Introduction to Microsoft Word – FormattingDover Public Library

Peggy Thrasherp.thrasher@dover.nh.gov

603-516-6050

We will be using Microsoft Word 2016. The features we talk about today are also available in earlier versions, though they may be in a slightly different place or look a little different.

Microsoft Word is used to create documents, from a simple to-do list to documents with hundreds of pages, chapters, tables of contents etc. We will look at simple formatting features that might be used when constructing a resume, but are useful in other documents as well.

There are free alternatives to Microsoft Word. The two most visible are Open Office and Google Docs.

When you open Word you have a blank page. Just start typing. You don’t need to worry about your line going past the end of the line. Word will automatically put the rest of your text on the next line. In fact if you are typing a paragraph, you don’t want to use the enter key to take your text to the next line because if you let Word take care of the line breaks then you can add or remove text from the middle of the paragraph and Word will adjust things for you.

1

I just typed this in one long string.

I inserted the words “very” at the beginning of the paragraph and Word automatically adjusted the lines for me.

A paragraph in Word is a series of characters that end with a carriage return. You put in a carriage return by pressing the Enter key.

2

I pressed the Enter key here

If you misspell a word, it will underline it in red. Of course, if you misspell your word but what you typed is actually a different word it won’t flag it.

If you right click on the word that is underlined in red it will give you some choices at the top of words that it thinks you might have wanted. You can choose the right spelling from the menu, or click back on the document and fix it by hand.

3

If you make a grammatical mistake like putting too many spaces between words, it will underline them in blue. Here there is an extra space between “dog” and “went” and “it’s” should be “its”. Sometimes Word also underlines things in green, but I couldn’t get it to do it… Word 2010 did a much better job of catching grammar mistakes. I don’t know why they would have made it less sensitive, but they did. Be sure to proofread your work. Many times, Word will correct your spelling as you type, too.

Again, right clicking will bring up a menu where Word makes a suggestion.

At the top of the Word window are some tabs:File, Home, Insert, Design, Layout, References, Mailings, Review and View

4

In the home tab is a section called Paragraph. There are three icons for left justifying, centering, and right justifying the text.

Word defaults to left justifying your text. If you want to center it, select the lines you want to center and click the centered lines icon in the toolbar. If you only wanted to center a single paragraph, you can just put your cursor anywhere in the paragraph and click the centered lines icon.

5

Left Center Right

I right justified the last two paragraphs by selecting them and then clicking on the icon next to the centering lines icon in the toolbar.

Also in the Home tab is a Font section. We’ll talk about the font name, font size, bold, italics, underline, highlight, text color, and formatting eraser.

6

Font name Font size

Bold Italics Underline

Erase formatting

Highlight Font color

You can change the font of your text by selecting the text you want to change and choosing your new font from the drop down. There are lots of options, and they use the font to spell the name of the font so that you can see what they look like. The Huffington Post recommends these fonts for resumes: Garamond, Ariel, Georgia, Helvetica, Calibri (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/fonts-to-use-on-resume_n_7562714.html)

You can changes the size of your font with the dropdown. If you want a size that isn’t in the dropdown you can type a number into the space at the top. This is useful if you want a really tiny font (like 6 or even 6.5) or a huge one (like 250). This is 36 point. Standard font sizes are 11, 12 or 14 for the main body of a document. You can use 10, but it is harder to read comfortably. Once you set something like the font or centering when you create a new paragraph by pressing the enter key at the end of the paragraph you formatted, your formatting will continue in the new paragraph.

7

To make something bold, italics or underlined, select the text that you want to change and then click on the B, I, or U in the tool bar. To undo a section that is already bold (or italics or underlined), just select the text and click on the B, I, or U. An easy way to select a word is to double click anywhere in the word. If you triple click you will select the entire paragraph.

Make your letters a different color, or add a background to your text with highlighter icon or the A with a color bar. Make sure that you select the text you want to change first.

8

In the Layout tab you can choose characteristics for your page

You can choose whether you want your document to be portrait or landscape orientation.

9

You can choose lots of sizes of paper, including letter and legal. You can choose an envelope, but it is a little easier if you print envelopes from the Mailing tab instead.

To print envelopes, go to the Mailings tab and click on the Envelopes icon. Type in your delivery and return address. It defaults to #10 envelopes. The ”Options” button lets you choose a different size envelope. You can print the envelope from this popup box.

10

Also in the Page Layout tab is the Margins icon. Many margin choices are available, or you can choose your own by choosing “Custom Margins” at the end of the dropdown. Changing margins is a good way to get a little more on a page without reducing the size of your text.

Tabs are important if you want things in your document to line up straight. With most fonts, the width of a letter varies depending on the letter. For instance, a lower case L (l) is much skinnier than a capital W (W). If you try to line things up with spaces instead of tabs, the size of your space on one line may be different than the size of you space on another line. So 5 spaces on each line may take up a different amount of space on the page. With tabs, you are sure that each new line will start at the same point.

Word defaults to a tab every half inch. To show the ruler, go to the View tab and check the box for the Ruler.

11

If you type a letter and then the tab key over and over you will see where the tab stops are.

If you type past a tab stop nothing happens. The next time you press the tab key, it will go to the next tab stop to the right of the last character you typed.

12

A second line using tabs will line up with the first one. See how “in the middle” and “tabs in the middle” line up perfectly?

http://www.gcflearnfree.org/word2013/11.3 has a good description of tabs and how to use them, including this handy chart of the different kinds of tabs that are available in Word.

13

You can choose what kind of tab stop you want to add by choosing the right symbol in the small box in the upper left. When you click on the small box it will toggle through the tab choices.

