Exercise 1 - Creating A New Word Document From Scratch

When creating a new Microsoft Word document, you have the option of creating it from scratch, or basing it on a template. The advantage of starting from scratch is that you have more control and flexibility over how your document looks and how it is structured. Any styling and effects present in the document will be there because you put them there. The disadvantage is that it can take some time to create the look and feel you want, and in some cases you will be "reinventing the wheel". Word templates are designed to speed up the process of creating stunning and professional documents. To get started, click the File tab > New. The following panel opens giving you many options.

You'll notice that the top of the panel gives you the option to create a blank document, a blog post and also to create your document on a template or an existing document. Blank document is selected by default and that's the option we need, so click Create. A new blank document opens and is ready for you to start editing. As soon as you can, you should save the document and then periodically you should keep saving it so that you don't lose your changes if your PC crashes or there is a power cut. A quick way to create a blank Word document is to use the keyboard shortcut ctrl-n.

Exercise 2 - Open An Existing Word Document

A big part of your document management work will involve creating new Microsoft Word documents. However, not every document you work on will be new; you will undoubtedly need to open existing Word documents, whether they have been created by you or someone else. Opening an existing Word document is easy, and there are several different ways of doing it. The first method we'll look at is driven by the ribbon: with Word open, click the File tab > Open, and the usual File Open dialogue box that you are probably already familiar with opens.

Navigate to where the document is and either double click it or select it with a single click and then click Open. The document will then open in Word for you to edit. Be sure to save any changes you make by clicking ctrl-s. Alternatively, if you want to keep a copy of the original document as it looked before you made any changes, click the File tab > Save As, and then give the document a new name. The newly named document is the one you are now editing and the original document still exists with its original name. This is only one way (albeit a clumsy one!) of keeping track of changes made to a document, and is useful if you think there is a big risk of messing it up. Another method of opening an existing Word document is to use the keyboard shortcut ctrlo. You'll find that many keyboard shortcuts work universally across all Microsoft Office products and ctrl-o is one of them. After pressing ctrl-o, the File Open dialogue box that we met above opens. Simply follow the same steps to find and open your document.

The final method that we're going to look at for opening an existing Word document is one that you would use if you were navigating your documents using Windows Explorer. When you find the document you want to work on in Windows Explorer, right click on it > Open With > Microsoft Word. The document will open in Word, as described earlier.

Exercise 3 - Using Different Views In Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word gives you five different views of a document, and each has its own advantages over the others. They are Print Layout, Full Screen Reading, Web Layout, Outline and Draft and you can guess what purpose some of them serve just by their names. There are two ways of changing the view you have of a document. You can click the View tab and then choose a particular view from teh Document Views tab, or you can use the view buttons next to the zoom slider in the bottom right of the work space. We'll look at the different Word views now.

Print Layout View

This is the default view you'll find yourself in when opening a document. This view is best used when your document will contain things like images, headers, and footers, columns, etc. Each of these components will be visible. In this view you can see how the document will print according to its page breaks.

Full Screen Reading View

Full Screen Reading view is optimized for reading a document on the computer screen. In Full Screen Reading view, you also have the option of seeing the document as it would appear on a printed page. You should view the document in full screen reading view to maximise the space available for reading or commenting on the document.

Web Layout View

Use web layout view to view the document as it would look like as a web page. In this view you can see the background, text is wrapped to fit the window, and images appear as they would online.

Outline View
Using outline view you can view the document as an outline and show the outlining tools. This is useful if you are moving sections of your document, or creating an outline.

Draft View
Use draft view to view the document as a draft, to enable you to quickly edit the text. Certain elements of the document, such as headers and footers, will not be visible in this view.

Exercise 4 - Page Orientation In Word

There are two page orientations you can use in Microsoft Word: portrait and landscape. The image below shows the page layout for each one.

You will usually find that the portrait orientation satisfies your needs. For example, letters are usually created in portrait. Indeed, portrait is the default orientation for new documents. Sometimes, however, you need a wider document. For example, sometimes I need to display a table that has either too many columns or very wide columns, and portrait will make the table looked cramped. The landscape page orientation is much better here as it provides more horizontal space. To change the layout in Word, click Page Layout > Orientation, and select either the portrait or landscape layout.

Note that if you were creating a table in portrait layout, and discovered that the page width wasn't wide enough, when you then change the layout to be landscape, the table does't

change its width to accommodate the new space. You will have to either adjust the table's dimensions manually or delete the table and start again.

