Introduction to

Microsoft Word 2007

Topic Areas:
Key tools
Creating documents
Editing documents
Other resources

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Key Tools

The Office button

• To open, save or print documents

The Ribbon

The three parts of the Ribbon are tabs, groups, and commands.

There are three basic components to the Ribbon. It's good to know what each one is called so that you understand
how to use it.

Tabs. There are seven basic ones across the top. Each represents an activity area.
Groups. Each tab has several groups that show related items together.
Commands. A command is a button, a box to enter information, or a menu.

Everything on a tab has been carefully selected according to user activities. For example, the Home tab contains all
the things you use most often, such as the commands in the Font group for changing text font: Font, Font Size,
Bold, Italic, and so on.

You may hide the Ribbon temporarily, for additional screen space:

• Double-click the active tab. The groups disappear, so that you have more room.
• Whenever you want to see all of the commands again, double-click the active tab to bring back the
groups.

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Dialog Box Launcher

Some groups have a small diagonal arrow in the lower-right corner. The arrow is called a Dialog Box Launcher. If
you click it, you'll see more options related to that group. Those options will often appear in the form of a dialog
box that you may recognize from a previous version of Word. Or they may appear in a familiar-looking task pane.

On Demand Tabs

In this new version of Word, certain tabs appear only when you need them. For example, when you insert a
picture, chart, clipart, etc. and you want to do more with it. You may want to change how text wraps around it
or to crop it.

Select the picture.

The Picture Tools tab appears. Click that tab.
Additional groups and commands appear for working with pictures; like the Picture Styles group.
When you click away from the picture, the Picture Tools tab disappears, and the other groups come back.

Mini Toolbar

Select your text by dragging with your mouse, and then point at the selection.
The Mini toolbar will appear in a faded fashion. If you point to the Mini toolbar, it will become solid, and you
can click a formatting option there.
You can also bring up the Mini toolbar at any time by right clicking on a word.

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The Quick Access Toolbar is the small area to the upper left of the Ribbon. It contains the things that you use over
and over every day: Save, Undo, and Repeat. You can add your favorite commands to it so that they are available
no matter which tab you are on.

Key Tips: shortcut key strokes

Press ALT to make the Key Tip badges appear for all Ribbon tabs, the Quick Access Toolbar commands, and the
Microsoft Office Button. Then you can press the Key Tip for the tab you want to display; for example, press H
for the Home tab. This makes all the Key Tips for that tab's commands appear. Then you can press the Key Tip
for the command you want.

Not sure what something does? If you hover over any command, a short description of the command will
pop up!
Like using shortcuts? If you press the “Alt” key, you will see “Key Tip” commands.

Creating Documents
• Create a blank document and customize
• Create new documents using “Templates”
Many templates are available to download from the Microsoft website. Look for an existing
template, instead of having to create it from nothing!

Saving Documents

To keep your work, you have to save it. Remember to save your work frequently!

• Click the Microsoft Office Button in the upper-left corner of the window. Then click Save. A dialog
box opens. A dialog box is a smaller window in which you perform some action. You use this box to tell
Word where you want to store the document on your computer, and what you want to call it.
• After you save your document, and you continue to type, save your work as you go. Every once in a while,

click the Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar in the upper-left
corner of the window. Or use a shortcut to save: Keyboard shortcut: Press CTRL+S (hold down the CTRL
key and then press S). Key Tip Shortcut: Press ALT+1
• When you are through with the document and have saved your work, close the file. Click the Microsoft

Office Button , and then click Close.

Tip To find your document after you close it, look in the Recent Documents list, or under Documents in
the folder where you saved it. Click a document in the list to open it.

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Adding content

Home Tab:

• Type the body of your document

• Edit text, fonts and styles
• Format paragraphs with alignment, spacing, bullets, & tabs.
• Use formatting marks to see how your document is laid out (these will not print!)

Insert Tab:

• Add blank pages, cover pages, and page breaks

• Insert tables: draw tables, insert excel tables, and create quick tables

Page Layout Tab:

• Set your document theme

• Create page setup: margins, orientation, size, columns, etc.
• Format paragraphs: indents and spacing
• Arrange items on your page

References Tab:

• Create a Table of Contents

• Add Footnotes
• Add an Index

Mailings Tab:

• Generate envelopes
• Create labels

Editing Documents:
Find and Replace tools

Review Tab:

• Spelling and Grammar

• Thesaurus

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Inserting Headers and Footers

When you add one header or footer, such as a page number or date, it appears on every page. In the case of page
numbers, they're also programmed to be consecutive and to update themselves automatically when the number
of pages changes. Page numbers are the most common type of header or footer. They're such a necessary
element in documents that they get their own button and gallery of choices.

To add page numbers:

On the Insert tab, in the Header & Footer group, click Page Number.
Choose where you want the numbers on the page, at the top or on the bottom, for example.
Then choose a page number style from a gallery of possibilities.

The page numbers are applied throughout your document. Also, they're set up to automatically renumber if you
add or delete content in the document.

Quick Styles

Quick Styles gallery is located on the Home tab, in the Styles group. Each Quick Style includes sets of formatting
such as font, font size, color, and more.

Quick Styles are grouped under Style Sets, which are different groups of styles that have been designed to work
together.

In the picture you can see:

The Quick Styles gallery, which shows some of the Quick Styles available under the Style Set currently in use by
the document.
The expanded gallery, which you can open by selecting the down button under “Change Styles”.

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To apply a heading style:

Click within the text you want the heading style to apply to.
Click the style you want in the Quick Styles gallery — here, Heading 1.
View how the text looks with the new heading style.

Note You can see how it looks in the Quick Styles gallery. If you want to preview the style in your document,
hover your mouse over it.

Underlines

As you type, Word might on occasion insert a wavy red, green, or blue underline beneath text.

Red underline This indicates either a possible spelling error or that Word doesn't recognize a word, such as
a proper name or place. If you type a word that is correctly spelled, but Word doesn't recognize it, you can
add it to Word's dictionary so that it is not underlined in the future. You'll see how in the practice.
Green underline Word thinks that grammar should be revised.

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 Blue underline A word is spelled correctly but does not seem to be the correct word for the sentence. For
example, you type "too," but the word should be "to."

What do you do about the underlines?

• Right-click an underlined word to see suggested revisions (every once in a while Word may not have any
alternate spellings). Click a revision to replace the word in the document and get rid of the underlines.
Note that if you print a document with these underlines, they will not show up on printed pages.
• Ignore them for now and perform a “Spell Check” after you are done typing.

Other Resources
The Help icon

Microsoft website for online training courses

Accessible from the Lyon Township Public Library Website Technology Page!
http://www.lyon.lib.mi.us/technologypage.html

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