouse button when the pointer is at the beginning of what you wish to highlight. While continuing to hold the button down, move the mouse pointer across what you wish to highlight. Once the mouse pointer has reached the end of what you are highlighting, release the button. This is useful to highlight or select multiple words that are displayed on the computer screen, such as text on a web page, which you can then copy and paste into a Microsoft Word document. Drag and Drop Highlight an object. Position the mouse pointer inside the highlighted area. Hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse to a new location. Then let up on the left mouse button. This moves the object to the new location. Two examples are, dragging an icon on the desktop to another location on the screen and moving items such as cards in Solitaire. Right-click Press the right mouse button once and a shortcut menu appears with commands that relate to where the mouse pointer is positioned. One example is, if you right-click in an area that contains text in Microsoft Word, the shortcut menu will most likely contain formatting options for text including cut, copy and paste. Mouse Pointer Shapes The mouse pointer will not always appear as an arrow. It will change its shape when it is moved into certain areas or certain processes are being performed by the computer in the background. Below are a few examples including the arrow. Most Common Shape Wait, PC processing Beam or Typing Cursor Whenever the mouse pointer is moved to an area designed to allow typing 8
Minimize, Resize/Maximize, Close Buttons Maximize Minimize Close Minimize Resize Close These buttons are located in the upper right corner of every program or file on the title bar. The minimize button allows you to keep your program or file running on your computer but closes the application so that you can see your desktop to open up another file. Then you can return to the former application later by clicking on it s windows application button on the taskbar. The resize /maximize button is located in the middle of the three buttons. When the button has the appearance of two boxes on the button, your file or program is opened up all the way. (Full Page.) When you click on the resize button, your file or program becomes smaller or resize and does not cover the entire desktop. Then the resize button changes appearance and shows only one square. Then it is the maximize button. When you click on Maximize, the page returns to full size. X means close. When you click on the X on the title bar it will close the entire program or file application. 9
Drag and Drop To drag and drop a file, click on the resize button on the title bar. When the screen is resized (above) the resize button is now the maximize button. (See circled button on the title bar.) Point your mouse arrow to the title bar(not on the buttons), press your finger down on the left click button of your mouse and start to wand your mouse from left to right to move the file. 10
Quick launch toolbar Your quick launch toolbar lets you keep your most used icons handy. Clicking on the drop down tab on the right upper corner of the toolbar allows you to customize the toolbar. You can move your toolbar below the ribbon or keep it above the ribbon. Or you can minimize it. 11
The Ribbon The ribbon brings the most important commands to the forefront. There are three basic components to the ribbon. 1. Tabs- (Home, Insert, Page Layout, References, Mailings, Review, View) 2. Groups- (As shown below) Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, Editing 3. Commands- (As Shown Below) Bold, Italicize, Underline, Copy, Paste, Alignment, etc. Tabs Groups Commands 12
Setting Margins Page and Orientation Above, in the Microsoft Word program, go to Page Layout tab, and in page setup group, click on the drop down box under margins to see margin settings. Page Orientation in Page Layout tab Paper Size in Page Layout 13
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Saving a File You want to save your files because they are important to you. You also want to save your files early on in their creation. After starting your document, click on the File menu to the left of the Home tab on the ribbon and then click on Save As (Left). Save As Dialogue Box To name your file, highlight whatever is already in the default file name textbox, and type the name of your file over it. Click on the SAVE BUTTON at the bottom right. File is saved. On the Navigation Bar on the left side of the dialogue box, choose the directory or place on the computer where you want your document saved. (Above, under the Organize tab. Then name your file. Under Save as type you can click on the drop down arrow to the right of file type to specify. The above file is being saved as a PowerPoint presentation because that is the name of the program this document we are using to create this handout. 17
Printing a File To print a file, click on the File menu on the left hand side of the ribbon and then click on Print. The Print page comes up, with categories Print, Printer, and Settings. Print lets you choose number of copies, and Printer lets you designate the printer you wish to use. Settings lets you choose whether to print all pages or one, single sided or double sided pages, and collation. If you want more options such as stapling, click on the caption that says Printer Properties (See above right under Printer category. ) A Print Preview is located to the right of print choices. If you click on Printer Properties dialogue box below appears When you are finished with this dialogue box, click ok button and it closes. You will return to the original print page above. Click on the print tab under Print category and your document prints. 18
My Computer USB drive indicator Click on the Computer or My Computer icon on your desktop to see different drives and options. The C drive is the hard disk or drive and contains your computer s operating system The USB memory drive will only appear if plugged into a USB port because it is a portable storage unit. DVD RW drive is for CD s and writing files to a DVD or CD. On this particular picture under Network Location we see a partition for files created in an office work setting to store on a network server to save space. You would not see this on your home computer. When you save files and want to pull them up, specify where the file is stored, and then double click on the icon or list to go to that storage medium to pull your files up. In this computer class, we save to the portable USB storage disk, so we would click on the picture of a USB storage drive. This would be located under devices with removable storage, and sometimes would be named the brand of the USB key. 19
Hard Drive or C: Drive In computers, active storage drives are automatically assigned a drive letter, beginning with the letter A. The DOS operating system followed the drive letter with a colon, as in A:. Prior to flash memory devices, computers incorporated floppy disk drives for portable storage, so the A and B drive letters were preserved by the system to be assigned to these devices. This left C as the first letter available for the hard disk. So it is that the hard disk became known as the C: drive. In days past hard disks were small enough that they were not divided into partitions, so a single drive letter was all that was required. The operating system was always installed on the C: drive and virtually all instructions for software and device drivers also referred to the C: drive. Today it s a different story. Today s hard disks are often several hundred gigabytes, or even as much as a terabyte and growing. Generally, computer users find that dividing large disks into several partitions or sections is handy for organization. In some cases it is even required by the computer s BIOS and/or operating system. With each additional partition created on the drive, the system assigns a new, sequential drive letter that it handles as a separate storage device. Thus, a C: drive today might only refer to a very small portion of a much larger disk that houses several additional drive letters. 20
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