Exercise 5 - How To Adjust Margins In Word

Margins are the blanks areas of space around the edge of your Word document. Although text and other objects are usually inserted into the printable area within the margins, some items can actually be positioned in the margins (for example, page numbers, headers and footers.). Microsoft Word offers you the facility to use default margin settings or to define your own margins. To adjust the margins in your document, click Page Layout > Page Setup > Margins. The following thumbnail images represent the different defaults settings available to you. Simply click on one of the images to apply the appropriate margins.

The margins just applied will affect all pages in your document. If you want to define your own margin settings, click on Custom Margins at the bottom.

The first tab is for margin settings, so that's where we need to make our changes. The top area of the window allows us to adjust the margin size for top, bottom, left and right of the page. There are also input boxes for you to specify a gutter margin. You would use a gutter margin to add extra space to the side or top margin of a document you plan to bind. A gutter margin ensures that text isn't obscured by the binding.

Exercise 6 - Creating Lines And Arrows In Word

Microsoft Word gives you the ability to create many shapes in your documents, and some of the more useful ones are lines and arrows. You can use these to good effect to help illustrate your points. For example, you might like to add some descriptive text for an image and then "point" to the image. To create a line, click Insert > Shapes. As you can see, there is a huge selection of shapes we can draw.

The options we need are positioned close to the top of the panel in the Lines category. They allow us to draw straight lines, stright lines with corners, curved lines and closed polygons. We can also draw lines that have arrows at one or both ends, too.

To draw a line, either with or without and arrow, click on a tool and then click and drag in your document. Clicking once for the start of the line and again for the end has the same effect.

Adjusting The Line

You can select a line by clicking on it, and once selected you can move it in any direction by using the arrow keys on your keyboard. To delet the line, just press the delete key or backspace. Suppose you want to resize the line though, either to lengthen or shorten it. You can do that too. First of all select the line and then hover the mouse over one end. When the cursor changes to a "plus sign" (without arrows on it) you can click and drag to move that end. When the line is selected, you might also notice that the Drawing Tools contextual tab appears in the ribbon.

Exercise 7 Inserting shapes in a document

Shapes are good for helping you illustrate the points you want to make to your readers and Microsoft Word 2010 now has a huge selection of shapes that you can draw in your documents. After you add one or more shapes, you can add text, bullets, numbering, and Quick Styles to them. To insert a shape, click Insert > Illustrations > Shapes. The panel that opens shows the shapes you can insert.

The shapes are organised in the following categories:

Recently Used Shapes - the last few shapes you inserted into a document. Lines - you can insert straight lines, straight lines with corners, curved lines, lines with arrows on and closed polygons. Learn how to add lines with arrows in Word. Rectangles

Basic Shapes - triangles, polygons and an assortment of other common "basic" shapes. Block Arrows - you can add block arrows that face all the different directions and you can also add some interesting variations on the block arrow. Equation Shapes - basic symbols used in equations, such as '+', '-', 'x' etc. Flowchart - if you need to create a flowchart, Microsoft Word 2010 has all the flowchart shapes covered. Stars and Banners Callouts - callouts are lines that end in a box for you to type in. They are useful for explaining a certain element on the page.

Adjusting A Shape
Once you've inserted a shape into your document, you'll find that it is easy to resize it. Click the shape to select it and you should see resize handles appear at each corner and along each edge of the shape's bounding box. Click and drag on any of those handles to resize. Note that you can keep the shape's proportions by dragging a corner handle. If you want to "squash" the shape, drag one of the handles along an edge.

Additionally, you can change a shape's orientation by rotating it. With the shape still selected, you should see a green rotation handle at the top and set away from the other handles. If you hover the mouse over that handle, the cursor will change to a rotation symbol. Click and drag to the left or right to rotate the shape anticlockwise or clockwise respectively. To delete a shape from your document, select it and press the delete key on your keyboard, or the backspace key.

Exercise 8 - How To Check Spelling In Microsoft Word

When you create a Microsoft Word document for other people to read, it's important to spot and correct any spelling mistakes or grammatical errors you've made. You can let Word's spelling and grammar checkers suggest corrections automatically while you work, or you can check the spelling and grammar in the file all at once when you've finished writing your document. Microsoft Word 2010 comes with a dictionary of standard grammar and spellings, but they are not comprehensive.

Check Spelling And Grammar All At Once

Let's look at how to check spelling and grammar in Word, all at once. It's a good idea to proofread your document once you've completed it, and using the Word spell checker should be part of this process. When Word highlights mistakes you've made, it offers suggestions for replacing the word, and there are several courses of action you can take: Use one of the suggested words to fix the error - select the word in the Suggestions list, and then click Change. Change the incorrect word manually - select the Not in Dictionary check box, change the word and then click Change. The highlighted word is actually a real word add this to Word's dictionary by clicking Add to Dictionary. Ignore the incorrect word for now - click Ignore Once. Ignore all occurrences of the word - click Ignore All. Get Word to autocorrect the word - select the correct word in the Suggestions list, and then click AutoCorrect. To spell check your entire document, click Review > Proofing > Spelling & Grammar. If the program finds spelling mistakes, a dialog box or task pane appears with the first misspelled word found by the spelling checker.

