The Quick & Dirty guide to Word 2007
By Chris Dillon 15/09/09. Version 2.2. Latest version at: www.ucl.ac.uk/is/fiso/ah/courses
1. Interface Word 2007 has a radically different interface from previous versions, such as Word 2003. For example, top left you will see a large, round icon, the Microsoft Office button, with a Windows logo on it. Where the menus used to be, you will find the ribbon, which is divided into tabs such as Home, Insert etc. These tabs in turn are divided into groups. To display more options, click the Dialog box launcher. This is a small icon at the bottom right of these tabs. 2. File format Currently many people are unable to read Word 2007 documents created in the default .docx file format. The best thing to do is to set Word 2007 to create documents in the Word 2003 .doc format. You can do this by clicking the Microsoft Office button and Word Options. Then select Save in the column on the left and Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc) in the Save files in this format drop-down box in the panel on the right. 3. Basic commands Click the Microsoft Office button for basic commands such as New [document] (Ctrl-N), Open (Ctrl-O), Save (Ctrl-S), Print (Ctrl-P) and Close (Ctrl-W). Save As (F12) is used for e.g. creating new versions of documents, saving a document in another format (including the old Word 97-1003 format) or creating a template (Microsoft Office button | New to display the templates available to you). The Word Options button is found at the bottom of the dialog box which appears when you click the Micsoft Office button and gives you access to many of Word’s settings. Note that most Word 2003 keyboard shortcuts, e.g. Ctrl-S, still work in Word 2007. Word 2007 has a good collection of its own shortcuts. One way of accessing them is to press Alt, wait a moment and then press the letters that appear on the keyboard. To the top left of the ribbon, there is the Quick Access toolbar with commonly used commands such as the Save (Ctrl-S) and Redo (Ctrl-Z). To add a command you use frequently to this toolbar, right-click on the command’s button and select Add to Quick Access Toolbar. (There is also an option to customise the toolbar.)
Cut (Ctrl-X), Copy (Ctrl-C) and Paste (Ctrl-P)
Buttons for these functions are to be found on the Clipboard tab on the left of the ribbon. After you have pasted something, a smart tag will appear. Click on this to specify how the pasted text etc. should be formatted. To see which pieces of text etc. are on the clipboard, click the dialog box launcher on the Clipboard tab.
Find (Ctrl-F) and Replace
To find or replace text, click the Find button in the Editing group on the Home tab. 4. Views To change the document view, click a button in the Document Views group on the View tab. There is, for example, a useful view which compares two open documents side by side.
Print Preview
To see what a document looks like before you print it, click the Microsoft Office button, Print and then Print Preview.
5.
Fonts
Formatting
The default font is Calibri, 11pt. See the Font group on the Home tab for common formatting options, such as bold. The Font dialog box launcher has two tabs – Font for options such as Shadow, and Character Spacing which includes kerning (adjusting the space between characters) etc. To change Word’s default font, set the font and point size on the Font tab and click Default (bottom left) and then Yes. To clear font-formatting from a selection, click the Clear Formatting button in the Font group (it has AB and a rubber on it) or press Ctrl-Spacebar. If you want to be sure that those receiving your document will see your fonts as you intend, embed the fonts in your document by clicking the Microsoft Office button and then Save in the column on the left. Select Embed fonts in the file on the right.
Paragraph formatting
The Paragraph group on the Home tab includes the Show/Hide button for (non-printing) formatting marks. It is recommended that you work with this switched on, as it is helpful if something goes wrong with your formatting. Other useful options are: Bulleted and numbered lists (Use the drop-down box for more options. If numbering goes wrong, select the list, right-click and use Continue Numbering or Set Numbering Value.) Indents (For more options e.g. hanging and first line indents, see Special when you click the Paragraph dialog box launcher.) Alignment Line-spacing (The drop-down box includes most options inc. space before and after paragraphs.) Borders (Includes horizontal lines. More options are available from the bottom option, Borders and Shading, in the drop-down list.) Shading You do not need to highlight the paragraph for these to work, just put your cursor somewhere in the paragraph and click the button or press the keyboard shortcut. As usual, there are more options in the Paragraph dialog box launcher. To copy formatting from one selection to another, click the Format Painter button (which looks like a paintbrush) in the Clipboard group. If you double-click the button instead, you can apply the formatting to other selections until you click it again. To insert a line break (when you want to end the line, but do not want a new paragraph possibly with space before it), press Shift-Enter.
Margins
Click the Margins button in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab. Either select an option from the list or click Custom Margins. If you are using sections and the margins only apply to the current section, you need to set Apply to to This section.
Paper size
Click the Size button in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab and select the size from the list.
Columns
If part of your document is in more than one column, first insert section breaks where necessary (see section 6 above). With the cursor in the multi-column section to be, click Columns in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab and select the option you want. If you want to force a break in a column, click Breaks in the Page Setup group and then Column.
