Module-1

Microsoft Office Word 2007

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Create and save a document. Accept or reject suggested revisions for spelling and grammar as you type. Change page margins. Adjust spacing by deleting any extra spaces between words or extra lines between paragraphs.

When you open Word, you see a blank document. It looks like a sheet of paper, and it takes up most of the space on the screen.

You need to get to work, but being new to Word, you may wonder how to get started. Where do you begin to type on a page? If you want to indent the first line in a paragraph, how do you do

that? If the page margins aren't how you like them, how do you change them? And how do you save what you type so that your work will not be lost when you close Word?

Let's begin by helping you get comfortable with some Word basics.

start typing

 The Ribbon at the top of the page.

 The insertion point.

Above the document, the Ribbon spans the top of Word. You use buttons and commands on the Ribbon to tell Word what you want to do.

Word waits for you to start typing. The insertion point, a blinking vertical line in the upper-left corner of the page, tells you where the content you type will appear on the page. The blank spaces to the left and above the insertion point are margins, which you'll learn more about later in the course. If you start to type now, the page will begin to fill, starting in the upper-left corner.

If you'd like to start typing further down the page instead of at the very top, press the ENTER key on your keyboard until the insertion point is where you want to type.

If you want to indent the first line you type, press the TAB key on your keyboard before you start to type. This will move the insertion point one-half inch to the right.

As you type, the insertion point moves to the right. When you get to the end of a line on the right side of the page, just continue to type. Word will move on to the next line for you as you type.

To start a new paragraph, press ENTER.

What's that?

Document with formatting marks.

 Extra paragraph mark: ENTER was pressed twice.

 Extra tab mark: TAB was pressed twice, making the second paragraph indented more than the first. Extra space between words: the SPACEBAR was pressed twice instead of once.

Imagine that you have typed a few paragraphs. The paragraphs seem very far apart, and the second paragraph starts farther to the right than the first paragraph.

You can see what's going on by looking at the formatting marks Word automatically inserts as you type. These marks are always in documents, but they are invisible until you display them.

To see formatting marks, use the Ribbon, at the top of the window. On the Home tab, in theParagraph group,

click the Show/Hide button  . Click the button again to hide formatting marks.

These marks are not just for show. You can get rid of extra spacing by deleting extra marks.

The first time you see these marks, you might wonder, "What's that?" And you might worry that formatting marks will be printed. These marks do not print — they won't be on printed pages, even when you see them on the screen.

So what are formatting marks, and what do they mean? Here are a few examples:

Word inserts a paragraph mark   each time you press ENTER to start a new paragraph. In the picture, there's an extra paragraph mark between the two paragraphs, which means that ENTER was pressed twice. This creates extra space. Deleting the extra paragraph mark will get rid of the extra space between the paragraphs.

One arrow   appears each time TAB is pressed. In the picture there is one arrow in the first paragraph and two arrows in the second paragraph, so TAB was pressed twice in the second paragraph.

Dots   show how many times you press the SPACEBAR between each word, or if you accidentally press the SPACEBAR between letters in a word. One dot is one space; two dots are two spaces. Normally there should be one space between each word. Dots, by the way, are different from periods at the ends of sentences. Periods (which you always see) are on the bottom of the line. Dots are higher up, toward the middle of the line.

In the practice you'll see how to get rid of extra space by deleting extra formatting marks.

What are those underlines in my document?

As you type, Word might on occasion insert a wavy red, green, or blue underline beneath text.

Red underline    This indicates either a possible spelling error or that Word doesn't recognize a word, such as a proper name or place. If you type a word that is correctly spelled, but Word doesn't recognize it, you can add it to Word's dictionary so that it is not underlined in the future. You'll see how in the practice.

Green underline Word thinks that grammar should be revised.

Blue underline    A word is spelled correctly but does not seem to be the correct word for the sentence. For example, you type "too," but the word should be "to."

What do you do about the underlines? Right-click an underlined word to see suggested revisions (every once in a while Word may not have any alternate spellings). Click a revision to replace the word in the document and get rid of the underlines. Note that if you print a document with these underlines, they will not show up on printed pages.

A note of caution about green and blue underlines: Word is really good at spelling, which is pretty straightforward (most of the time). But grammar and correct word usage take some judgment. If you think that you are right, and Word is wrong, you can ignore the suggested revisions and get rid of the underlines. You'll see how in the practice.

Tip    If you prefer not to stop every time you see wavy underlines, you can just ignore them as you go. When you are through, you can tell Word to check spelling and grammar all at one time. You'll learn how in the practice.

Change page margins

Click the Margins button on the Page Layout tab to change margins.

Page margins are the blank spaces around the edges of the page. There is a 1-inch (2.54 cm) page margin at the top, bottom, left, and right sides of the page. This is the most common margin width, which you might use for most of your documents.

But if you want different margins, you should know how to change them, which you can at any time. When you type a very brief letter, for example, or a recipe, an invitation, or a poem, you might like different margins.

To change margins, use the Ribbon at the top of the window. Click the Page Layout tab. In the Page Setup group, click Margins. You'll see different margin sizes, shown in little pictures (icons), along with the measurements for each of the margins.

The first margin in the list is Normal, the current margin. To get narrower margins, you would click Narrow. If you want the left and right margins to be much wider, click Wide. When you click the margin type that you want, your entire document automatically changes to the margin type you selected.

When you choose a margin, the icon for the margin you chose gets a different color background. If you click the Margins button again, that background color tells you which margin size has been set for your document.

Save your work

 To save your new document, click the Microsoft Office Button .

 Then click Save.

By now you may have a finely tuned sentence or several paragraphs of facts and figures that you would regret losing if your cat jumped on your keyboard, or if a power failure shut your computer off.

To keep your work, you have to save it, and it's never too early to do that.

Click the Microsoft Office Button  in the upper-left corner of the window. Then clickSave. A dialog box opens. A dialog box is a smaller window in which you perform some action. You use this box to tell Word where you want to store the document on your computer, and what you want to call it. You'll learn the exact steps in the practice.

After you save your document, and you continue to type, save your work as you go.

Every   Access Toolbar  in the upper-left corner of the window. Or use a keyboard shortcut to save: Press CTRL+S (hold down the CTRL key and then press S).

When you are through with the document and have saved your work, close the file. Click theMicrosoft Office

Button , and then click Close.

