| Scan for Virus | Control Box | Opening Word | Helpful Tools |
Typing on a Blank Document
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The Power of Selecting Text
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Using Bars | All Tool bars |
| Spacing Text | Inserting options |
Checking options
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Printing and saving
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File
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Edit
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View
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Insert
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Format
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Tools
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Table
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Window
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Practice using your mouse with 30 click Mousercise.
Opening Microsoft Word
Click the start button with the mouse. A pull down menu will appear, revealing options, one of which is Programs. Select Programs then click on the Microsoft Word icon to launch Microsoft Word. On our computers we set up a Word icon on the desktop; double click it.
Tool Tip

When the mouse cursor is placed on an icon or any kind of button a Tool Tip will pop up announcing the function of the icon or button. The Tool Tip can be very useful when trying to acquaint yourself with the Microsoft Word program.
Office Assistant
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The Office Assistant is a cartoon character who answers your questions and provides guidance though the Microsoft Word program. You can access the Office Assistant by pressing the "?" button at the far right of the Standard Tool Bar.
What is this?
When the Tool Tip and the Office Assistant cannot answer a question about a feature you encountered just click the right button on the mouse. Pressing the "What is this ?" button will tell you what the feature does. All dialog boxes will come with a "What is this?" option in the upper right hand corner represented by a question mark. When you click the question mark your courser has a question mark attached to it and when you click on a word or variable option it will display the explanation.
Typing on a Blank Document
Make sure that the font size is acceptable. Font size, style, and type can be found on the Standard Tool bar or the Format pull down menu. You can enter text by simply typing on the keyboard.
Insertion point
An insertion point is a line that appears when the cursor is placed over text. The insertion point can allow you to add or remove text. An insertion point can easily be inserted by placing the cursor over some text and clicking where you want the insertion point to appear.
Practice your typing skills (If you are accessing this page from home you will need an e-mail account to sign up for EasyType).
EasyType - http://www.easytype.com/
Selecting Text - With the mouse, place the insertion point in front of the portion of text that you wish to select. When you have the insertion point where you want it, click the left button on the mouse, hold, and drag the insertion point to where you want the selected text to end. You can also select text by using some simple shortcuts:
You can also select whole lines of text by clicking to the left of the line of text, and while holding down the shift key you can continue to select more lines of text. You can deselect by clicking on an empty space anywhere on the page.
With the text highlighted you can manipulate text in many different ways.
The new key that is pressed will immediately replace the highlighted text. For instance if you highlighted an entire paragraph and then pressed the "A" you will replace the highlighted text with an "A". Other changes to text can also be made by highlighting, but be careful not to delete all your text. If you do delete some text on accident you can use the undo command to bring your text back. With the text highlighted you can go to the Formatting Tool Bar and change font size, style, color, alignment, and any other options you have in the Formatting Tool Bar.
Moving text - With the selected text highlighted click the left button (on the mouse), hold, and drag the text to the desired location. The text will appear now in the space where you let go of the left button.
Cutting text - With the selected text highlighted use the shortcut key stroke by holding the control key and pressing the "X" key. You can also cut text by highlighting it then going up to the Edit menu in the Menu Bar and clicking on cut. Cutting the text will remove the text and place it on a clip board where it will stay until you paste it.
Pasting text - Once the text is cut or copied and you can use the paste command to place it where desired. The shortcut key stroke to paste can be done by holding the control key and pressing the "V" key. You can also cut text by highlighting it then going up to the Edit menu in the Menu Bar and clicking on paste. Wherever the insertion point is on the document is where your text or image will appear.
Copying text - With the text highlighted use the shortcut key stroke by holding the control key and pressing the "C" key. You can also cut text by highlighting it then going up to the Edit menu in the Menu Bar and clicking on copy. Copying text will not remove the highlighted text but it will place a copy of the text on a clip board where it will stay until you paste it.
Practice your skills
Mousercise - http://www.ckls.org/~crippel/computerlab/tutorials/mouse/page31.html
One useful skill is copying text from one place and pasting it in another place.
Using Bars
The Title Bar reveals the documents name (Document 1). The title bar is also where you can find the Word control box.
Click on the Menu Bar to find out what each option does.
Pass cursor over each button in the Standard Tool Bar to find out what it does.
Pass cursor over each button in the Formatting Tool Bar to find out what it does.
All Tool bars - On the Microsoft Word screen only three tool bars appear. Under the View pull-down menu, located on the Menu Bar, click on the word Tool Bar to reveal a long list of tool bars. For our purposes only the Standard and Formatting tool bars should be checked, but if you desire to use the other tool bars you may do so by checking the other tool bars, and new bars will appear on the Word screen.
Located on the Menu Bar is the Format pull down menu. Press the Format menu and select the paragraph button. When you select paragraph a paragraph dialog box will appear revealing the spacing options. Normally the spacing will be set at single, but other options are available.

