MS Word Part I

Lab 4: Microsoft Word

Well, today we're just gonna learn the very (very) basic of this application software on how to open, create a new one, saving, printing, and editing. Anyway, let's just enjoy this lab!

First of all, what is this program? Word processing software is an application software that can create any type of written document in electronic form i.e. soft copy.

As for Microsoft Windows, we have Microsoft Word as the word-processing application program. For us Mac lovers, we have our iWork's Pages!

First, is Creating a Document:

Microsoft Word offers few document templates. What is a template? Template is a document file that has pre-defined setting e.g. letters, certificates. How do we use a template? At the menu bar,

Office button> New>Templates Panel

Next is Opening a Document:

• On the menu bar, go to File and choose Open. A dialog box will be asking which document we want to open.
• From template.
• From our drives where we have a copy of Microsoft Word file and just open it.

Then, saving a Document:

Basically, there are 2 types of saving, say we're using Windows Vista. After we're done with writing the document, we want to save it, right?

First, if we just choose 'Save' in the menu or by shortcut (Ctrl + S), Microsoft Word will save it as Word document with extension .docx.

Second, say a friend is using a previous version of Windows e.g. XP. and we need to give him the copy of this document. A computer running Windows XP with Microsoft Word 2003 can't open this type of document. So, in order for him to be able to open this document in his computer, we can save the document in another format. So, go to the menu bar and choose Save As. A dialog box will open and from the box we can find options on Save As, and select 'Microsoft Word 2003'. We'll find another document with the same name as our .docx file but different extension i.e. .doc.

The good thing about Microsoft Word 2007, it has auto recovery where the program will automatically save the document like every 10 seconds. For Windows XP's Word '03, we have to enable by going to

Office button>Word Options Command Button>Save tab>Select Auto Recover

There we can choose the period, whether we want the program to save every e.g. 5 minutes while working on the document.

This very useful especially when we have a sudden power failure. At least like half of document are being saved, right?

Next is Printing a Document:

We can print out document but make sure your computer is connected to a printer, first!

Before we print, we can see the preview by go to the Office button and choose print, and select print preview.

So, how do we print? By going to the office button, and choose Print. As usual dialog box will popped out and in the box will give us options on how we want to print the documents i.e. the number of copies, in colour or black and white, just print the even or odd pages, we can even change the orientation of the printouts but this one we have to go the properties.

Finally, Editing and Proofing Document.

As for our assignments and notes, we definitely don't want them to appear dull and boring, right? Unless it's for the formal thesis or whatsoever. So there are lots of options for us to 'beautify' our documents like adding background or watermark of pictures or words, putting graphics on it, having tables, and so much more. Of course, we can run spell-checker program to see our spelling mistakes!

So that's all the basics to use this software.. Will continue on second part later on next class!