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MS Word Basics
We will discuss how to get started with MS Word . We will understand how to start a MS
Word application in simple steps. Assuming you have Microsoft Office installed in your PC,
to start the Word application, follow these steps:

Step 1: Click the Start button.

Step 2: Click the All Programs option from the menu.

Step 3: Search for Microsoft Office from the submenu and click it.

Step 4: Search for Microsoft Word from the submenu and click it.
This will launch the Microsoft Word 2010 application and you will see the following
window.
 Word 2010
Word ─ Explore Window

In this chapter, we will understand how to explore Window in Word 2010. Following is the
basic window which you get when you start the Word application. Let us understand the
various important parts of this window.

File Tab
The File tab replaces the Office button from Word 2007. You can click it to check the
Backstage view. This is where you come when you need to open or save files, create
new documents, print a document, and do other file-related operations.

Quick Access Toolbar

This you will find just above the File tab. This is a convenient resting place for the
mostfrequently used commands in Word. You can customize this toolbar based on your
comfort.
 Word 2010
Word ─ Backstage View

Ribbon

Ribbon contains commands organized in three components:

• Tabs: These appear across the top of the Ribbon and contain groups of related
commands. Home, Insert, Page Layout are examples of ribbon tabs.

• Groups: They organize related commands; each group name appears below the
group on the Ribbon. For example, group of commands related to fonts or group of
commands related to alignment, etc.

• Commands: Commands appear within each group as mentioned above.

Title bar
This lies in the middle and at the top of the window. Title bar shows the program and
document titles.

Rulers
Word has two rulers - a horizontal ruler and a vertical ruler. The horizontal ruler appears
just beneath the Ribbon and is used to set margins and tab stops. The vertical ruler
appears on the left edge of the Word window and is used to gauge the vertical position of
elements on the page.

Help
The Help Icon can be used to get word related help anytime you like. This provides nice
tutorial on various subjects related to word.

Zoom Control
Zoom control lets you zoom in for a closer look at your text. The zoom control consists of
a slider that you can slide left or right to zoom in or out; you can click the + buttons to
increase or decrease the zoom factor.

View Buttons
The group of five buttons located to the left of the Zoom control, near the bottom of the
screen, lets you switch through the Word's various document views.

• Print Layout view: This displays pages exactly as they will appear when printed.

Full Screen Reading view: This gives a full screen view of the document.

• Web Layout view: This shows how a document appears when viewed by a Web
browser, such as Internet Explorer.
 • Outline view: This lets you work with outlines established using Word’s standard
heading styles.

• Draft view: This formats text as it appears on the printed page with a few
exceptions. For example, headers and footers aren't shown. Most people prefer this
mode.

Document Area
This is the area where you type. The flashing vertical bar is called the insertion point and
it represents the location where text will appear when you type.

Status Bar
This displays the document information as well as the insertion point location. From left to
right, this bar contains the total number of pages and words in the document, language,
etc.

You can configure the status bar by right-clicking anywhere on it and by selecting or
deselecting options from the provided list.

Dialog Box Launcher

This appears as very small arrow in the lower-right corner of many groups on the Ribbon.
Clicking this button opens a dialog box or task pane that provides more options about the
group.

In this chapter, we will discuss the Backstage View in Word 2010. The Backstage view
was introduced in Word 2010. This acts as the central place for managing your documents.
The backstage view helps in creating new documents, saving and opening documents,
printing and sharing documents, and so on.

Getting to the Backstage View is easy: Just click the File tab, located in the upper-left
corner of the Word Ribbon. If you already do not have any opened document, then you
will see a window listing down all the recently opened documents as follows:
If you already have an opened document, then it will display a window showing detail
about the opened document as shown below. Backstage view shows three columns when
you select most of the available options in the first column.
The first column of the backstage view will have following options:

Option Description

Save
If an existing document is opened, it will be saved as is, otherwise it will
display a dialogue box asking for the document name.

Save As A dialogue box will be displayed asking for document name and document
type, by default it will save in word 2010 format with extension .docx.

Open This option is used to open an existing word document.

Close This option is used to close an open document.

Info This option displays information about the opened document.

Recent This option lists down all the recently opened documents
 New This option is used to open a new document.

Print This option is used to print an open document.

Save & This option will save an open document and will display options to send the
Send document using email, etc.

Help This option is used to get the required help about Word 2010.

Options This option is used to set various option related to Word 2010.

Exit Use this option to close the document and exit.

Document Information
Document Properties

When you click the Info option available in the first column, it displays various properties
in the third column of the backstage view. These properties include the document size, the
number of pages in the document, the total number of words in the document, the name
of the author etc.

You can also edit various properties by clicking on the property value and if the property
is editable, then it will display a text box where you can add your text like title, tags,
comments, Author.

Exit Backstage View

It is simple to exit from the Backstage View. Either click on the File tab or press the Esc
button on the keyboard to go back to the working mode of Word.
 Word 2010
Word ─ Entering Text

In this chapter, let us discuss how to enter text with Microsoft Word. Let us see how easy
it is to enter text in a Word document. We assume you know that when you start Word, it
displays a new document by default as shown below:

Document area is the area where you type your text. The flashing vertical bar is called the
insertion point and it represents the location where the text will appear when you type.
keep the cursor at the text insertion point and start typing the text. We typed only two
words "Hello Word" as shown below. The text appears to the left of the insertion point as
you type:
 Word 2010
Word 2010 ─ Move Around

The following are the two important points that will help you while typing:

• You do not need to press Enter to start a new line. As the insertion point reaches
the end of the line, Word automatically starts a new one. You will need to press
Enter, to add a new paragraph.