Single line spacing - Single line spacing allows enough room for the largest font while giving a little extra.
1.5 line spacing - 1.5 line spacing allows enough room for the largest font and half that as extra space.
Double line spacing - Double line spacing allows enough room for the largest font and another empty line.
At least line spacing - At least line spacing allows the minimum amount of space that can accommodate larger font size or graphic that would not normally fit in the space.
Exactly line spacing - Exactly line spacing makes all lines evenly spaced.
Multiple line spacing - allows space size to be increased or decreased by percentage.
At line spacing - At line spacing gives the amount of spacing that is selected. The arrows going up and down will allow you to change the spacing.
The insert options are located under the Insert pull down menu and include page break, page numbers, time and date, footnote, and caption and picture. You can insert any one of these options into your document by selecting one of them. When any of these options are selected (except picture) a dialog box will appear giving specific settings for these options. See the Insert page for more information.
Inserting a picture or drawing
Using the Picture tool bar you can insert a picture by clicking the Insert Picture button. You can also manipulate pictures by using the other picture commands on the picture tool bar. Pass over the buttons on the picture tool bar to reveal the tool tip (a box that displays what the button does).

From left to right
Insert Picture - Open your image file when the dialog box appears.
Image Control - Image control allows you to change your picture to Grayscale, Black and
White, Watermark, and Automatic (normal).
More Contrast - By adding contrast you create a greater difference between colors.
Less Contrast - Less Contrast will blur the image by blending shading.
More Brightness - Brightens the image.
Less Brightness - Darkens the image.
Crop - Cropping the image allows you to pick out a portion of the image.
Line Style - Line style places a border around the image of varying thickness'.
Text Wrapping - Text Wrapping will allow you to place text around the image.
Format Picture - Will open a dialog box with options to change size, layout, picture, text box, and web (with many of the same options as the tool bar).
Set Transparent Color - Makes one of the colors in the image transparent.
Reset Picture - Will return your image to its original form.
| Spell & Grammar check - Spell & Grammar check are options found under the Tools pull down menu. When selected, a Spell & Grammar check dialog box will appear. Also a right click on the misspelled word will produce a correct spelling. To change spelling, click change, and if there is no change click ignore. | ![]() |
| Thesaurus - By highlighting a word you can run it through a thesaurus by first selecting Tools and then selecting language. The thesaurus will appear after the arrow that comes after the language command. The thesaurus will give the meaning and a list of synonyms in the thesaurus dialog box. To choose a synonym select replace. | ![]() |
| Viewing statistics - Also found underneath the tools menu is the word count option. The word count command will count the number of lines, words, paragraphs, and pages. | ![]() |
Printing and saving
Print preview - Located in the File menu is the Print Preview option. Click here for more information about Print Preview.
| Printing - You can print by choosing print option under the File menu or by simply pressing the print icon located on the Standard Tool Bar. When print is selected a print dialog box will appear revealing print options. Options to print include page range (option to choose all or selected pages), and number of copies. When options are selected simply print by pressing OK. | ![]() |
| Save as - When choosing Save as you must specify where you wish to save the file (hard drive or floppy drive) depending on where you are looking. When saving a document at the library or another public word processing station you should always save on a floppy disk. After choosing where you want to save your document you must name your document, then press Save. The File name will always have a three letter extension specifying what kind of file it is. In the Save as type box you can choose what type of file you wish to save as, but for our purposes you will only need to save as Word Document (*.doc). After the first time you save a document you needn't use the save as command. If you are saving a file to a floppy disk and you are at one of the library's computers you can simply press the save button located on the Standard Tool Bar. The computer will recognize that your document has been saved before and it will simply save over the original. |
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Word Quiz