SECTION TWO

Bold text in Microsoft Word

To make any part of your text bold in Microsoft Word, you have to highlight the text. So using one of the highlight techniques you learnt in a previous section, highlight the first line of the report. In other words, highlight the words "Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics". Your page should like this one:

Incidentally, if your lines have too much space between them, highlight the lines from January down to Speeding. Click the highlighted text with your right mouse button. From the menu that appears, select Paragraph with your left mouse button. From the dialogue box, select the item that says "Don't add space between paragraphs of the same style":

The space between the lines should then be reduced.

We're now going to make bold the text we highlighted. There are two very easy ways to make your highlighted text bold. The first is by clicking the "B" icon on the Home tab at the top of Word. It looks like this:

With your text highlighted, click the "B" icon. Your text will turn bold. You might not be able to tell because your text will still be highlighted. Click anywhere on your blank page to get rid of the highlight.

The "B" icon will change to this:

That indicates that you have Bold text switched on. To turn off Bold text, highlight the text and then click the B icon with the left mouse button.

Use Keyboard

Another easy way to make your text bold in Microsoft Word is with the keyboard. To make text bold by using the keyboard, do the following

• Highlight the text you want to make bold
• Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard
• Keep the CTRL key held down
• Press the letter B on your keyboard
• To switch off the bold text, keep the CTRL key held down and press the B key again
  

The Shortcut Toolbar

A third way to make text bold is via the shortcut toolbar that appears every time you highlight something. It first appears faintly. Move your mouse over, however, and you'll see it more clearly:

Again, click the B to get bold text. Click the B again to undo the bold text.

When you have successfully changed the first line of the report to bold text, change the crimes themselves so that they are all bold. Change the Months of the year to bold text, too. When you're done, your document will look like this:

As you can see, there is a distinct difference between the bold text and the normal text. We'll now use italics and underlining.

In the next part, we'll take a look at Italics and Underlines.

CRIME STASTICS DOCUMENT

The Crime Statistics Document

In this section, you'll discover how to make text bold, underline text, and change it to italics. You'll also learn something about bullets, tabs, indents, margins, and the Page Setup.
So, when you're ready, launch Microsoft Word.

If you already have Word open, start a new blank document by clicking the round Office button in the top left of Word, for 2007 users. From the menu, click on New. When you see the dialogue box appear select Blank Document then the Create button at the bottom:

For 2010 users, click the File tab at the top of Word. From the menu on the left, click on New to see the following:

Select Blank Document from the list at the top. Then click the Create button in the bottom right.

When you create a new document this page is always called Document followed by a number (Document 1, Document 2, etc). Click the round Office button in the top left and save your new document under a different name. (Or click the File tab, if you have Word 2010.) You learnt how to do this in the previous section. Call it Crime Statistics.
When you have saved your new document under a different name, type in the following. Type it exactly as it is below. Don't try to format it just yet.

Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics

January February March
Murder 0 0 0
Rape 0 0 0
Arson 0 0 0
House Burglary 0 0 0
Shop Burglary 0 0 0
Other Burglary 0 0 1*
Drunk Driving 1 1 1
Speeding 1 1 1
*Does not include Mr Irate's alleged theft from his sweet shop
The crimes committed are:
The theft of a Delia Smith Cookery book from Councilman Todd's chauffer
The same person was caught drink driving three times in three months
Councilman Todd's chauffer was also speeding when he was drink-driving

As you can see, Constable Tucker's statistics are a bit messy and difficult to read. We'll tidy the report up during the course of this section. First, we'll make some of the text

GRAMMAR AND SPELLING CHECKING

Spelling and Grammar Checking

One thing you probably will have noticed is the spelling mistakes in the letter. You should have typed the letter exactly as it was, and left any spelling errors in. More than likely, the spelling mistakes are underlined in red in your document. Anything with a wiggly green line under it is a grammatical error, (or what Microsoft Word insists is a grammatical error).
The easiest way to correct spelling mistakes is to right click any word that has a red wavy underline. You'll then see a menu appear:

In the image above, we've clicked with the right-hand mouse button on the incorrectly spelt "counsil". The menu that appears shows three alternative words: counsel, council, and counsels. We meant council, of course. Click this option with your left mouse button to replace the misspelt word. The red wavy underline will disappear. (Incidentally, don't worry about the box that appears above the menu as we'll get to formatting options in a later section.)