• When you want to add more than one space between words, use the Tab key
instead of the spacebar. This way you can properly align text by using the
proportional fonts.

In this chapter, we will discuss how to move around in Word 2010. Word provides a number
of ways to move around a document using the mouse and the keyboard.

To begin with, let us create some sample text. To create a sample text, there is a short cut
available. Open a new document and type =rand() and press Enter. Word will create the
following content for you:
Moving with Mouse

You can easily move the insertion point by clicking in your text anywhere on the screen.
There may be instances when a document is big and you cannot see a place where you
want to move. Here, you will have to use the scroll bars, as shown in the following
screenshot:
You can scroll through your document by rolling your mouse wheel, which is equivalent to
clicking the up-arrow or down-arrow buttons in the scroll bar.

Moving with Scroll Bars

As shown in the above screenshot, there are two scroll bars: one for moving vertically
within the document, and one for moving horizontally. Using the vertical scroll bar, you
may:

• Move upward by one line by clicking the upward-pointing scroll arrow.

• Move downward by one line by clicking the downward-pointing scroll arrow.

• Move one next page, using the next page button (footnote).

• Move one previous page, using the previous page button (footnote).

• Use the Browse Object button to move through the document, going from one
chosen object to the next.
Moving with Keyboard

The following keyboard commands, used for moving around your document, also move
the insertion point:

Keystroke Where the Insertion Point Moves

Forward one character

Back one character

Up one line

Down one line

PageUp To the previous screen

PageDown To the next screen

Home To the beginning of the current line

End To the end of the current line

You can move word by word or paragraph by paragraph. You would have to hold down the
Ctrl key while pressing an arrow key, which moves the insertion point as described here:
Key Combination Where the Insertion Point Moves

Ctrl + To the next word

Ctrl + To the previous word

To the start of the previous paragraph

Ctrl +

To the start of the next paragraph

Ctrl +

Ctrl + PageUp To the previous browse object

Ctrl + PageDown To the next browse object

Ctrl + Home To the beginning of the document

Ctrl + End To the end of the document

Shift + F5 To the last place you changed in your document.

Moving with Go To Command

Press the F5 key to use the Go To command. This will display a dialogue box where you
will have various options to reach to a particular page.

Normally, we use the page number, the line number or the section number to go directly
to a particular page and finally press the Go To button.
 Word 2010
Word 2010 ─ Save Document

In this chapter, we will discuss how to save a document in Word.

Saving New Document

Once you are done with typing in your new Word document, it is time to save your
document to avoid losing work you have done on a Word document. Following are the
steps to save an edited Word document:

Step 1: Click the File tab and select the Save As option.

Step 2: Select a folder where you will like to save the document, Enter the file name which
you want to give to your document and Select the Save As option, by default it is the
.docx format.
Step 3: Finally, click on the Save button and your document will be saved with the entered
name in the selected folder.

Saving New Changes

There may be an instance when you open an existing document and edit it partially or
completely, or an instance where you may like to save the changes in between editing of
the document. If you want to save this document with the same name, then you can use
either of the following simple options:
 • Just press the Ctrl + S keys to save the changes.

• Optionally you can click on the floppy icon available at the top left corner and just
above the File tab. This option will also help you save the changes.

• You can also use the third method to save the changes, which is the Save option
available just above the Save As option as shown in the above screenshot.

If your document is new and it was never saved so far, then with either of the three options,
Word will display a dialogue box to let you select a folder, and enter the document name
as explained in case of saving new document.
 Word 2010
Word 2010 ─ Opening a Document

In this chapter, we will discuss how to open a document in Word 2010.

Opening New Document

A new, blank document always opens when you start Microsoft Word. Suppose you want
to start another new document while you are working on another document, or you closed
an already opened document and want to start a new document. Here are the steps to
open a new document:

Step 1: Click the File tab and select the New option.

Step 2: When you select the New option from the first column, it will display a list of
templates in the second column. Double-click on the Blank document; this is the first
option in the template list. We will discuss the other templates available in the list in the
following chapters.

You should have your blank document as shown below. The document is now ready for
you to start typing your text.

You can use a shortcut to open a blank document anytime. Try using the Ctrl + N keys
and you will see a new blank document similar to the one in the above screenshot.
Opening Existing Document

There may be a situation when you open an existing document and edit it partially or
completely. Follow the steps given below to open an existing document:

Step 1: Click the File tab and select the Open option.

Step 2: This will display the following file Open dialog box. This lets you navigate
through different folders and files, and also lets you select a file which you want to open.
Step 3: Finally, locate and select a file which you want to open and click the small triangle
available on the Open button to open the file. You will have different options to open the
file, but simply use the Open option.
This will open your selected file. You can use the Open Read-Only option if you are willing
just to read the file and you have no intention to modify, i.e., edit the file. Other options
can be used for advanced usage.