Tip    To find your document after you close it, look in the Recent Documents list shown in the picture. Click a document in the list to open it. You'll learn more about how to find and open a document in the practice.

Chapter – 02

Make changes to your Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

Move the insertion point around a document, using either the mouse or the keyboard, so that you can get to where you need to in order to make changes.

Select text to make revisions.

Move text by cutting and pasting.

Makes changes to your document

Documents get changed. You may make changes as you type, or after you finish the document.

To work quickly and efficiently in the document, you need to know how to move around the insertion point, which shows you where the text you type will be inserted. You can use either the mouse or the keyboard to get to where you want to make a change.

Once you get to the part of the document you want to edit, you'll need to type the new text you want to add, or select the existing text so that you can change or delete it. You can select a word, a sentence, a paragraph, or the entire document. You can also move text to a different location.

Move around the document

 Insertion point (vertical line) at the end of the second paragraph, in front of the paragraph mark.

 You can move the insertion point to the first paragraph by moving the pointer and then clicking, or by using the keyboard.

Imagine, in the picture above, that you want to type a new sentence between "civilization" and "During": "Symphonies and constellations have been named for clocks."

The insertion point (a vertical line) is at the end of the second paragraph, after the word "assistance." To type where you want to, you need to move the insertion point. There are different ways to move it.

With your mouse, move the pointer just to the left of "During," and then click to insert the insertion point. Once you start typing, the existing text moves to the right as you enter the new sentence.

OR

Press the UP ARROW key   on your keyboard to move the insertion point up one line at a time. Then press

the LEFT ARROW key   to move the insertion point left, one character at a time. Or press CTRL+LEFT ARROW to move left one word at a time.

To get a list of the keys you can use to move around the page, see the Quick Reference Card at the end of the course.

Select and delete text

The word "really" is selected.

After adding the sentence to the first paragraph, you read through the paragraph. You think the second sentence will read better if you delete the word "really."

To delete text, first select what you want to delete. You can do this by using the mouse or the keyboard.

Place your pointer over the word "really" and then double-click the word. Or click in front of "really," hold down the left mouse button, and then drag the pointer over the word.

OR

With the arrow keys on your keyboard, move the insertion point next to the text. Then hold down the SHIFT key and press the arrow key that moves the insertion point in the correct direction until all the text is selected.

Once "really" is selected, delete the word by pressing DELETE on your keyboard.

Tip    In the picture, you can see formatting marks: a dot   between each word and sentence, and a paragraph

mark   at the end of each paragraph (explained in "Get to know Word 2007 I: Create your first document"). These marks help you when you revise text. For example, you don't want to delete the space between words or sentences. One dot between each word or sentence lets you know that the spacing is okay. You'll see how to show and hide formatting marks in the practice and in the Quick Reference Card.

Move text

 Select the text you want to move.

 Click Cut.

 Place the insertion point where you want the text to appear.

 Click Paste.

Still looking at the first paragraph, you decide that the sentence you added should be the last sentence in the paragraph.

You don't have to delete the sentence and then type it again. Instead, you can move the sentence by performing a cut-and-paste operation: Cut the sentence to delete it from its current location, and then paste it into the new location.

First, you select the entire sentence, as shown in the picture (you'll learn the steps to select a sentence in the practice). Then, on the Ribbon at the top of the window, on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Cut

. Or use a keyboard shortcut to do the same thing, by pressing CTRL+X (think of the X as a scissor). (Once you start editing documents, you'll see how fast and convenient this keyboard shortcut is.)

Then you move the pointer to the end of the paragraph, where you want the sentence to appear (after the dot   formatting mark).

Finally, on the Home tab, in the Clipboard group, click Paste , or press CTRL+V to use the keyboard shortcut. The sentence is pasted in place. You can try this in the practice.

Undo changes

  Undo button on the Quick Access Toolbar.

 Actions to undo: Paste and Cut.

You've moved the sentence, but now that you look at it, you're not happy with the change. Fortunately, you don't have to go through the entire cut-and-paste process again to move the sentence back. Instead, use Undo.

On the Quick Access Toolbar at the very top of the window, click the arrow on the Undobutton  . Move the insertion point over the last two actions, Paste and Cut, and then click. This will undo the last two actions you took, and place the sentence back in its original location. Or, to use another handy keyboard shortcut, press CTRL+Z twice to do the same thing.

Use the scroll bar to review a document

 The scroll bar.

 Drag the scroll box to move up or down in the document.

 Click the scroll arrows to move up or down in the document.

Perhaps you have a long document that you'd like to read all the way through without having to continuously press the arrow keys to move the insertion point. You can do that byscrolling, using the scroll bar.

The scroll bar is on the right side of the window, as shown in the picture. To use it, click the scroll box, and then drag it up or down to move through a document without moving the insertion point. Or click the single scroll arrows at either end of the scroll bar to move up or down.

To quickly scroll by using your keyboard, press PAGE UP   to go up one screen or PAGE DOWN   to go down one screen. You can try all this in the practice.

Make your documents stand out. 

See how to change the look of your Microsoft Office Word 2007 documents.

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to: Emphasize text with bold, italic, or underline formatting.

Create bulleted and numbered lists.

Use styles to format text.

Format text and apply styles

A document in need of formatting.

In the picture is a nicely typed press release. But all the text looks the same. There are no titles or headings, no signposts to guide you through the document — nothing says, "This is important, look here."

Never fear, you can quickly change how a document looks. Emphasize text with bold, italic, or underlined formatting; create lists; and use style, a tool that helps you format a document.

Continue on to learn how to shape up your documents, so that what's on the page gets the attention it deserves.

Add emphasis

The press release announces the net income and price per share for Contoso Pharmaceuticals. You can call attention to this important information by adding emphasis with bold, italic, or underlined formatting. You do this by clicking a button or by using a simple keystroke.

Select the text you want to call attention to, and then on the Ribbon, on the Home tab, in the Font group, choose

how to format the text. For example, click Bold  (you can do the same thing by pressing CTRL+B). This kind of formatting is especially handy when you want to change the format of just a few characters or words in the body of a document.

If you decide that bold doesn't look right, it's easy to undo. Immediately after you make the text bold, on

the Quick Access Toolbar at the very top of the window, click the Undo button. Or select the text and

click Bold  again.

You can also change the font color to make the text stand out even more. Select the text, and then, on

the Home tab, in the Font group, point to Font Color . Click the arrow, and move the insertion point over the colors. You get a preview in the document of how each color will look. When you see a color you like, click it.