Do the same with the other two misspellings in your letter, and then save your work.

Spelling and Grammar Options

To check more than one word at a time, you can bring up the Spelling and Grammar dialogue box. To see it, click on the Review tab at the top of Word. On the Review tab, locate the Proofing section. Then click Spelling & Grammar:

When you click on Spelling & Grammar, you'll see a dialogue box appear. This one:

This dialogue box allows you to do most of the things you can do by right-clicking a misspelt word. The Suggestions area lists alternatives to the word you're trying to correct. The suggestion for our fictional town of Evercrease is for two separate words, Ever and Crease. To stop Word highlighting our fictional town as an error, click the Add to Dictionary button on the right. (Or you can click the Ignore buttons.)

When you have corrected a word, the dialogue box will move on to the next one. In our case it will highlight the fictional postcode, insisting that it is a repeated word. Click Ignore Once and Word will have finished with its corrections. The dialogue box will then go away.

Setting Spelling and Grammar Rules

Sometimes, however, you want a little more control over what spelling and grammar Microsoft Word highlights. For that, there is a Proofing dialogue box.
In Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left. At the bottom of the menu you'll see a Word Options button:

In Word 2010, click the File tab again. Have a look for the Options item, near the bottom left:

Click the Word Options (or Options) button and you'll see another dialogue box appear. On the left, select the Proofing item. You'll then see the following rather complex list of things you can do:

The check marks in each box show what options are currently selected. Click a check mark to deselect that option. Click an empty box to select it. So if you don't want Word behaving like a grammar Nazi, uncheck the box that says Check grammar with spelling.

Microsoft Word AutoCorrect

One interesting option is AutoCorrect. Click the button at the top of the Proofing dialogue box that says AutoCorrect Options. You'll see this dialogue box:

On the AutoCorrect tab, you can see a lot of inbuilt options have been checked. So Word will, for example, automatically capitalize days of the weeks for you as soon as you press the space bar on your keyboard.
The area at the bottom, "Replace text as you type", has also been check. What this means is that if you were to type a colon followed by a left round bracket Word will change the two characters into a smiley face. If you don't want Word doing this, select that option from the list. Then click the Delete button.
However, you can use the Replace feature to your advantage. If, for example, you didn't want to keep typing your full name all the time, you can type say two characters into the Replace box. In the With box, type your name, as in the image below:

After you click the Add button, your text will be added to the list:

Click the OK buttons on the AutoCorrect dialogue box, and on the Word Options dialogue box and you'll be returned to Word. Now, whenever we type the initials "KC" and then press the space bar on the keyboard, Word will replace them with the name "Ken Carney".

And we'll leave the Library Complaint letter, as we're done. In the next section we'll create a new document so that you can learn some formatting.

ADDING AN ADRESS TO A LETTER

Adding an Address to a Letter

If you haven't already done so, open your Library Complaint letter. With the file open, do the following:

• Position your cursor so that it is flashing before the letter "D" of "Dear sir or Madam"
• Hit the Enter key on your keyboard about 5 or six times
• This will give you a bit of room to type the address. We'll get rid of any unnecessary space later.
• Your letter should now look something like this one
  

• Move your cursor right up to the top, to the first line
• Type in Mr Irate's address. It's this:

Mr Irate
12 High Street
Evercrease
EV1 EV1

When you have finished typing the address, it should look like this:

If you have too much space between the postcode and "Dear Sir or Madam" you can remove it by doing this:

• Position your cursor so that it is flashing before the letter "D" of "Dear sir or Madam"
• Hit your Backspace key a few times to get rid of any unwanted blank lines
• Your text will move up one line with every tap of the backspace key

We'll now highlight the address and move it the right. So, using one of the highlighting techniques you have learnt, highlight the address and only the address. When you have finished, it should look like this one:

Once we have highlighted the address we can align it to the right. To do that we use the alignment icons on the Home tab at the top of Microsoft Word. The alignment icons look like this:

The first alignment icon is Align Left; the second one is Centre Align; the third one is Align Right; and the fourth one is Justify.

With your address highlighted, click each of the align icons in turn, just to get a feel for how they work. Finally, click Align Right, the third icon. Your address should now look like this:

It doesn't look too neat and tidy, and we'll see how to straighten the left side of the address later, when we get on to document tabs. The lesson here, though, was all about highlighting. And, most importantly, that only highlighted text is affected by changes you make. All the other text remained exactly the way it was.