Case
To change the case of a selection, click the Change Case button (which has Aa on it) in the Font group.
Highlights
To apply a highlight behind text, click the down-arrow next to the Highlight button (which has ab and a pencil on it) and select a colour. 6. Special characters To insert special characters (anything you can't see on your keyboard), click the Symbol button in the Symbols group on the Insert tab, and then More Symbols if you don't see the character you require. Select the font that contains the character in the Fonts drop-down box, locate it and click Insert. There are keyboard shortcuts for accent. Before typing the letter use: Ctrl and ' for an acute accent e.g. é Ctrl and ~ for a tilde e.g. ñ Ctrl and ` for a grave accent e.g. è Ctrl and & followed by o for œ Ctrl and ^ for a circumflex e.g. ê Ctrl-@ followed by a for å Ctrl and , followed by c, for ç Ctrl and / followed by o for ø Ctrl and : for an umlaut/diaeresis e.g. ä Ctrl and & followed by a for æ Ctrl and & followed by s for ß 7. Styles These are combinations of formatting. There are two kinds: character (options from the Font dialog box) and paragraph (which consist of character styles and paragraph formatting). Word comes with some Quick Styles which are available in the Styles group on the Home tab. Use the arrows on the right of the group to access more built-in styles, or click Apply Styles or click the launcher button at the bottom of the Styles group to use the Styles task pane. To change a style, right-click on it and click Modify. To create a new style, format some text with the formatting you want in the style and select the text. Right-click and select Save Selection as a New Quick Style. It is worth switching off Keep track of formatting. That automatically generates a new style every time you make a minor change to an existing style and you almost certainly don’t want that! You can find it here: Office Button | Word Options | Advanced | Keep track of formatting.
Inserting a table of contents
One of the major advantages of using styles for headings in a Word document is that one may insert an automatic table of contents! To insert a table of contents, go to the Table of Contents group on the References tab and click Table of Contents. If the table of contents gets out of date, right-click on it and select Update field. 8. Tables Insert a table by going to Table on the Insert tab and click Insert Table. If you are using the table for lay-out etc. and don’t want to see the lines in it, click the area slightly to the top right of the table to select it and then click the drop-down arrow on the right of the Borders button on the ribbon and then No Border. You can insert rows and columns, and merge cells by right-clicking in the table. 9. Headers, footers and page numbers To edit the document’s header or footer or insert page numbers, use the buttons on the Header & Footer group on the Insert tab. 10. Sections You may need to use sections: if the document has parts in both portrait and landscape orientations (change this if necessary on the Page Layout tab) if some pages need different margin settings
if some pages include columns To insert a page break, click Breaks in the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab. Select the type of break required (there’s a good description of the alternatives). The This point forward option in page layout features automatically inserts a section break. Section breaks appear if you have formatting marks (see 5 above) switched on and may be deleted like any printing character. 11. Pictures and ClipArt To insert a picture, click Picture on the Insert tab. To insert ClipArt (this is a useful database of free drawings), click ClipArt on the Insert tab. 12. Spelling and grammar To do a spell-check, click on the Review tab and then click Spelling & Grammar on the left of the Proofing group, or press F7. If you have sentences in another language, highlight them, click Set Language and select the language in the Proofing group. For settings, click the Microsoft Office button, Word Options and then the Proofing tab. 13. Word count To count the number of words, click Word Count in the Proofing group on the Review tab. 14. Track changes To switch on Track Changes which displays changes to a document in different colours according to who made them, go to the Tracking group on the Review tab. To hide the changes when printing, select Final in the drop-down box on the Tracking group. 15. Password protection If you want to password-protect your document, click the Microsoft Office button and select Save As. Click Tools, bottom left and then General Options. 16. Definition of a word Hold down your Alt key and click a Word to get its dictionary definition including pronunciation. 17. Inserting an index First you need to switch on Hidden text by clicking the Microsoft office button and going to Display on the right. Entries in the text to be placed in the index need to be marked by highlighting them and pressing Alt-Shift-X. There is a choice whether one wants to mark just that one occurrence of the term or all of them in the document. To insert the index, go to the end of the document and select Insert index in the Index group on the References tab. 18. Settings
Switching off irritating AutoCorrect defaults
Click the Microsoft Office button and click Word Options. Choose Proofing in the left column and click AutoCorrect Options in the pane on the right. Go through the AutoCorrect and AutoFormat As You Type tabs and check Word is set up as you would like it to be.
Units of measurement
By default Word works in centimetres. Click the Microsoft Office button, Word Options and then Advanced (in the column on the left). Scroll down to the Display section in the right column and select the unit you want e.g. Inches in the Show measurements in units of box. 19. Help To get help, click the question mark icon on the far right of the ribbon. Click the Search button if you want to limit where Word searches for help.