In the practice at the end of the lesson, you'll make text italic and underlined.

Click Play to see how to format text as bold and to change the font color.

Note that in the animation you'll see formatting marks: a dot   between each word and sentence, and a

paragraph mark   at the end of each paragraph. These marks help you see what's going on when you type. For example, they let you see if SPACEBAR was pressed more than once between words. You'll see how to show and hide formatting marks later on in the lesson.

Quickly add some style

"Press Release" should stand out and announce what the document is about.

You could add bold or italic formatting for emphasis, change the font size, and then change the font color. But instead of doing all these steps separately, you can apply Quick Styles, ready-made sets of formatting that you can use to change font, font size, or font color with one click. You can easily format titles and headings, for example, by using Quick Styles.

To add a style, select the text you want to change. Then, on the Ribbon, on the  Home tab, in the Styles group, place the pointer over a style. You can see how a style will look in your document just by pointing to it, without having to click it.

If you don't see the style that you want, click the More  button to expand the Quick Styles gallery. When you see a style that suits you, click it.

You don't have to worry about making mistakes when you select a style. You can always change the style to another by using these same steps, or you can delete formatting and styles. You'll see how in the practice.

Click Play to see how to apply title and heading styles.

Make a list

The press release points out some reasons for the strong quarter. This text would stand out better if formatted as a list.

You can create numbered or bulleted lists to call attention to certain points or to show step-by-step instructions.

Select the text you want to make into a list. Then, on the Home tab, in the Paragraphgroup, click either Bullets

 or Numbering .

Word can also automatically create lists as you type. You'll see how in the practice.

Tip    To see different bullet or number styles you can select, click the arrow on Bullets orNumbering.

Click Play to see how to make selected text into a bulleted list.

When you need more (or less) space

You can adjust how much space is between lines of text. If you'd like more or less space between lines throughout a document, or in a selected area of text, such as in a letter address, it's easy to change the spacing.

To change the line spacing for an entire document, you need to select all the text in the document by pressing CTRL+A. To change line spacing for a single paragraph, you can just place the insertion point inside the text; you don't have to select the text.

Then, on the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click Line Spacing . A check mark in the list tells you what the current line spacing is. Click the new line spacing you want.

Click Play to see how different line spacing will look in the press release.

Tip    If you end up with too much space between paragraphs, look for extra paragraph marks in between paragraphs. Delete the extra paragraph marks to get rid of the extra space. To show or hide formatting marks, on

the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click the Show/Hide button.

Apply a style extravaganza

The press release is in good shape. It has a title and headings, bold formatting with a different font color to call out the net income, and a nicely formatted list.

As a last step, take a look at Quick Style sets. These are sets of styles that can dramatically change the look of the entire document with one click. Each set includes styles for different heading levels, body text, quotes, and titles, all designed to work together.

The Quick Style sets, while changing the look of the document, do not change the type of formatting or styles already applied. For example, a title style will be replaced by a title style; it will not be replaced by, say, a Heading 1 style.

To see how your document would look with a Quick Style set, on the Home tab, in theStyles group, click Change Styles, and then click Style Set.

Move your pointer over the styles in the list. As the pointer rests on each style set in the list, you can see the changes in the document. If you see a set that you like, click it. For example, you could try the  Modern set for this press release.

In the practice you'll try this out, and you'll see how to change the colors and fonts in a style set with one-click selections.

Tip    If you apply different colors and fonts to a Quick Style set, you can reuse your changes again and again by saving them as your own Quick Style set. And if you’d like to make a Quick Style set the style for all your new documents, you can do that too. See how in the Quick Reference Card.

Have you heard the word?

It's time to get up to speed with Microsoft Office Word 2007. Learn the best ways to use the new Ribbon, get a handle on finding popular commands, and understand what the new file format does for you

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Work with the Ribbon — the new feature that makes Word easier than ever before. Find everyday, common commands you need to do your job.

Use the new file format for Word in the way that's best for you.

Get to know the Ribbon

The new Ribbon spans the top of Word.

When you first open Word 2007, you may be surprised by its new look. Most of the changes are in the Ribbon, the area that spans the top of Word.

The Ribbon brings the most popular commands to the forefront, so you don't have to hunt in various parts of the program for things you do all the time.

Why the change? To make your work easier and faster. The Ribbon was thoroughly researched and designed from users' experiences so that commands are in the optimal position.

This lesson will tell you more about the Ribbon and how to work with it.

The Ribbon in action

The Ribbon's ease of use and convenience are best understood when seen in action. ClickPlay below the picture to see an animation of the Ribbon. First, on the Home tab, some text is cut from one position and pasted into another; then the text format is changed using a Style; and finally, the page background color is altered on the Page Layout tab.

What's on the Ribbon?

The three parts of the Ribbon are tabs, groups, and commands.

There are three basic components to the Ribbon. It's good to know what each one is called so that you understand how to use it.

  Tabs. There are seven basic ones across the top. Each represents an activity area.

  Groups. Each tab has several groups that show related items together.

  Commands. A command is a button, a box to enter information, or a menu.

Everything on a tab has been carefully selected according to user activities. For example, the Home tab contains all the things you use most often, such as the commands in theFont group for changing text font: Font, Font Size, Bold, Italic, and so on.

Dialog box launchers in groups

Click the Dialog Box Launcher   to see more options for that particular group.

At first glance, you may not see a certain command from a previous version of Word. Fret not. Some groups have a small diagonal arrow in the lower-right corner  .

The arrow is called a Dialog Box Launcher. If you click it, you'll see more options related to that group. Those options will often appear in the form of a dialog box that you may recognize from a previous version of Word. Or they may appear in a familiar-looking task pane.

Speaking of previous versions, if you're wondering whether you can get the same look and feel of a previous version of Word, the simple answer is, you can't. But after playing around with the Ribbon a little, you'll get used to where things are and will like how easy it makes getting your work done.

Additional tabs appear

When you select a picture, the additional Picture Tools tab appears, showing groups of commands for working with pictures.

In this new version of Word, certain tabs appear only when you need them. For example, let's say you've inserted a picture. But now you want to do more with it. Maybe you want to change how text wraps around it or you want to crop it. Where are those commands found?

 Select the picture.

 The Picture Tools tab appears. Click that tab.

 Additional groups and commands appear for working with pictures; like thePicture Styles group.

When you click away from the picture, the Picture Tools tab disappears, and the other groups come back.