In the next part, we'll take a look at how Word deals with spelling and grammar errors.

OPENING WORD DOCUMENT

Opening Microsoft Word Documents

We'll shortly add an address to the top of our Library Complaint letter. Before we do that, we'll learn how to open a file. After all, you might have closed down Microsoft Word, or your computer might have crashed. The result being that you no longer have your library letter loaded into Word. So here's how to open a file you have saved, and want to work on again.

In Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left of Microsoft Word:

In Word 2010, you need to click on the File tab in the top left of Word:

If you see your file under the Recent Documents heading, you can simply click there to open it. However, if it's not on the list, click the Open item on the menu:

The Open dialogue box appears, and looks like the image below:

The Open dialogue box looks very similar to the Save As dialogue box. Notice, though, that the File name text box is blank. If you can't see your document in the Documents Library section, you can click where it says All Word Documents. You'll then see a list of file types that can be opened with Microsoft Word:

This is more or less the same list you saw with the Save As dialogue box, under Save as Type. So if you don't see your file displayed, remember to display this list.

But the File Name text box is empty because no file has been selected. A file is selected from the larger white area in the middle. Clicking on the file once with the left hand mouse button will select a file.
In the image above, the document we want is displayed. But if it's not there, you can use the area at the top to search other folders. Click the My Documents item to see another drop down list:

The list shows you all the folders you have in your My Documents folder (this gets shortened to just Documents in Windows 7). Select a folder to move inside of it.

You can see more areas on your computer by clicking the double arrows just to the left of My Documents, in the image above. You'll then see another list:

Again, clicking an item on the list takes you to that location. Have a play about with them, and watch how that dialogue box changes. To get back to where you where, you can either use the drop down lists above, or click the arrow buttons just to the left of the lists:

Clicking the arrows just below the word Open above will take you either back one folder, or forward one folder. If you get totally lost, just click the Cancel button at the bottom of the Open dialogue box, then start again.

To open a file, though, select it by clicking the file once with your left mouse button. Its name will then appear in the File Name at the bottom. Once it does, click the Open button.

OK, now that you know how to open a file, we can start adding the address to our letter.

SAVING YOUR WORK

Saving your work

To save your work in Word 2007, click the round Office button in the top left of your screen. You should see a menu appear:

In Word 2010, click the File tab at the top of Word:

In both versions, when you click the Save item you'll see a dialogue box appear (This image is from Windows 7. The one for Windows Vista is very similar):

There are three main areas to the Save dialogue box: Where do you want to save your document? What do you want to call it? What type of document do you want to save it as?

We'll take the three areas in turn, starting with "Where do you want to save your document?"
The "Where" is set right at the top. The default location is in the Documents folder on your computer. You can see where this is by clicking the arrow in the top left:

The dropdown menu is a list of locations on your computer. The image above is from Windows 7 and shows that we are in the Libraries folder. If you have Windows Vista, you won't see a Libraries entry. It will say Users. There will then be another one next to Users that has the user name you used when setting up your computer. For example: Users > Kenny > Documents.

Inside the Libraries folder is another one called Documents. We're saving it to this folder. The larger area of the Save As dialogue box shows you the folders that are already in the Documents folder:

You can create folders of your own to hold your work. So click the New Folder button at the top:

You should see a new yellow folder appear in the main area of the Save As dialogue box, with some blue highlighting:

The blue highlighting means that it is ready to be typed over. Type the name My WP Projects. Then press the enter key on your keyboard (or just click away). The folder will then be renamed:

If you get it wrong, click back onto the folder. Now click again, and you should see the same blue highlighting. Or just right click the folder to see a new menu appear. Select Rename from the menu.

Now that you have created a new folder, double click the folder name to move inside of it. Notice the location area at the top:

The name of our folder has been added to the right of Documents, indicating that this new folder is inside of the Documents folder. In other words, there is a folder called Libraries, and inside of that another one called Documents. The folder we have created, the My WP Projects one, is inside of the Documents folder.

