Introduction to Microsoft Word

Lesson 1

Introduction To Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a widely used commercial word processor designed by Microsoft. Microsoft Word is a component of the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. It was initially launched in 1983 and has since been revised numerous times. Microsoft Word is available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Microsoft Word is often called simply Word or MS Word.

Basically, MS Word is a word processing software. It falls under the category of application software. It is used to create and edit personal and business documents such as letters, reports etc. The default file extension of MS Word 2007 is .docx. Microsoft Word offers several features to ease document creation and editing, including:

  • WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) display: It ensures that everything displayed on screen appears the same way when printed or moved to another format or program.
  • Spell check: Word features a built-in dictionary for spell checking; misspelled words are marked with a red squiggly underline. Sometimes, Word auto-corrects an obviously misspelled word or phrase.
  • Text-level features such as bold, underline and italic.

Given below is the basic Window that appears when we open the MS Word:

 

File Menu: File menu contains all the options related to an open file.

To create a new file: Just type in the document area. The text insertion point is the place where the cursor stands and the document area is the place where we can type our text.

To Open an existing file: Click on File menu and select Open or just press CTRL + O, a window will pop up, locate your file in the computer and click Open button.

Save the Current file: Save the file from the File tab or click on the Floppy sign above the File tab or press CTRL + S. A window will pop up, locate the path where you want to save the file, give a valid name to your file and click Save button. This pop-up window will appear only once, when you are saving your file very first time, thereafter just press CTRL + S.

Save As: The ‘Save As’ option under File menu provides us to save our file in different formats or to save our existing file with different name. We can choose our desired format and then save the file.

 

VIEW MENU: View menu allow us to view our document in different ways.

Print Layout: To go to the Print Layout, we need to click on the file tab and then the Print option. The various print menus as displayed below:

The Print Preview is show in the right pane of the window.

Here, we can select the type of Orientation we need our document to be printed on. Two orientations are available –

  1. Portrait
  2. Landscape

Full Screen: To view a document in full screen mode, we need to follow the given below steps:

  1. Click on the View tab
  2. Click on the “Full screen reading” button

 Zooming: Zooming i.e. Zoom-in and Zoom-out enlarges and reduces respectively the size of the texts.

Go to – View > Zoom

In the above given image, dragging the control at the bottom right, to the left reduces the text size and dragging to the right increases the text size.

Some of the important shortcuts:

  • Open a file – CTRL + O
  • Create a new document – CTRL + N
  • Close a document – CTRL + W
  • Save a file – CTRL + S
  • Copy – CTRL + C
  • Paste –CTRL + V
  • Cut – CTRL + X
  • Undo – CTRL + Z
  • Redo or repeat an action – CTRL + Y