Note   On-demand tabs appear for other activity areas, like tables, drawings, diagrams, and charts.

The Mini toolbar

When you select text and point at it, the Mini toolbar will appear faded.

Some formatting commands are so useful that you want to have them available whatever you are doing.

Let's say you want to quickly format some text, but you're working on the Page Layout tab. You could click the Home tab to see the formatting options, but here's a faster way:

 Select your text by dragging with your mouse, and then point at the selection.

 The Mini toolbar will appear in a faded fashion. If you point to the Mini toolbar, it will become solid, and you can click a formatting option there.

The Mini toolbar is great for formatting options, but what if you want other types of commands to always be available? Use the Quick Access Toolbar. The next page will explain what it is.

The Quick Access Toolbar

The Quick Access Toolbar is the small area to the upper left of the Ribbon. It contains the things that you use over and over every day: Save, Undo, and Repeat. You can add your favorite commands to it so that they are available no matter which tab you are on.

Click Play to see an animation showing how to add, and then remove, a button to the Quick Access Toolbar. You'll also get a chance to try this out in the practice session that's coming up.

Temporarily hide the Ribbon

Double-click the active tab to hide the groups for more room.

The Ribbon makes everything in Word 2007 nicely centralized and easy to find. Sometimes, however, you don't need to find things. You just want to work on your document, and you'd like more space to do that. So it's just as easy to hide the Ribbon temporarily as it is to use it.

Here's how: Double-click the active tab. The groups disappear, so that you have more room.

Whenever you want to see all of the commands again, double-click the active tab to bring back the groups.

Use the keyboard

Press ALT to display the Key Tip badges for the Ribbon tabs, the Microsoft Office Button, and the Quick Access Toolbar.

Okay, keyboard people, this page is for you. Shortcuts that start with the CTRL key (for example, CTRL+C for copy, or CTRL+ALT+1 for Heading 1), remain the same as in previous versions of Word.

But the Ribbon design comes with new shortcuts. Why? Because this change brings two big advantages over previous versions:

Shortcuts for every single button on the Ribbon. Shortcuts that often require fewer keys.

The new shortcuts also have a new name: Key Tips. Press ALT to make the Key Tipbadges appear for all Ribbon tabs, the Quick Access Toolbar commands, and the Microsoft Office Button. Then you can press the Key Tip for the tab you want to display; for example, press H for the Home tab. This makes all the Key Tips for that tab's commands appear. Then you can press the Key Tip for the command you want.

Note    You can still use the old ALT+ shortcuts that accessed menus and commands in previous versions of Word, but because the old menus are not available, you'll have no screen reminders of what letters to press, so you need to know the full shortcut to use them.

Get an introduction to the new look in familiar programs

Goals

See how Microsoft Office has changed, and why. Use the Ribbon to do what you're used to doing.

See what the new file formats mean to you

The new Office: Made for you

Yes, there's a lot of change to familiar Microsoft Office programs. But the good news is that the commands and other tools you need are now exposed and more readily available.

Instead of having 30 or so undisplayed toolbars, and commands buried on menus or in dialog boxes, you now have one control center that brings the essentials together and makes them very visual.

And once you learn how to use the Ribbon in one program, you'll find it easy to use in other programs too.

What's on the Ribbon?

There are three basic components to the Ribbon.

 Tabs sit across the top of the Ribbon. Each one represents core tasks you do in a given program.

 Groups are sets of related commands, displayed on tabs. They pull together all the commands you're likely to need for a type of task, and they remain on display and readily available, giving you rich visual aids.

 Commands are arranged in groups. A command can be a button, a menu, or a box where you enter information.

How do you get started? Begin with the first tab.

For example, the first tab in Word 2007 is the Home tab. The principal task in Word is writing, so the commands on the Home tab are the ones that people use most commonly when they write documents: font formatting commands (in the Font group), paragraph options (in the Paragraph group), and text styles (in the Styles group).

You'll find the same organization in other 2007 Office system programs, with the first tab including commands for the most key type of work. The primary tab in Excel, PowerPoint, and Access is also the  Home tab. In Outlook, when you create a message, it's the Message tab.

How commands are organized

Paste, Cut, and Copy commands in Word and Excel. Frequently used, they logically appear on the Home tab, the first tab on the Ribbon.

Commands are organized by how they are used. Microsoft found that people using Microsoft Office favor a core set of commands, which they tend to use over and over. Those core commands are now the most prominent.

An example is the Paste command. It's one of the most frequently used commands. Why not give it maximum exposure in the window, along with its related commands, Cut and Copy?

Frequently used commands don't have to share space anymore with a range of remotely related commands on a menu or toolbar. They're the ones that get used, and so they're the ones that are at your fingertips.

Less frequently used commands are less prominent on the Ribbon. For example, most people use Paste Special less often than they use Paste. So, to access Paste Special, you first click the arrow on Paste.

More commands, but only when you need them

The Picture Tools appear at the top of the Ribbon in Word after you insert a picture.

The commands you use most are on the Ribbon and readily available all the time. Some other commands appear only when you may need them, in response to an action you take.

For example, if you don't have a picture in your Word document, the commands to work with a picture aren't necessary.

But after you insert a picture in Word, the Picture Tools appear, along with the Format tab that contains the commands you need to work with the picture. When you are through working with the picture, the Picture Tools go away.

If you want to work on the picture again, just click it, and the tab appears again, with all the commands you need. Word knows what you are doing and provides you with the tools you need. The Ribbon responds to your action.

So don't worry if you don't see all the commands you need at all times. Take the first steps. Then the commands you need will be at hand.

You'll see how this works in the practice steps at the end of the lesson.

More options if you need them

Click the arrow   at the bottom of a group to get more options if you need them.

 Click the arrow   in the Font group.

 The Font dialog box opens.

When you see a small arrow   in the lower-right corner of a group, it means there are more options available for the group. Click the arrow   (called the Dialog Box Launcher), and you'll see a dialog box or a task pane with more commands.

For example, in PowerPoint, on the Home tab, the Font group contains all the commands that are used the most to make font changes: commands to change the font face and font size, and to make the font bold, italic, or underlined.

But if you want a less commonly used option, such as superscript, you click the arrow  in the Font group to open the Font dialog box, which has superscript and other options related to fonts.

Preview before you select

Have you ever spent time in the try-undo-try-undo cycle? You select a font, font color, or style, or make changes to a picture. But the option you select turns out not to be what you want, so you undo and try again, and perhaps again, until you finally get what you have in mind.

