Coffs Harbour Writers' Writing

Working with MS Word

This document is written for our workshop so you will be looking for misspelt words to correct, formatting to fix and hopefully some useful titbits to absorb.

We probably all have different versions of Word to work with, so if you find your page view is different just ask for help. This version is 2010. Seemed like state of the art back then.

The basics are still the same. (I hope) I used this version for my novels, and editing, so I let’s hope nothing much has changed.

OK, here we go. To start with, you need to recognise the menu bar. We will work on this document as we go. So, let’s transfer it to our own laptops.

Hopefully you will have Word open and see a screen similar to this. (Ignore the red warning about activation.)

Now, in the top left corner you will see FILE drop down menu.

CLICK on File… Then choose NEW, then BLANK Document

Now let us visit the blog page.

Two ways to transfer information. We want the whole document, so we can LEFT click on our mouse with our cursor at start of the document. Keeping pressure on the left button, SCROLL to the end of the document. This will highlight everything in the doc. Once it is highlighted press CONTROL C 

Then return to your word doc. Press CONTROL V

You should have the doc transferred. 

The second method is to Press CONTROL A, then CONTROL C, return to your word Doc and press CONTROL V.

Ok, that is called COPY/PASTING. Vital to moving information around your document. Changing sentences, paragraphs and even chapters. 

Now we are working in word.

We need to be able to Save our work.

The drop down menu FILE has SAVE AS,

We will create a saved Doc from today. 

Choose SAVE AS and name your file as Workshop03092018, or whatever you choose.

Now we can move on. Many of you will have done this before, so bear with us. You can be looking for errors in spelling/ grammar/formatting. ;)

NExt, we want to have our document looking tidy.

We need to have the same FONT throughout.

Again there are two ways of fixing this. First the manual way. Along the top menu bar you will see a drop down menu with THEME FONTS. It will have the name of the Font in use and the size in a drop down menu next to it.

Highlight the portion of the document you want to change. Then choose the font and size you prefer.

Otherwise there is a tool, FORMAT PAINTER which allows you to highlight the font and format you prefer, and then highlight the portion you want to be the same. With a click you can ‘fix’ your font, size and formatting.

If you make a mistake, don’t stress. High up on the menu bar, next to the SAVE image (an old floppy disc image) there is a backwards facing curved arrow. This will take you back to where you were!! Vital if you accidently click ENTER while you have text highlighted.
Now, apart from FONT size and style, we have BOLD, UNDERLINE, ITALICS etc.
Further across we have HIGHLIGHT...

Now we have some text to work with, I will carry on in person. ;)

I jus t wanted something for you to edit correct, etc.