A basic guide to Microsoft Word (part two)

In part I of this feature, we covered the basics of formatting a Word document. This concluding part will look at how to add indexes, footnotes and import information from other documents, as well as show you how to track changes made by different people.

Sample text to experiment with
To save you the trouble of creating a document with which to try our tips, we have put a document of sample text on Computeractive's website. There is no reason why you cannot use your own text, but this should save time.

This text is called Lorem Ipsum, and it’s used by typesetters to test styles and formatting on the page.

Because it’s not English, the spelling and grammar checkers in Word will underline every single word. If this is distracting, turn off both tools on the Spelling & Grammar tab in Options under the Tools menu.

Once the text document has been downloaded, start Word and open the file by clicking on the File menu and selecting Open.

Find the document and open it. Most of the tasks that are going to be explained require the documents to be saved in the Word file format, so now is a good time to do that.

Click on the File menu again and this time select Save As. Navigate to a suitable location and select Word Document in the Save as type menu.

Headers and footers
Headers and footers can give a professional feel to documents and are essential for essays, where the student’s name and page number must be shown on each page.

Click on the View menu and select Header and Footer. The main text of the document becomes greyed out and a box appears at the top called Header, along with a special toolbar that is used to insert page numbers and the date and time of the document.

The text in these boxes is used on every page and text entered using the buttons is automatically updated.

The Insert AutoText includes many commonly used methods, including “Page X of Y” to show the total number of pages.

The fourth button from the right switches the view from the Header to the Footer and vice-versa.

Students also often need to attribute quotes with footnotes and endnotes. Footnotes include information in a space at the bottom of the page, while endnotes are placed at the end of the document.

To insert either of these, click on the Insert menu, then Reference and Footnote. Select whether a footnote or endnote is required and the list format required. Footnote numbering can be sequential throughout the document or can start afresh on each page.