Now you can see a live preview of your choice before you make a selection. You get better results faster by picking what you want the first time. You don't have to undo and try again.

To use live preview, rest the mouse pointer on an option. Your document changes to show you what that option would look like, before you actually make a selection. After you see the preview of what you want, then you click the option to make your selection.

Put commands on your own toolbar

If you often use commands that are not as quickly available as you would like, you can easily add them to the Quick Access Toolbar, which is above the Ribbon when you first start your Microsoft Office program. On that toolbar, commands are always visible and near at hand.

For example, if you use Track Changes in Word or Excel every day to turn on revision marks, and you don't want to have to click the Review tab to access that command each time, you can add Track Changes to the Quick Access Toolbar.

To do that, right-click Track Changes on the Review tab, and then click Add to Quick Access Toolbar. To delete a button, right-click it, and then click Remove from Quick Access Toolbar.

Different screen resolutions can change what you see

The Show/Hide group on the View tab. All commands in the group are displayed in high resolution. In low resolution you need to click the arrow on the group button to display the commands.

Everything we've told you so far applies if your screen is set to a high resolution and the program window is maximized. If

that's not the case, things look different. How? Like this:

Low resolution    If your screen is set to a low resolution, for example to 800 by 600 pixels, a few groups on the Ribbon will display the group name only, not the commands in the group. You need to click the arrow on the group button to display the commands.

For example, in Word, with a higher resolution you will see all the commands in theShow/Hide group on the View tab. But with 800 by 600 resolution, you will see theShow/Hide button only, not the commands in the group.

In that case, you click the arrow on the Show/Hide button to display the commands in the group.

Generally, the groups that display only the group name at a lower resolution are those with less frequently used commands.

Minimized    At any resolution, if you make the program window smaller, there is a size at which some groups will display only the group names, and you will need to click the arrow on the group button to display the commands.

Tablet PCs    If you're working on a Tablet PC with a smaller screen, you'll notice that the Ribbon adjusts to show you smaller versions of tabs and groups. If you have a larger monitor, the Ribbon adjusts to show you larger versions of the tabs and groups.

Get a jump-start on your documents

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

Get a huge boost in time by using templates provided by Word and Office Online. Create your own template, customized to your business needs.

Tap into template power

A template is a starting point for documents.

Although you may have worked in Word before and may be familiar with Word documents, you might not be so familiar with Word templates. What's a template, and what's its benefit to you?

A template is a type of document that already contains content, such as text, styles, and formatting; page layout, such as margins and line spacing; and design elements, such as special colors, borders, and accents, typical of a Word theme.

Think of a template as a very helpful starting point. If, for example, you have weekly work meetings and have to create the same meeting agenda over and over but with slightly different details every time, starting out with a lot of information already in place will vastly speed up your work.

See some examples of this, and get a firsthand glimpse of the many templates that already exist, within Word itself and on Microsoft Office Online. Use them to create impressive, professional documents and also to save yourself time.

Use an already made fax cover sheet

Let's say that on your job you frequently have the task of sending a fax to another company. You always need a cover page for the fax. You could spend the time and create this page in Word every time. Or you could use a fax cover sheet that Word already contains.

You will find this, and other templates, among Word's installed templates. The picture gives you an example. The template is set up so that it's simple to complete. Just fill in the blanks with your information, print the sheet, and fax it. Even if you have to add something to the sheet, or delete another part, the essential content is there already; you needn't build it from the ground up.

Use an already prepared agenda

Three different agenda templates from Microsoft Office Online.

Here's another example of how Word templates could help you. Imagine that you're in charge of creating an agenda for your team's weekly meeting.

Before you start from a blank page, have a look at the collection of templates available onMicrosoft Office Online — you can link directly to these from within Word (you'll see how). This vast and varied collection has

different categories of templates. Some of the most popular are Agendas, Calendars, Flyers, Letters, and Resumes. Within each, you have several choices of template type.

The picture shows three of the agenda templates.

 This example is simple and straightforward, with formatted text areas that help you fill out the agenda.

 Or go with a completely finished, artful look, and type over example text.

 This one takes the page layout and formatting up a notch, using color and tables to create areas for a complex agenda design.

You simply open the agenda you want and fill in your information.

Note    Along with the numerous templates on this site that are developed by Microsoft, there are templates that have been created by customers.

Find installed templates

Word includes over 30 pre-installed templates for document types such as letters, faxes, reports, resumés, and blog posts. Here's how you find them:

 Click the Microsoft Office Button, and click New.

 In the New Document window, click Installed Templates.

 Click one of the thumbnails, and see its preview on the right.

 When you've found the template you want, click Create.

A new document opens that's based on the template, and you make the changes to it that you want.

Find Office Online templates

The steps for opening templates from the Office Online Web site are very similar. As the animation shows, you open the New Document window, but in this case you look in the area under Microsoft Office Online.

Click one of the categories to see thumbnails of all the templates offered. As with installed templates, a large preview of each is given. Some categories, such as Letters, have subcategories that you choose from — for example, Academic, Business, and Cover Letters.

To download one of the templates, you select the thumbnail and click Download. That's it. The template opens as a fresh new document on your computer for you to add to as you want and then save.

The original template is not changed; it remains on Office Online. However, a copy of the template itself is saved to your computer. If you want to use it again, you don't have to go to Office Online again. You can open it within the My Templates folder in Word. You'll see how in the practice session at the end of the lesson.

A template's special power

A template's special power is that it opens a copy of itself, in the form of a fresh document.

We mentioned earlier that when you open a template, a new document opens that's based on the template you selected. That is, you're really opening a copy of the template, not the template itself.

And that's a template's special power: It opens up a copy of itself, imparting everything it contains to a new, fresh document. You work in that new document, benefitting from everything that was built into the template, plus adding or deleting what you need to. Because the new document is not the template itself, your changes are saved to the document, and the template is left in its original state. Therefore, one template can be the basis for an unlimited number of documents.

Every document is based on a template of some kind; the template just lives in the background.

Templates and documents: two distinct file types

Just as templates have slightly different behavior from documents, so are they also a distinct file type.

If you've saved many documents in Word, you're probably familiar with the choices of file type available in which to save files. The standard format defaults to a document type. A template is a different type.