After you've fixed a misspelled word using the above steps, Word moves onto the next one misspelled. Once the spelling mistakes are complete Word moves onto grammar checking. You can resolve grammar issues in the same way.

Check Spelling And Grammar Automatically

Microsoft Word can flag misspelled words while you type so that you can easily locate them, as in the following example:

When you right click on the misspelled word, Word offers you suggestions for corrections.

As you can see, the right click menu offers you other options, such as ignoring the word and adding it to the dictionary. Word highlights misspelled words by underlining them with a red squiggle, and grammatical errors by underlining them with a blue squiggle.

Turning Off Automatic Spelling And Grammar Checking

By default, automatic spelling and grammar checking is turned on. However, if you want to turn it off, click the File tab > Help > Options > Proofing. You can hide spelling and grammar errors using the two check boxes at the bottom of the window, and you can apply these changes to either the current document, or all new ones using the drop down list.

Exercise 9 - How To Use The Thesaurus In Word

In addition to the spell checking and grammar checking tools that Microsoft Word offers, there is also the Word thesaurus we can take advantage of to improve our documents. Using the thesaurus, you can find synonyms (different words with the same meaning) and antonyms (words with the opposite meaning).

In Microsoft Office Word you can look up a word quickly if you right-click anywhere in your document, and then click Synonym on the shortcut menu. Let's have a look at the thesaurus in Word now: click Review > Proofing > Thesaurus. The Research pane opens on the right hand side of the workspace.

Type in a word into the Search for box and press Enter. Alternatively, press ALT on the keyboard and click a word in your document. Word displays a list of alternatives that you can use. If you find a word in the list that you'd like to use, click on the down arrow that appears to the right and select Insert.

If you had selected a word in your document, the word you select in the Research pane will replace it. If not, the word will simply be inserted into your document where the cursor was positioned. If you want to continue your research and look up further synonyms for another word in the list, click on it. That word will be placed in the Search for box and its synonyms will be displayed in the list.

Exercise 10 - Move Text Around Your Word Document

Sometimes, you will need to move portions of text around your Microsoft Word document after you have finished typing it. To do so, first of all select the text you want to move, and then do one of the following: Click and drag the selected text where you want it. As you drag the text, you'll see a dotted vertical insertion point that tells you where your text will go when you release the mouse. Copy the text by pressing ctrl-c, place the cursor where you want the text and then paste it in by pressing ctrl-v. Note that this isn't really moving text. It's simply copying it. Cut the text by pressing ctrl-x, place the cursor where you want the text and then paste it in by pressing ctrl-v. Often, people use tables to align different blocks of text. If you do use tables, you'll find it easy to select a block of text you'd like to move as jumping from table cell to table cell by pressing the tab key automatically selects the entire text in a particular cell.

Exercise 11- Bullets in Word

You can add bullets in Microsoft Word to differentiate between the different points you want to make. The bulleted points form a list. Word allows you to create both bulleted lists and numbered lists. To start a bulleted list, click on the bullets command button in the ribbon and then start typing.

Whenever you press Enter, a new bullet point will be created. If you press Enter twice, Word will realise that you have finished the list and will stop creating new bullets. If you want to create a sub list, you can press the tab key. The sub list will be indented, as shown below.

As with the first level of the list, pressing Enter twice ends the current list and will return to the previous list. If you have already typed out some text that could be used as a bulleted list, you can select the text and then click the bullet icon and bullets will be applied.

Changing The Style Of A Bulleted List

If after creating a bulleted list you decide to change the type of bullets used, first of all select the list and then click the down arrow to the right of the bullet command. Here, you can select from all the different bullet types available.

Creating A Numbered List

Creating a numbered list in Word is very similar to creating a bulleted list, except you click on the numbered list command instead.

As you've probably guessed, one of the differences between bulleted lists and numbered lists is that numbered lists are sequential. That is, position in the list matters. If you want to, you can change the number that the list starts at. To do that, select the numbered list and click the down arrow to the right of the numbered list button and then select Set Numbering Value.

In the Set Numbering Value dialogue box, amend the Set Value To to be the starting number of the list.

Exercise 12- How To Insert A Table In Word

In addition to using tables to present tabular data in a Microsoft Word document, you might also use a table to align blocks of text or other objects. To insert a table, click Insert > Tables > Table.

