A basic guide to Microsoft Word (part 1)

Microsoft's once simple word processor, Word, is now capable of producing professional-looking documents with proper formatting.

In part I of this two-part feature, we give new users a good grounding in the basics of using Word, with plenty of step-by-step advice. We will demonstrate features in Word XP, which is included with Office XP and Works Suite 8.

Microsoft Works 8 uses its own word processor, without many of the advanced tools of Word. Most of the tips discussed here can also be used in OpenOffice Writer as many of the toolbar icons and menus are the same as Word.

Get started
To make the examples here easier to follow, we have created a document full of sample text to practise with, which you can download from Computeractive's website.

It is a plain text file with no formatting, so it will download in a matter of seconds, even on a dial-up internet connection. But you can use some text of your own if you wish.

Don’t worry if the text does not appear to make sense; it is a standard document that has been used by printers for hundreds of years to fill pages with text. It is called Lorem Ipsum, and it’s useful because it can be used to fill templates with realistic text to test templates, formats and styles.

Seen from all angles
Word can display a document in one of four ways: Normal, Web Layout, Print Layout and Outline.

Normal displays all of the text with line breaks – faint dotted lines that show where each physical page ends.

Web Layout fits documents to the width of the screen and can be useful for making the most of a large monitor.

Print Layout shows the whole page as it would appear printed on a sheet of paper, while Outline is used for planning documents.

Text is arranged by section headings, so it is easy to see the structure of the document.

The view can either be changed by clicking on the View menu and selecting the desired option, or by clicking on one of the small buttons to the left of the horizontal scroll bar. They are arranged in the same order as the list of views above.

Start Word, open the File menu and select New. The Task Pane should appear on the right-hand side of the screen with the New Document options.

Creating a blank document is as simple as clicking on the Blank Document option in the New section in the Task Pane.

To save time when creating a new document, Word uses documents that already contain formatting and sometimes text, called templates. They are saved in a special format so when the document is saved, the template is not changed and is ready to use again.

Several templates are installed with Word, and Microsoft Works Suite comes with a wide selection as well.

There are also a lot of templates available on the Microsoft Office website.

To use a template, click on it and then on the Download Now button. Accept the licence agreement and Internet Explorer will download an extra component to organise templates.

If this is interrupted by the pop-up blocker in Internet Explorer, click on the yellow bar below the address bar and select Install ActiveX control.

Click on the Install button in the window that appears and then continue. The template will be installed on your computer and ready for use.