 As shown in example 1: A template is saved as a Word Template type. It has a .dotx at the end of its file name. (In prior Word versions, this extension was .dot.)

 As shown in example 2: A document is saved as a Word Document type. It has a .docx at the end of its file name. (In prior Word versions, this extension was .doc.)

You'll get more exposure to this in the second lesson, in which you'll save a document as a template, and you'll see firsthand what those steps are. For now, just remember that documents and templates are two distinct types of files, and they behave differently from each other.

Note    To see the file extension as part of the file name, you need to change a setting within Microsoft Windows. The practice session and Quick Reference Card give the steps for doing so.

Arranging information in lists

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

Create a bulleted or numbered list. Change the look of a bulleted or numbered list.

Combine two separate lists.

Use a multilevel list.

Simple lists

A single-level bulleted list, a single-level numbered list, and a multilevel bulleted list.

Lists are very useful things to have in a document. From summarizing information to making it easier to understand and digest, lists have many uses. There are numbered lists and there are bulleted lists. If you have a sequence of information, a numbered list is essential. If you're not worried about sequence, a bulleted list might be better.

Lists can be single-level or multilevel: Single level (or single layer) means that all items in the list have the same hierarchy and indentation; multilevel means that there's a list within a list. You can see the difference in the picture.

This lesson is all about simple lists, that is, lists of only one level or layer. Multilevel lists are discussed in the second lesson.

Create lists as you type

There's more than one way to start a list, but one of the most popular is where you automatically create lists as you type. If you need a bulleted list, just type an asterisk (*) followed by a space. The asterisk turns into a bullet and your list is started. When you've finished typing the first item in your list, press ENTER and a new bullet will appear on the next line. To automatically create numbered lists, type the number one and a period (1.), followed by a space. This is new for Word 2007; in previous versions you had to press ENTER before the list started.

There are a number of different symbols that you can use to start a list like this, including arrows, dashes, and squares. You'll find a complete list in the Quick Reference Card at the end of the course. Because lettered lists are just another variety of numbered lists, type the letter a and a period (a.), followed by a space, to start a lettered list.

Note    In Word, lists are automatically indented from the page margin.

Stopping lists

The easiest way to stop creating a list is to press ENTER twice. Every time you press ENTER at the end of the list you get a new bullet or number, but if you press ENTER again, the last bullet or number disappears and you're ready to start a new paragraph on a new line.

If you need something slightly different, for example if you're in the middle of a list and you want to type some text under your bullet that's indented at the same level as the text above, use the BACKSPACE key. This removes the bullet but keeps the text indent identical. If you want the new text aligned under the bullet itself rather than in line with the text above, press BACKSPACE again. Finally to get out of the list indentation completely, press BACKSPACE again.

Note    It's possible to change the default list indent so that the bullet or number is at the page margin (you'll find out how later on); in that case, pressing BACKSPACE twice (rather than three times) gets you out of the list.

Bullets or numbers?

Got the wrong type of list? Started with bullets but now think numbers would be better, or vice versa? Don't worry, it's easy to switch from one to the other. Just click somewhere in your list and then click the Bullets or Numbering button on the Ribbon.

You can also use these buttons to start new lists. Either click the button and start typing to create your first list item, or select the text you've already typed and click the Bullets orNumbering button to change each paragraph into a list item.

Note    Both of these buttons will "remember" what type of list you last used and will use the same type when you use these buttons again. So, if the last numbered list you used was actually a lettered one, you'll get another lettered list the next time you click the Numberingbutton. And if the last bullet design you used (more on designs in a moment) was a black square, that's what you'll get next time.

Tip    If you want to sort a list after creating it, for example, into alphabetical order, you can use

the Sort button   in the Paragraph group on the Home tab of the Ribbon. Keep in mind that when you sort a numbered list, only the list items are sorted, not the numbers (so number 1 will still appear first, and so on). You'll get to try this in the practice session.

Change the look of your list

If you have a bulleted list that uses the same dull, boring black circles, there's good news: You can change the bullet design to one of many different built-in designs. Simply click the arrow next to the  Bullets button to see the Bullet Library.

There's even more good news: If none of those designs appeal to you, you can create your own by clicking Define New Bullet at the bottom of the dialog box.

There are two types of bullet you can design: symbol and picture. Symbol bullets use a character from a font;

for example, Webdings and Wingdings such as these   are popular fonts for bullet symbols. You must have the font available on your computer to be able to use the symbols from that font, so don't use anything too unusual if you want to send the document to others who might not have the same fonts installed. Picture bullets are just that, tiny little pictures. There are lots more designs for picture bullets available from Microsoft Office Online, and you can also create a brand new one with a tiny picture of your own. Just remember how small bullets are and don't try to use a complicated image.

There's a built-in Numbering Library too, and you use it in just the same way as the Bullet Library. You can change font characteristics, such as color, to create your own numbering or symbol bullet style.

Once you've added a new design, it will appear in the Bullet or Numbering library from then onwards, unless you remove it by right-clicking it and then clicking Remove.

Format a list

 Click the list numbers.

 Change the format.

 The new look for the list numbers.

A little known secret of lists is that you can format the bullets or numbers separately from the text in the list items. For example, you could have standard black text with bold red numbers. You do this by clicking one of the bullets or numbers to select just them, not the text in the list items.

After you've selected the bullets or numbers, format them the way you would any other text by using the commands on the Ribbon. Finally, click away from the list to see the final reformatted list.

Tips   

Being able to click a single bullet or number to select all the bullets or numbers in a list is extremely useful in a multilevel list. When you want to see all the items at a particular level, click one of its bullets or numbers to select all the items at that individual level.

If you start a list with a formatting pattern that Word can recognize, Word will apply it to each of the items that follow in your list. For example, if you make the first sentence in a list item bold, and then type the rest of the paragraph in normal text, the rest of the list items you type will be automatically formatted for you. When you press ENTER at the end of the line and start typing the second item's text, it will be bold. And after you get to the end of the first sentence, the text goes back to normal text.

The list would look like this:

First sentence of first list item is bold. The following sentence uses normal text.

First sentence of second list item is bold. The following sentence uses normal text.

Working with paragraphs in lists and pasting lists

Tips for working with paragraphs in lists

Suppose you're creating a numbered or bulleted list and you need some of the list items to include subparagraphs (paragraphs that are not numbered or bulleted), as shown in the picture. There are several ways to deal with this scenario; the method you use depends on the state of your document and personal preference.