The panel that is displayed gives a representation of the tables that you could insert. In the image, I've hovered over the square that lies in the third column and fourth row. Clicking on that square, therefore, will insert a table with three columns and four rows. Indeed, as you hover over different squares, Word tells you at the top of the panel how many rows and columns your table will have. When you find a square that corresponds to the number of rows and columns you need, click on it and the table will be inserted into your document. The table is placed where your cursor is currently positioned. Another way of adding a table to your Word document is to use the Insert Table option on the above panel.

In the Insert Table window that appears, you can specify the number of rows and columns you want your table to have, and you can also specify: Fixed Column Width - if you leave this at auto, Word will decide how wide your columns will be. AutoFit to Contents - the columns will adjust to fit the contents that are inserted into table cells in a column. AutoFit to Window - use this if a table that you have pasted into your document from another application (for example Excel) exceeds the documents margins. Remember dimensions for new tables checking this box defaults the settings you apply here to all new tables you insert.

Exercise 13- How To Delete A Table In Word

There is a very quick way to delete a table in Microsoft Word 2010, that doesn't even involve selecting the table first. Place the cursor in a cell in the table and notice that the Table Tools contextual tab appears in the ribbon. Click Layout > Rows & Columns > Delete > Delete Table.

Doing this removes the table from your document. Another way to delete a table is to first of all select it and then delete it. There are two ways of selecting a table: using commands in the ribbon and using the right click menu. Let's look at using the ribbon first. Place the cursor into any cell in the table and notice that the Table Tools contextual tab appears in the ribbon. Click Layout > Table

> Select > Select Table.

When you select a whole table, all the cells within are highlighted. Pressing the backspace key now will delete the table, whereas pressing the delete key will simply delete all the contents of the table. The other way of selecting a table is to right click anywhere in the table > Select > Table, and then proceed as above.

Exercise 14 - How To Print In Word

With the introduction of Backstage View in Microsoft Word 2010, the process of printing out documents now appears very much different. To see the printing options available, click the File tab > Print. The following panel will be displayed (click on the image to enlarge it).

Using this panel you can control:

Copies - how many copies of your document will get printed. Printer - your default printer will appear here, but you can select others that are on your network. What To Print - initially set to Print All Pages but you can change this setting to print a selection of pages, print the current page only or print a custom range of pages. Print One Sided - this is the default, but you can change that to print on both sides of the page. Collated - this setting tells Word how to collate multiple prints that you request. Do you want all page 1s printing first, followed by all page 2s etc. Or do you want an entire copy of the document printing before moving onto the next copy? Portrait Orientation - the default is portrait orientation, but you can change this to landscape orientation. Letter - the letter setting allows you to select from a set of commonly used letter sizes, for example, legal, executive, A3 etc. Margins - you can alter the size of the margins that are used on your document here. 1 Page Per Sheet - this is the initial default, but you can change it to be 2, 4, 6, 8 or 16.

Print Preview In Word

The old way of presenting a print preview of your document has become obsolete. Now, the print preview appears to the right of the print settings. You can page through your document by clicking on the page scroller at the bottom (the left and right arrows), you can jump to a particular page by typing it into the input box and pressing Enter, and you can also use the page up and page down keys on your keyboard to navigate the document.

Changing Printer Properties In Word

Sprinkled throughout the Microsoft Word 2010 user interface are links that perform commands. It's odd to see links instead of buttons on a modern interface, but I'm sure Microsoft know what they're doing! On the print panel, there are links to change the Printer Properties (at the top) and also the page setup (at the bottom).

Exercise 15 - How To Save Your Document In Word

It's a good idea to save your document as soon as you create it in Microsoft Word and then keep saving it periodically as you make changes. It's no fun to make drastic changes to a document, have your PC crash and then lose all your hard work. Fortunately, saving documents is easy. As soon as you create a new document, you can save it by pressing ctrl-s. If you haven't yet saved the document (and you won't have if you're just in the process of creating it), the Save As dialogue box will open. Give the document a name in the File name box (the text here is highlighted straight away, so as soon as you start typing, it will overwrite the current default name), and navigate to a location on your hard drive where you'd like to save the document. Click Save.

Once you've done the initial save, all incremental saves can be performed in a split second by pressing ctrl-s. You won't be bothered again by the Save As dialogue box, unless you choose to rename your document by clicking the File tab > Save As.

Autosaving In Word
In addition to the manual saving you can do in Word, there is also the Autosave function that will prevent you from losing changes. This feature is a godsend for those people who save their documents infrequently. The autosave function instructs Word to save your document after a certain amount of time has elapsed. You can configure the autosave settings by clicking the File tab > Word > Options > Save.