If you click in the space under the ruler, Word will put a new tab stop in at that position. It will put in whichever tab is showing in the small box. When it puts a new tab in, it erases all of the tabs up to that point. Whatever paragraph the cursor is on when you add the tabs will be affected by the tabs. To add tabs to a section of paragraphs that you have already typed, select all of the text in the paragraphs. To remove a tab stop, just click and drag it down.

14

This is how the three different tabs (left, middle, right) look when they are placed at the same point on the ruler. The decimal tab will line up the decimal point where the tab is placed. The vertical line is drawn by the bar tab.

Here the first line is indented.

15

Here subsequent lines are indented. Notice that you don’t have to have either of the indents where the margins are. You can tell where the margins are for the page because the margin area is grey, while the area within the margins is white on the ruler.

You can put lots of different types of tabs on one line. You can have as many tabs as you want.

16

When you start a new paragraph by pressing the Enter key, the new paragraph will have the same formatting options as the paragraph before (notice the tabs in this screen shot). If you want to remove all formatting there is a handy icon in the toolbar that clears all formatting. I think it is supposed to be an eraser with some letters. Click that icon and the formatting will go back to normal for any new paragraphs. If you change the formatting for a paragraph that is in the middle of your document, the new formatting will apply only to that paragraph. The paragraphs following will still have the original formatting. If, however, you finish a paragraph that has formatting with the enter key and start a new paragraph that new paragraph will have your new formatting.

You can see exactly what tabs, spaces and carriage returns are in your document by clicking on the Paragraph icon in the Home tab. This puts symbols on the page for each of those things that you usually can’t see. A carriage return is the backwards P, a tab is an arrow, and each space is a small dot in the middle of the line between words. This can be really helpful if you can’t figure out why things aren’t lining up the way you think they should be.

17

The reason you want to use tabs is that in most fonts the letters aren’t all the same width. So if you put 5 spaces after a capital I, and 5 spaces after a capital W the next word won’t line up. Use a tab instead of the spaces and things will line up nicely.

Word tries to autocorrect things for you – like if you start a paragraph with a lower case letter it will capitalize it for you. But sometimes you don’t want it to do that. If you put your cursor on the letter you’ll see a small blue rectangle under the letter. Click on that small rectangle and you’ll get some choices.

18

You can change just this letter back to lower case, keep Word from changing the case you use from now on, or look at other autocorrect things that are set up. If you change the autocorrect settings your new settings will apply to your documents in the future.

You can make bulleted lists or numbered lists by typing each element on a new line and then clicking on one of the list icons in the Paragraph section. The drop downs for these icons provide style options.

19

They line up really nicely!

If you press the Enter key at the end of a list item, it will give you the next number so you can continue your list. If you are done with the list, you can backspace and Word will end the list.

20

Word also defaults to adding a blank line after each paragraph. Usually, this is fine, but if you are making a list of things you might not want the extra line. To remove the extra line, select the first paragraph and click on the icon with horizontal lines and vertical arrows in the Paragraph section. Then you can choose Remove Space After Paragraph.

You can force a page break with the Page Break icon in the Insert tab. You would want to do this if you always want the new section to start a new page, and if you might want to change something on a previous page. If you just add blank lines then if you add something earlier your new page won’t start at the top of the paper.

21

Sometimes you want to keep some lines together on the same page, you just don’t want a page break in the middle. If you select the paragraphs that you want to keep together and then right click you can choose “Paragraph” from the pop up menu.

22

In the Line and Page Breaks tab you can choose to Keep lines together (which will keep all the lines in a paragraph on one page) or Keep with Next (which will keep paragraphs on the same page – this is useful for lists).

If you want to put a border around a paragraph, go to the Design tab and choose Page Borders

Choose the Borders tab to put a border around a paragraph (or collection of paragraphs – just select all of the paragraphs before you do this). Choose which sides of the paragraph will have a border, What style of border you want and a width. You can also choose special effects or a color for your border. Choose your style options in the middle of the box before you choose which sides of the paragraph you want them on.

23

We chose only three sides with a thick border.

To put a border around the whole page, choose the Page Border tab. Choose your options the same way as for the paragraph border.

24

This puts a border around each page in your document.

To save your document, click on the file tab. That brings you to this screen. Then choose Save As.

25

Choose where you want to save your document. My Documents is a good choice. If you are going to have a lot of documents, then you will want to create some folders in your My Documents folder.

There are a couple of ways to see where your file is going to be saved. The top bar says “Libraries > Documents” which says that it will be save in your Documents Folder. Also on the left side “Documents” is highlighted showing that it will be saved in your Documents folder. Sometimes this folder is called the “Documents Folder” and sometimes it is called “My Documents”. They are the same folder. If you had folders inside your Documents folder they would show in the right pane (Where the “Custom Office Templates” folder is). You can double click on a folder in the right pane and it will open that folder so you can save a document inside.

Type the name that you would like to use for your document in the “File Name” box and click Save.

26

You can see your folders and their contents by opening up “Windows Explorer” – not to be confused with Internet Explorer, which is a browser. The folder icon will bring this up, or you can get there by clicking on the My Computer icon or a My Documents icon. Different operating system versions have different ways of getting there… Double click on the “Documents” icon in the right pane or in the left pane to open that folder.

Here is the file I just saved.

27

To print, click on the File tab and then choose Print.

This shows you a preview of what you are going to print. And you can look at the preview for more than the first page by using the page thingy at the bottom. You can choose what printer you want to use. And you can change lots of the page set up stuff that we’ve looked at before. Click the Print button to send your document to the printer.

28