File Names

We now need to come up with a name for this particular document that we're saving. If you have a look at the bottom of the Save As dialogue box you'll see two areas: one called File Name, and the other called Save as Type. The File Name area is where you type a name for your document. The Save as Type means which type of document is will be. Microsoft Word documents from 2007 onwards end with the letters docx. Previously, the letters where just doc. If you sent someone a Word document with the ending docx, somebody with version 2003 of the software would not be able to open your file. Simply because previous Office versions don't know how to handle the newer format. The reverse is not true, though: they could send you a file that ended with the letters doc and you would be able to open it up in Word 2007 or Word 2010.
Microsoft Word allows you to save documents in a wide range of different formats. Click anywhere inside of the Save as Type area to see a list of the different formats:

The image shows that we have Word 97 - 2003 Document in the Save as Type area. The three letter extension shows .doc. The first one on the list, however, is Word Document .docx, which is the one we want. Make sure this one is selected in your Save As dialogue box.
Now have a look at the File Name area. It should say Doc1.docx. (It might just say Doc1, however, if you haven't enabled file extensions on your computer. If you can't see any file extensions, do the tutorial here on our site: Enable File Extensions.
If you clicked the Save button now, your file will be called "Doc1". That's not a very descriptive name for a document, so we'll change it to something else. To give your document a different name, simply click inside the File Name text box. Delete everything in the text box. Type in a new name, something like Library Letter.
Your Save As dialogue box should now look like the one below. When it does, click the Save button:

You have now saved your work to your hard drive. To prove that it has indeed been saved, click the round Office button in the top left (or the File tab in Word 2010). Select Save As. When the Save As dialogue box appears, you should see the name of your file in the big white area:

Click the Cancel button to get rid of the Save As dialogue box.
You can continue to work on a document that has been saved. But if you add more lines to your letter, or make any changes, you need to keep saving your changes on regular basis. You don't have to use Save As any more. You can just click the Office button or the File tab, then click on Save. Or click on the circled icon in the image below. This will update your document.

Word 2007

Word 2010

A shortcut for saving your work is to hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard. Keep it held down and then press the letter S.
Remember to save your work on a regular basis. It's not a pleasant experience to have worked on a document for some time only for your computer to break down. When you finally get your computer to work again, if you haven't saved regularly you'll find all that hard work lost forever, with no way to get it back!


OK, now that you know how to save a Microsoft Word document, let's move on. The next section will be about highlighting text.

typing your 1st letter

Your First Letter

Have a look at the blank page on your screen, all that white space. The first thing to notice is the flashing vertical line. This is called the Cursor, or the Insertion Point. Its normal behaviour is to flash on and off.
The cursor is where all the action takes place. Try touching one or two of the letter keys on your computer keyboard and watch what happens. You should see the vertical line, the cursor, move to the right. Your letters will appear to the left of the cursor. In other words, when you tap a letter on your keyboard, the letter will appear where the cursor is. The cursor will move across, ready for the next thing you type.
Before we start typing the letter below, there are three keys on your keyboard that might come in very handy: the Backspace key, the Enter key, and the Shift key.

If you have made a spelling mistake, tap the backspace key to get rid of your unwanted characters. You can also click the Undo icon right at the top of Word. Here's what the Undo feature looks like Word 2007:

In Word 2010 it will look like this:

To get a new paragraph, press the Enter key on your keyboard. You cursor will move down one line to the start of the new paragraph.

The Shift key is held down if you want uppercase characters (capital letters). Keep the Shift key held down then press a letter. It will then be a capital letter. You also need to hold the Shift key down to get any of the characters on top of another key. For example, to type an ampersand character ( & ) hold down your Shift key. Keep it held down and press the number 7 (on a UK keyboard).

So, time for your first letter. Type the following onto your new white page. Type it in exactly as it is, spelling mistakes included. (You don't have to make your text bold, though):

Dear Sir or Madam,

It has come to my attention that our local counsil has decided to close down our one and only libary. While it is true that no new books have been bought for seven years £12.50 was recently raised in a local raffle. This is nearly enough for an entire Delia Smith! Do you not think that your decicion is a little premature?
Yours truly
Mr Irate

Ok, you can stop typing now. You've finished. So, how did you get on? There's a good chance that you needed to use the backspace key a few times. And finding keys like the pound sign and the exclamation point might have took you more time than you would have liked. But this is usual when you are first starting out: it will come.

Before we get on to those spelling mistakes, let's learn how to save your work.