Microsoft Word
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Load Microsoft Word. To do this, while in Windows 95, locate the following icon from the start-programs menu:  . Next, click on this icon and Microsoft Word will load. 

Entering Text
You will get a blank white screen with a blinking cursor as well as a menu on the top of your screen. The white area on the screen is where you type in your text. Go ahead now and type in a few words. You'll see them appear. That is your text. 

Editing, Spell Checking, or Revising Text
To edit your text, do the following: 
First, type in a working sample: "the fox jumped over the lazi dog."   Notice that the word lazi is misspelled.  Underneath the misspelled word appears a red squiggle, which indicates that this word is misspelled. Also notice, that the "t" in the word "the" was automatically capitalized by Microsoft Word. There are several ways to correct misspellings in your text. 

    a.  Individual Words  To correct the word "lazi", move the cursor after the letter "i" in that word by pushing the arrow keys on your keyboard. Each time you press that key, the cursor moves one space in the direction indicated. Now, press the backspace key on your keyboard, which is located usually above the enter or return key on your keyboard. The "i" is gone. Now type in "y". You have corrected the misspelled word. 

    b. Individual Words  Another way to correct misspelled words is by doing the following:   Move your cursor over the misspelled word ("lazi") and click the right mouse button. You'll get a screen with a list of alternate spellings. Click on the correct spelling ("lazy") with the left mouse button. The misspelled word "lazi" will now change to the word "lazy". The other choices that were present were alternate matches that most resemble the word misspelled word. 

    c.  Spell Check Entire Document  Click on the ABC icon on the Toolbar (or click on Tools from the menu bar, and then choose Spelling) and then follow the directions provided.  A Spelling dialog box appears showing the first word identified as misspelled in the document.  After you correct that word, the program moves on to the next misspelled word.  (Windows 97 also includes a grammer check that points out problems of syntax, verb agreement, and other important components of correct English usage.

Changing the appearance of words is also easy in Microsoft Word 97. 

To do this, we will first highlight the entire line we want to change by depressing the left mouse button and dragging it across the text we want to change.  Now we can manipulate the appearance of the text. Here are some of the things that can be changed:  italicize, bold, center, right or left justify, underline, change the size of the type, change font style. 

Highlighting
As a working example, use the sentence above "The fox jumped over the lazy dog."
Place your mouse after the letter "g" in the word dog. Click on the left button of your mouse and don't let go of the mouse button. Now, while still holding down on the mouse's button, drag the mouse to the left until you reach and pass the "T" in the word "The". You will notice that the words will turn black. 

Bolding

Now, release the mouse button and move the mouse pointer over the "B" (Bold)button on the menu at the top of the screen . The sentence will look as follows now: 

To get rid of the black highlight, click on any white portion of the screen, other than where the text is located. The sentence is now boldface and will look as follows: 

The fox jumped over the lazy dog

Italicizing and Underlining

Follow the same procedures as with bolding.  Highlight the section of text that you want to italicize or underline and then click on the I button or U button next to the Bold button. You can apply all three functions or any combination to your highlighted text.  To reverse the process just click on the appropriate button and this will remove the bold, italicized or underlined text.  To rid your text of the highlight, click on any non-text white portion of the screen. 

Centering Text
To center a line of text, word or title, highlight the text and then click on the  button at the top of the screen. (An entire paragraph can be centered by just clicking on this button and not highlighting the text.) . 

Right Justifying and Left Justifying Text
To line up all text along the right or left margin is called right or left justifying.  Academic papers, books, and articles are commonly left-justified.  Newspaper articles are usually left and right justified.  Academic papers are normally left justified with uneven right borders. 
To right justify text, highlight the affected portion and click on the  button.  To return the line to the left, click on the  button. 

Double Spacing

Academic papers are normally double spaced.  Instructors will specifiy if some other spacing between lines is required.  To double space text in a paper, click on the word "Format" at the top of your screen. When the menu appears, scroll down and click on the word "paragraph." When the "Line Spacing" menu appears as below, click on the down arrow after the word "Single". You will get a list of spacing options. Click on and highlight "Double" to select double spacing. Click on "OK" from the menu and you will return to your text, and it will be double spaced (look at picture below). 


 

Saving Text

To save text on your hard drive or floppy disk, click on the File menu and scroll down to the word "Save" and click on it. Do the following to save your document, as shown in the picture below. 

Be certain to save your text about every 15 minutes when working on a longer document since power failures or network glitches can eliminate those wonderful papers that you have been working on for hours.  Once you begin a document, of course, you can save it and return later to continue working on it.  When you save your document a second time you can use the "Save As" command so that you don't have to rename it each time. 

Printing

To print your document (after completing, revising, editing, spell checking, formating),
click on "File" at the top of the screen. Scroll down and click on the word "Print.". 
Do as the following picture explains (You need a printer attached to your computer to do the following!): 


 

Opening A File

To open a file you have saved on disk or your computer's hard drive, click on File, then on Open in the pop-up menu.  Next you have to indicate where your file is located by clicking on your C drive or A drive for floppy disks.  When you have completed this, click on the needed file.
 