If you want to remove an existing bullet or number from a paragraph in a list, and you want to keep the text indented with the rest of the list items, as shown in the picture, click after the bullet or number you want to delete and press BACKSPACE. If you have subsequent paragraphs, you can indent them by using the TAB key

or the Increase Indent button  . This method is also good if you need clear definition between paragraphs (for example, because you're monitoring the document statistics and want to know the total number of paragraphs).

If you want to remove an existing bullet or a number from a paragraph in a list and make the text line up with the margin rather than the rest of the list, click the bullet or number you want to remove and click DELETE.

Another option for creating subparagraphs in a list is to end each block of text by pressing SHIFT+ENTER instead of using just ENTER. This is known as a soft paragraph; it creates something that looks just like a paragraph break, but in fact is just a continuation of the original paragraph on the next line. But if you need your document statistics to be accurate about the number of paragraphs, do not use this method.

To continue a list after the subparagraphs, type in the next number followed by a period and the list will automatically continue. If you use the Numbering button, you'll notice that Word does not carry on the numbering from the first list; it starts a new list beginning at number 1 again, and the AutoCorrect

Options button   appears next to the list item. Click the AutoCorrect Options button and then click Continue Numbering. The new list item will join your list.

Pasting lists

If you paste a list into or at the end of an existing list, Word automatically joins the lists together and the

numbering for the two lists is combined. You can change this by clicking the Paste Options button   that appears just after the pasted text, and then choosingPaste List Without Merging.

Multilevel lists

What if some of your list items need to have subsets of information? You need a multilevel list. A multilevel list has lists within lists, in which you can have many levels, or layers. A multilevel list, like single-level ones, can be bulleted or numbered — but with the added bonus that you can mix numbers, letters, and bullets. So, for example, one layer could be bulleted, with a numbered list inside it.

List levels

The key to understanding multilevel lists is to understand list levels. A single-level list has everything at level one, but after you add a list under one item you have list at level two. Each new list within a list creates a new list level.

Note    Do not rely on indentation to show list levels, because you can change indentation, as you'll see in a moment. To see all the items at a particular list level, click on one of the bullets or numbers in that level to highlight all of the items at that level.

Create a multilevel list by typing or by using the commands on the Ribbon exactly as you did with the single-level lists. So start with a bullet or number, enter your first item, and then press ENTER. When you're ready to

start the next level, press the Increase Indent button  , type the first list item of that level, and then press ENTER.

When you're working with different list levels, you can move between the levels using theIncrease

Indent button   and Decrease Indent button   on the Ribbon. You can also increase and decrease indents by using keystrokes: Press TAB to increase the indent, and press SHIFT+TAB to decrease it. You'll try both of these methods in the practice session.

All about indentation

Figure 1   Some default lists in Word do not have different indentation for the different levels.

Figure 2   You can adjust the indentation for any list without changing its level by right-clicking and then choosing Adjust List Indents.

It's very easy to think that the list level is determined by the indentation from the left margin. While that's the default behavior of a lot of lists, some do not have different indents for different levels (see Figure 1).

If you want to change the amount a list is indented from the margin, do not use the TAB key or the Increase Indent button. This creates new list levels, so although it may look right, when you try to create a new list you'll have all your levels mixed up. Instead, right-click the list and then click Adjust List Indents. In the dialog box that appears, you can change the indent of both the bullet or number and the text.

The List Library

As with single-level lists, you can choose what list design you want to use. But there's an extra feature with multilevel lists: You can choose to design each level independently, exactly as you did with the single-layer lists, or you can do it all in one go.

Start by clicking the Multilevel List button to see the List Library. Once again, you can choose a built-in list or design your own. If you choose to design your own list, click Define New Multilevel List. You'll have to set the characteristics you want for each level.

Tip    You'll find the different bullet designs in the Number style for this level list, because multilevel lists consider bullets to be just another type of number.

As you can see in the picture, there also is an option to define a new list  style by using theDefine New List Style command. This would be a good thing to do if you think you're going to use the same list design again but may want to make some changes to the design later. A new list style can be modified after it's created, and every instance of that list style in your document will get updated with the changes you make. There's no need to design it from scratch a second time when you can just save it as a style once. By contrast, if you just add a new list design to the library rather than define a new style, you won't be able to make changes to the design of the new list.

Your document is complete, but it's begging for some visual sparkle

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to: Add a custom watermark to printed documents.

Add a colorful background to Web-based documents.

Add defining borders to pages, paragraphs, pictures, or tables.

Use shading to emphasize headings or paragraphs.

Give color and snap to shapes and tables.

Make headings more professional with text effects and WordArt.

Add a watermark or background

 Watermark in a printed document.

 Colorful background for a Web document.

Do you want to visually convey to the audience for your document that it is a draft only? Or that the information is strictly confidential? You can do that with a watermark.

The example on the left shows what a watermark is. The watermark tells people something about the document. You can also use a picture watermark if you want it to serve as a type of branding. Watermarks are semitransparent in color, so they sit behind and don't divert people's attention from the document's content. They are for documents that will be printed.

Another sort of background, shown here on the right, is purely for decoration and is intended for documents you'd post to a Web site. You can add all sorts of colorful backgrounds, including solid colors, gradients, patterns, textures, and even pictures.

The goal is to liven up the page — but you don't want to make it hard to read.

See how to add watermarks and backgrounds.

Add a watermark to a printed document

Here are examples of watermarks. The ones with text are typical of what's available in the watermark gallery in Word 2007. The one with the graphic shows how you might customize a watermark to use a picture you specify.

Once the watermark's inserted, you can see it in Print Layout view, in print preview, or in the printed document. As this indicates, watermarks are intended for printed documents — they will not show up in the Web Layout view of the document, which is the view used if you post the document to a Web site.

If you want a watermark that's not in the gallery, you can create a custom watermark. See how in the next section.

Add a picture watermark

For a custom watermark, you can use either text or a picture. These steps show how you'd create a picture watermark.

 On the Page Layout tab, click Watermark to open the gallery.

 Click Custom Watermark, at the bottom of the gallery.

 Click Picture watermark, and select your picture. Use any image on your computer, or clip art in the Microsoft Clip Organizer. Note that you can scale it and select to wash out the color so it's not as visible behind document text.

 Your result might look something like the example shown.

If you want a custom text watermark, select the text from a list in the same dialog box shown in this picture or type the text you want. You can select font, size, and color, plus set transparency and choose a diagonal or horizontal layout.

