MS Word 2000
MS Word is a powerful but overly complicated word processor; this serves only as an
introduction for very simple and fundamental tasks.
Get into MS Word by clicking on Start, then Programs, look for the MS Word entry and
click on it. You will be shown an electronic page with several "menu bars" across the top and a
status bar across the bottom. You can move around the document at will by clicking on the up
and down arrows on the scroll bar on the right hand side of your document. You may also "click
and drag" the square symbol in the scroll bar. As a last resort you can maneuver around your
document by pressing the cursor control (or "arrow") keys at the right bottom of the keyboard.
Pressing Home will move the cursor to the beginning of a particular line, pressing End will
move you to the end of that line.
Most of the things you can do in MS Word are available through the menus at the top of the
screen. The menu items tend to be self-explanatory after some trial and error on your part.
There are three commonly used menus available to you at the top of the screen. The first is
both the simplest and the most powerful. It consists of the items File, Edit, View and so on.
File. The sub-menu entries under the File item allow you to do several kinds of operations
including transferring files (documents) between your disks/directories and MS Word. Open lets
you bring a document from your disk into MS Word, while Save and Save As allow you to save
documents into files on your disk.
The Open and Save As dialog boxes allow you to specify which disk or directory your file is to
come from or be written to, and to specify the kinds of files. For instance the Open dialog box
assumes that you are wanting to open a MS Word document (they have type tag .doc). You will
only be shown documents of this type. You can over ride that feature by clicking on the down
arrow at the right of the Files Of Type Box; a little menu drops down, if you select All Files
(*.*), then all files of all types will be shown to you. Other items let you print your document and
leave MS Word to get back to Windows. Page Setup allows you to set margins and paper
orientation.
All of these processes are controlled by a dialog box. A dialog box asks you for the specifics of
what exactly you want to do. For instance the dialog box that you get under Open allows you to
specify what disk to look at and what document or file you wish to bring into MS Word.
Similarly, the dialog box under Print allows you to specify the number of copies, etc.
Edit allows you to make changes to your document, such as copying or moving blocks of text
around, and searching for and replacing particular pieces of text.
View lets you add headers and footers, set the size of what you see, select which toolbars you
wish to use.
Insert lets you put in page numbers and to insert images (both your own or from a library of
images called clip art), objects, data from other applications..
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Format lets you change case, fonts, insert bullets, etc
Tools lets you invoke the speller, grammar checker and thesaurus.
Adjustments to Your Document.
Below are the commands to do a variety of things to your document, primarily having to do
with margins, headers, page numbers, appearance of the text in terms of fonts, size, bold face,
etc. An important thing to remember is that MS Word has default values for all of these things
(such as 1" margins, no page numbers, etc). You may over ride these. You may choose if the
change is to affect the whole document, just from this pijt forward, etc.t.
Margins, Tabs, Page Numbers and Headers can be set or changed under the File, View, Insert
and Format menu items.
Marking Blocks. Marking a block means defining a part of your document that you want to do
something to, such as move, copy, delete, change the style (boldface, underline, italic, double
space, etc) or font. To mark a block put the cursor at the point where you want the block to start,
holding down the left mouse button, and "dragging" to the end of the piece of text you want to
mark, and releasing the mouse button. You will see the marked block in reverse. Once you have
marked a block you may do a variety of things to it. Some of them are shown below: The toolbar
across the top contains three "buttons" labeled B, I and U. They invoke Boldfacing, Italics and
Underlining for the block you've marked.
Moving & Copying Blocks. After having marked the block, as above, find Cut or Copy under
Edit, then move the cursor to where you wish to move this block to, find Paste under Edit and
the block will be "pasted" in to that spot.
Fonts. Under Format you choose the font for your whole document, as well as the type size..
Graphics Word will allow you to splice in clip art or other graphics files, go to Insert, then to
Picture.
Annoying Things. MS Word can be very annoying, mostly when it tries to be too helpful. You
can defeat some of these maddening features by going to Options under Tools. You can disable
the checking of grammar and spelling while you type; follow instructions to disable these very
annoying features. Under View you can disable the equally annoying and cluttering ruler bars.
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