 

Advanced Functions of Word 97

Cutting and Pasting

We can cut a portion of our text from a paragraph or sentence and then paste that portion that we cut into another paragraph or document. We do this as follows: 

  1. Type in your text- for example, type in "The computer industry has revolutionized the world and nation. As fast it came it keeps on revolutionizing itself. The limits of the computer industry are limitless as the industry continually pushes itself forward to a better technological state as we all enter the next century. This revolution knows no boundaries." 
  2. Now indent your paragraph before the word "The" in the first sentence. 
  3. We will now cut the last sentence from our paragraph and place it as the third sentence in the paragraph instead of the fourth sentence. We'll do this in our case since this sentence would sound better as the third sentence rather than the fourth sentence. First, move your cursor before the word "This" in the last sentence and highlight the last sentence. The last sentence looks as follows- 
  1. Now go to the Edit menu at the top of your screen and click on "Copy". This will place the highlighted portion of your text into memory so it will be saved and available to paste later. 
  1. Now go to the edit menu again and click on the word "Cut" to delete the sentence. 

Your paragraph will now look as follows: 

6. Now move your cursor to the position you want to paste the text at- that is before the letter "T" in the word "The" in the third sentence. 

Now press paste from the edit menu and your paragraph will look as follows: 

7. You have just pasted your text in the correct position that it belongs. If you have no space between the last word of the second sentence "itself." and the word "This", then push the space bar after the period proceding the word "itself". If there is no space between the word "boundaries." and the word "The" of the last sentence than push the space bar proceeding the word "boundaries.". 

We will now learn a few useful tools of Microsoft Word. Right now your cursor should be in the middle of the page. Say we wanted to move to the first letter on that line, then you should press the "Home" key on the right side of your keyboard. If you want to move to the last letter on the line, then push the "End" key. If you had a multi-paged document and wanted to jump from one page to another, you would use the "Page up" or "Page down" buttons. 

To access the menu above the screen- the menu with the words "File, Edit, View, etc.…" you can either use your mouse as you've been doing, or another way is to press the "Alt" key to the right or left of your space bar and press the underlined letter of the portion of the menu that you wish to access. For example, to access the File menu, notice how the letter "F" is underlined on the menu as show below: 

Now press Alt and then the letter "F" on your keyboard. The menu will then appear. 

Another tool to use before printing is called "Print Preview". Go to the File menu and click on the word "Print Preview" 

or else you can click on the Print Preview button at the top of your screen which looks as follows: 

You will then get the following screen: 

To enlarge your text, click on any white portion of the screen. You'll get the following screen: 

To close the preview and return to editing, click on the close button. To return to the previous overview of the page, click again on any white portion of the screen. 

Once you have returned to the editing screen, save your document by going to file and choosing save. Notice how you didn't have to retype the file name. If you wanted to rename your file, then you can choose "Save As" which will allow you to rename the file. 

After saving your document, we will now learn how to close the document without exiting Microsoft Word. Go to File and click on Close. 

Page Breaks 

 We will now learn how to insert page breaks and page numbers. A page break automatically starts you off on a new page, even if you're in the middle of a page of text. To do this, place the cursor on a new line. This line should be proceeding the last line of the page, so that all the text typed on the line that you're cursor is located on will be on the new page. Then go to the "Insert" menu and choose "Break" 

Then choose "Page Break", which is normally already chosen for you. Then press "OK" 

You will then notice the following horizontal line appear on your screen. 

You have inserted a page break. To delete the page break, you can bring the cursor after the page break line and press backspace. 

Page Numbers

To insert page numbers, go to the "Insert" menu and choose "Page Numbers" 

Then you'll get the following screen: 

Choose the options you want: 

Press "OK" and the page numbers will be inserted. To view the page numbers and the effect of any page breaks, you need to use print preview. 

Getting Help

We have now learned a large portion of Microsoft Word. If you need any additional help, go to the "Help" menu 

Click on "Microsoft Word Help Topics". From the menu that will then appear, choose "Contents" and double click on any one of the help books to learn more about one of those topics, just like what you did for QuickTutor 

You can also choose "Find" and type in any keywords that you are interested in and the computer will give you a list of matching topics. You then must choose one of those topics and you will be given a help screen with the information you requested. 

Another new and helpful feature of Microsoft Word is "Answer Wizard". Here, you can type in the question you are interested in and the computer will give you the topics that match your question and thereby your answer. 

You should use any of these help forms for any other information that you might need further down the line during your word-processing. 

You can now exit Microsoft Word using the File-Exit method. 

You will then return to the Microsoft Windows 95 Main screen/desktop. 

 
 
© Copyright 1999 -- Jeffrey M. Johnson
Last Updated 10/7/99