Microsoft Word Basics

What we are going to do now is have a look at Microsoft Word and a little bit of an overview on the main screen when you log in. Now, Microsoft Word is a word processor, so it can handle information, you can make newsletters, calendars, all sorts of bits and pieces. When you first log in, you are going to get a screen like this and this is the main overview screen. So to start with you have got some templates along the top here. The first one is a blank document. So if you just want to start from scratch, that's the one. So, often if you are creating a document for the first time, using the blank document feature is about the best one you can do. There's then a tour, which is worth doing. So if you go through the tour it will tell you all the bits and pieces you need to know. So when you first go into this I definitely recommend that you do that and as part of this course, again, I definitely recommend you get the... Go through the tour on Word.

The next template is one where you can take notes. So if you are at a meeting and you want to just take notes, you can create a format there and you can create a blank copy and write it, print it off, write it in with a pen, or you can literally type as you go. You can do that on an iPad or a tablet or your computer. The next template is if you wanted to create a calendar. This is a standard calendar, you can set the dates of when you want it, you can do just one month, weekly, whatever you want to do there. The next one along here is for creating a job CV. So, this is, just gives you the basic ideas on how to create that job CV. And the following ones here are covering letters and also other forms you might well need. So if you go, just go through, these are just some examples across the top. So, definitely when you first go into Word, have a look at all these. And if you look on the very top, it says more templates, you can click on that and see even more templates.

Now, as you look down the page here, these are recent folders of documents that you have created. So here you can see they have got the W symbol, which would indicate that they are a Word file. So these are all the recent and again at the bottom there are more documents here, so you can create and have a look back even further. The pinned ones are where you can pin a document, so if you want to keep something and use it quite regularly, you can pin that and put it there, and also, people can share. The big thing with Microsoft Word and the Microsoft Office suite is you can share documents very, very easily. So, if you are starting working as a workgroup, then you can have all the documents in one place where everyone can access them. This is useful if you maybe even just work in the local village group or a club, you can have the key people involved and being able to see all the same documents. Now, when you are navigating through Word, there's the doc templates on the top and the documents here.

Then down here this is what's called the home page, and then there's the new button. So if we click that it comes up with, very similar to the ribbon across the top of the home page, but there are even more templates. So these are all the main templates on here. As you see, there's also one's with pictures in, there's newsletters, menus, all sorts of things, even create catalogues if you are needing to do it for a company. Once you have looked at that, if you then move across to the recent, now these are recent in more detail. As you see here, there are a lot more files on here that have been dealt with through this computer. The shared are in shared files. On this particular one, there aren't any shared files on here, but if there were they would open up there.

And the final one is open, now this will be where all of the information is. So this is like the finder or the task explorer on the Windows machine and from here you can look at where the folders are. So, if you have got stuff on the OneDrive, it will be there, or on your Mac, it will be here, so this will pop up. And here we got the downloads file, so if we wanted to find a file on here, we can look right here. We can say this one here if we want and we open it up. So by clicking on that Word example, we have opened up the document and then we see it here. You see it's just an example page here. And now we will look in a little bit more detail how to edit these later on. If we go up to the top, what we can do is close that down and we can decide whether you wanna save it or not. So yes, we will just save that one for now. And then along here is the icon for Word, we can go back into exactly where we left off.

Now, with Microsoft Word, if you want to interact with other people and link, you will need to log in. We are not actually logged in on this type one here, which is why we have then got this exclamation symbol here, because we are not linked in with OneDrive at the minute. But once you have got your account set up, you can log in directly and access all of the files. Now the final menu we will look at is this one along the very top here. So this menu is very similar to all the programs. If you start off with the Word one, and it will tell you about the programs. We click on that, it tells you the version of Word that we are working with, and any other information about the actual program. Lower down here we have got preferences, so here we can look at all the preferences we can set within Word, all the basics on here, but there are lots of others that we can look. The general ones, you see is lots of pre-done settings we can adjust.

Lower down we can quit it, we can end it, we can sign out. The file section is where we can create new documents, documents from templates. We can also use the icons from the home button. We can share documents as well, restrict permissions. Edit, there are lots of fields here. Now, what I'm looking at now is these fields and I have not got a document open, which is why some of these documents here... These lines here are greyed out. So, we'll have a look at those in more detail later on. But if I just run through here, you can see all the other settings that are there, there's lots and lots of them, and you go away right the way along to the help one at the end. Now on the help one at the end, you can put search terms in here. So if you're not sure how to do something on Word, you can put the question in there and there will be an answer done by Microsoft, hopefully, to actually solve the problem you have got.

The final one just on here is this one here, check for updates. As with any program, there's likely to be updated, so what you do is you click that and this box will appear, you will connect directly to the Internet, and what it's doing is it is seeing whether there are any latest updates for Word. And often when it updates, it won't only update for Word, it might update for all of your Microsoft Suite programs. So what it's saying here is all of the apps are updated, but the box in the bottom here says automatically update, so we have that ticked. So automatically while this is being used, it is checking to see if there's an update. And if there is an update, it will automatically upload it to the system. Sometimes when it does an update, it needs to reboot the program, which means you have to shut it down and restart it. But you will be prompted if that does have to happen. So, to exit Word, you can either just shut it down but leave the programme still running, either just with either the X on the Windows machine on the right-hand side or the red dot on the Mac machine. If not, go to Word, quit Word, and that will shut the program down and then it's completely closed down, and you are back to your desktop.