Download and use a free word processor

To download Abiword, first type www.abisource.com/download into your web browser or click on the link above. When the web page is displayed, click on the words Microsoft Windows in the pale blue rectangle. A dialogue box then asks whether you wish to run or save the file. Click Save, and on the left-hand side of the Save As dialogue box, click Desktop as the destination for the downloaded file. Click Save to start the download.

Using a broadband internet connection, the download should take no more than a couple of minutes, after which the Close button can be clicked to dismiss the Download dialogue box. Close the web browser by clicking the X in its top right-hand corner and then locate the downloaded file on the Windows Desktop. It will be called something like ‘Abiword-setup-2.6.6.exe’, but don’t worry if the full name is not visible. To install Abiword into Windows, double-click the downloaded file. If you receive an Open File Security Warning, click Run to ignore it – it’s quite safe.

When asked to select a language, click OK for English, and then click Next to begin the Abiword Setup wizard. On the first screen, click Next, and on the second screen scroll through the list of optional components to locate the English dictionary, which is called ‘en-GB English’. To scroll downwards, click on the chevron at the bottom of the scroll bar, and to scroll the other way if you overshoot, use the chevron at the top of the scroll bar. Click to place a tick in the box next to en-GB English and then click the Next button at the bottom of the dialogue box.

Click Next, then Next again, and then click Install to begin the installation. Once the installation has completed, click Next followed by Finish to run Abiword for the first time. When Abiword starts it automatically loads a sample file containing release notes about the program. These are mainly legalese and don’t contain anything that should interest you at this point. To close Abiword, click the red X in the top right-hand corner or click on the File menu and then click Quit. If asked whether you wish to save any changes to the document before closing, click No.

You no longer need the setup file on the Windows Desktop because Abiword is now permanently stored in the programs section of Windows. Delete the setup file by right-clicking it and then selecting Delete from the menu that appears. To start Abiword now, and on future occasions, in Windows XP, click on Start, point to All Programs, point to Abiword Word Processor and then click on Abiword 2.6. To start Abiword in Windows Vista, click on the Start button and point to All Programs, then click Abiword Word Processor and then select Abiword 2.6.

Whenever AbiWord starts, it displays a blank untitled document ready for you to start typing. As with all word processors, you don’t have to worry about watching the end of the line because Abiword automatically carries any word that won’t fit on the current line onto the next one. If you wish to start a new line before reaching the end of the current line, just press the Enter key. If you wish to start a new paragraph or create a blank line, press the Enter key a second time.

Along the top of the Abiword window are two toolbars. The top one is the standard toolbar, which contains options that may already be familiar for opening and saving documents and for cutting and pasting text and pictures. In addition there’s a backwards-pointing arrow for undoing editing mistakes, an ABC button that starts the spelling checker and a zoom control that determines the size at which characters are displayed on the screen. The zoom control does not affect the size of characters when printed.

The formatting toolbar contains controls that change the appearance of text on the screen and on the printed page. The leftmost control is a dropdown menu that applies a style to the current paragraph (the one with the text cursor in it). Styles are mainly used for headings and other advanced features in complex documents. When all that’s required is to change the text size or switch to a different font, the second and third dropdown menus are used. Usefully, the fonts menu displays not only the name of the font, but also what it looks like.

To the right of the three dropdown menus are several buttons that change the appearance of text by applying enhancements such as bold, italics, underlining and colour, or by automatically placing bullet points or numbers at the beginning of each line. The remaining buttons control whether text aligns with the right or left margins or is centred on each line. To see how formatting works, press Enter to place the cursor at the beginning of a line. Click the bold icon (the black capital A) and type your first name, then click the bold icon again and type your second name.

As you will have worked out, clicking the bold icon the first time turns on bold text and clicking it the second time turns it off. All the formatting controls can be used in this way but most people prefer to use them retrospectively by selecting which parts of the text need to have formatting applied. For example, if you wished to emphasise the word ‘good’ in the line ‘Every good boy deserves favour’, you would use the mouse to place the cursor before the ‘g’ and then hold down the left mouse button while dragging the cursor to the end of the word.

Once text has been selected and is highlighted in blue, you can click any of the formatting controls to apply a format to it. If you don’t like the result, click the same control again to remove the formatting. If desired, several formats can be applied to the same selection. Try it now by applying both bold and italics to the word ‘good’. When you’ve done this, click anywhere on the page away from the highlighted word to deselect it.

If you’re not already a user of word processors, you can teach yourself the basics by writing simple documents of your own and experimenting with the standard and formatting toolbars. To take things a stage further, press function key F1 to summon the Abiword Help system. When the Help page is displayed, click the Tutorial link in the black panel on the left of the screen for an introduction to Abiword’s main features, or use the How To link for step-by-step guides to performing some of the more advanced operations.

To save a document for future use, click the File menu, and then click Save. This displays a standard Windows dialogue box for file saving. Click in the File name panel and type a name for your document and then click Save to store it on disk. The document will be stored in Abiword’s own unique format. But because this Workshop is as much about using Abiword as a substitute for Microsoft Word, you also need to know how to save documents in a format compatible with Word so that other people can open and edit them.

To save a document in Word format, click the File menu, and then click Save As. Type a name for the document but don’t yet click Save. Instead, click in the Save as type panel and select Microsoft Word (.doc) from the dropdown list. Now click Save. To load a saved file, click on the File menu and then on Open. Select the desired file and click the Open button. If the file you wish to open is a Word document, you won’t be able to see its name unless you use the dropdown list in the Save as type panel, and then select Microsoft Word (.doc).