Open “Document”
In this lesson you will learn about basic “Document” in “Word”.
To open a “Document”, we must first know where it is located.
Whether in a folder on our computer, on CD-ROM or a floppy
To do that, we have to first click on the “Open” button 
in the “Standard toolbar”, or click “File” (“File) – and then “Open” (“Open“) in the menubar.
In the dialog that opens choose the folder where the “Document” was saved, select it, and double-click the “Document” or click the “Open” button.
When you have several non-adjacent “Document”(s) which you wish to open in the same folder, select the first, hold the “Ctrl” button on your keyboard, select the second …. etc., etc., click on “Open”.
If the various “Document”(s) are adjacent in the folder, hold the “Shift” key on your keyboard, select the first and last. And click “Open”.
Close “Document”
To close a “Document” we click “File” – “Close” in the menu bar.
Or we 
clickin the right hand corner of the “Document” window.
When we click 
in the “Application” window, it closes the program.
When we close the “Document” before we have saved, “Word” will ask us whether we want to save.
Answer “Yes” if you wish to, “No” if you do not wish to, and “Cancel” if you wish to continue in the “Document”.
Creating a new “Document”
To create a new “Document” in Windows 2003 and XP, we click the “New” button (“New“), in the
“Standard toolbar”, or we select “File” (“File“) – “New” (“New“) in the menu bar.
We can choose the second option, open the “Task Pane” (if not yet open), where we choose “New Document” (“Blank Document“)
To create a new “Document” in Windows 2000 and ’97, we click the “New” button (“New“), in the
“Standard toolbar”, or we select “File” (“File“) – “New” (“New“) in the menu bar.
Choosing the second option, opens the “New” dialog .
Select “New Document” (“Blank Document“) and click OK.
Saving a “Document”
If we want to use the “Document” later, we save it.
The first time we save the “Document”, we will choose “File” (“File“) – “Save As ..” (“Save As …“) in the menu bar.
In the window that appears, we select a location and give a name for the file.
Give it an appropriate name and a location you can remember.
Once the file is saved, the name of the file is displayed in the “Title bar”.
We can change the file later but for that we need to save it. To do that we click the “Save” buttonin the “Standard toolbar”.
We do not have to give a location.
Filenames can be 255 characters long, but I love them to be short and appropriate.
“Word” does not allow us to use these characters in a filename:
- The colon :
- the semicolon ;
- the slash /
- the backslash \
- the greater than sign >
- the less than sign <
- the asterisk character *
- quotes “”
- and the straight line |
Adding text to a “Document”
When we open a new “Word” “Document”, the cursor is always at the top left in our “Document”.
The location of the cursor determines where the text will begin when we type.
Once the “Document” is open, we can start typing.
If we get to the end of a line, and we just continue typing, “Word” will automatically go the next line, this is called “Wrap text”.
If you wish to begin in a new line, click the “Enter” key on your keyboard.
With the “Backspace” key on our keyboard, we can remove characters before the cursor and with the “Delete” key on our keyboard, we can remove characters after the cursor.
With the “Tab” key on our keyboards, we indent text.
When we see a red wavy line under a word, this word is spelt incorrectly.
When we see a green wavy line under a word, the grammar is wrong.
This is the spelling and grammar check that is automatically executed.
More on this in another lesson.
Moving the cursor
We can place the cursor on our “Document” by simply left clicking on the place where we want.
Or we can use the arrow keys on our keyboard.
Select text
After we have entered the text in “Word”, we must select it, partially or completely, to be edited.
We have different ways to select it.
The fastest, I think, is by clicking and dragging across the text you want to select with the mouse pointer.
Or if it’s only one word that you want to select, double-click on it.
Text that is selected has a black background and white lettering.
You can also select text using the arrows on your keyboard.
To do this, for the first character you want to select, click on the arrows, left, right, top and bottom.
Or even another possibility is, you place the cursor on the first letter, hold the “Shift” key pressed and click the last letter you want to select.
Non-printable characters
In “Word”, the “Spacebar”, the “Tab” button, and the “Enter” button do not create any characters, like any other key on our keyboard.
Normally we don’t see the charecters, we still see this when we click the “Show/Hide” button , in the standard toolbar.
Click on this button again, they will be hidden again.
Zoom in and out of “Document”
To zoom in or out of texts, we click “View” – “Zoom” in the menu bar.
Enter a percentage in the “Zoom” dialog box, and click OK.
By zooming in we can take a closer look at our text.
By zooming out, we can view the “Document” in its entirety.
“Full screen” display
We can see the “Document” in size of our screen.
To do this we click on “View” (“View“) – “Full Screen” (“Full Screen Mode“) in the menu bar.
This hides all toolbars, scrollbars, etc. ..
You see only the “Document” and a new toolbar, the “Full Screen” toolbar.
We click the Esc key on our keyboard when we want to go back to “Normal” view. Or we use the “Close full screen” button in the “Full Screen” toolbar.
Open multiple “Document”(s)
Sometimes it is necessary to open multiple “Document”(s) to copy information from one “Document” to another.
When we have several “Document”(s) open, then the “Document” whose “Title bar” is colored blue is considered the “Active” “Document”.
We make another “Document” “Active” by clicking it.
We can arrange the windows of the various “Document”(s) manually, by clicking their “Title bar” and dragging it to where we want it in the window.
Overwrite function
When we click the OVR button in the status bar, we can overwrite text.
Click on the OVR button in the status bar.
Now, when you for eg. place the cursor between two words and start typing, you’ll see that “Word” overwrites the previously typed text, instead of inserting the typed text.
Click the OVR button again to turn this off.
Rename a “Document”
When a “Document” is saved, you can always change the name later.
For example if you want a copy of a “Document” before you change, what is recommended is, you can “Rename” the “Document” under a different name.
We use the “Save As” under “File” in the menu bar.
Once the “Save as” dialog is open, we choose a name and location for our copy.