You can save your custom watermark to the gallery so it's easy to apply next time. You'll see how in the practice session.

Add a background to a Web document

Use a colorful background, such as the examples shown here, to add boldness or flavor to Web documents. The backgrounds available include solid or gradient colors, textures, patterns, and pictures.

 The first example uses a gradient background that has two colors, a lighter and darker green.

 The second uses a texture that has a marbling effect. Woodgrains are another option for textures.

 The last is an example of a two-colored diamond pattern. Stripes, dots, and checkerboards are some other patterns available.

You can also apply a picture background, using a file on your computer. However, you will need to wash out the color using a picture editor before you apply it as a background.

You add a background from the Page Layout tab. You can print your document with the background, but there's a setting you need to apply in Word before you do. You'll see how when you practice.

Warning    Don't overpower your text with the background you choose. You want it to complement the text, not make it unreadable.

Add borders, shading, and styles

Borders, shading, and decorative effects aren't just for holiday newsletters. Word gives you many ways to spruce up the look of your documents all year round.

 Apply page borders for results ranging from playful to business-sharp.

 For pictures, add new style effects, such as shadows and reflections, or simple borders.

 Emphasize whole paragraphs with background shading and borders.

 Choose from new table styles to instantly add color and formatting.

 Give flair to shapes with new styles and fill effects.

Coordinate your colors    When you add decorative accents such as these, you'll want the colors you use to complement each other. Word 2007 includes themes that you can select for their color combinations so that all your page accents work well together. You'll learn more about these in the next practice session.

Page borders

You can add full or partial borders to a page. Word provides a variety of built-in page borders, from businesslike to fancy.

You can choose:

The type of overall border, from simple box to shadowed to 3-D to a custom style of your own design.

The line style, color, and thickness.

The artistic style, which can be fun if your document is informal, or which can be tied to a special occasion, business event, or holiday.

You can preview the border design, so it's easy to see how your chosen effects will look.

You apply a page border from the Page Layout tab, using the Page Border command.

Borders for pictures, text, and tables

Try borders around various elements within a document. For example:

 Use a border to make a picture stand out.

 A border can nicely offset an important quotation.

 And borders can be very effective in tables. Apply them to every cell if you want that look.

As with whole pages, you have a lot of border styles to choose from.

The methods for adding borders vary depending on what you're adding a border to. For a picture, Word 2007 offers a whole new set of picture styles that include borders as well as effects such as reflections and shading. You find these styles by selecting the picture and then working with the Picture Tools on the Ribbon.

For other graphics, such as tables, and for text, you'll find border options similar to those you'd use for page borders. These are opened from the Page Layout tab. In the practice session, you'll see how to find and apply them.

Shading

Use shading to emphasize text. These examples give an idea.

 Make a heading stand out.

 Use a quotation style and apply a shading background and border to it.

 Set off a list.

Experiment with colors and styles, and preview the effects. The preview is particularly helpful in this case because you want the shading to complement, not overpower, any text it sits behind.

You find shading options in the same place as border options: Start on the  Page Layouttab, and click Page Borders.

Quick styles for tables

If you want to give coordinated colors and shading to a table, use one of the new table styles. These each have a unique format and use of color, for a professional result. It's more efficient to use a table style than to try to add shading and borders row by row or cell by cell.

The picture shows two examples of table styles. Each of these draws upon one set of colors, available in a theme called Oriel.

You apply a table style by selecting the table in the document and working with Table Tools on the Ribbon. You'll work with styles in the practice session.

Quick styles for shapes

Shapes, such as the arrows shown here, have new styling options in Word 2007. As with tables, whole packages of finished styles are available to give color and instant finish to circles, arrows, text boxes, and myriad other shapes.

The arrows here have three different styles applied.

Shapes have their own tools, as tables and pictures do. You select a shape and work with the  Drawing Tools to select a style — which comes complete with border, look, and type of fill. But you can tinker as you wish with the fill and border. See how in the practice that follows.

Use special text effects

How do you emphasize text? Often it's the old standbys, bold and italic, or maybe the occasional use of all caps. But Word offers some formatting choices for text that give a bit more visual impact.

These include:

A dropped capital letter, used at the start of a document or beginning of a new chapter.

Text effects that make letters stand out, such as embossing, engraving, and shadowing.

WordArt formatting, which makes a heading or other text flashy and bold.

More examples and details follow.

Note    The feature that animated text, which you may have used in prior Word versions, is not available in Word 2007. However, you can preserve animation created in an earlier document within Word 2007. The Quick Reference Card at the end of the course has details.

Create a drop cap

Think of an ancient illuminated text, or the start of a fairy tale — the large first letter that sometimes begins a chapter. In modern typography, that's referred to as a drop cap. Create one in Word when you want to convey elegance at the start of your document.

The steps are simple: You select the letter you want to turn into a drop cap, and click  Drop Cap on the Insert tab. The drop cap sits in a text box, and you can apply any text formatting to it. The picture shows examples of different fonts you might use.

You can turn only a single letter into a drop cap. Even if you select a block of text, only the first letter is affected. Also, only the first letter of a paragraph can become a drop cap.

Special font effects

While font style and color do a lot to give impact to text, you can add a little more to the look with different effects.

The picture shows you examples.

 The first has an embossing effect, which makes the text look raised off the page.

 The second has an outline effect, which removes the solid color fill in the text.

 The last example uses an engraving effect, which makes text look pressed into the page.

These three effects — embossing, outlining, and engraving — plus shadowing (not shown in the picture) can be used to make a simple heading look more like a logo. They have more impact on bigger font sizes, sometimes they're enhanced by bold or italic formatting, and they're best used sparingly.

You'll work with these effects in the practice session.

Add WordArt

WordArt is not for the faint of heart. Where text effects operate on subtlety, WordArt, by contrast, is big, bold, and flashy. It treats text more as if it were a graphic.

The picture gives you some examples.

You create WordArt by typing the text you want to style in a WordArt editing dialog box (opened from the Insert tab). Once WordArt is applied, you treat the affected text somewhat like a picture. You click to select it, and WordArt Tools are available, with several formatting options.

For example, you can edit the text, change fill color or word outline, apply a different warping style, and add shadows. For most of the choices, you get previews on the WordArt before you apply a selection.

You'll see more in the practice session, which follows.

Reuse text and other document parts: Introducing building blocks

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

Locate and identify document parts in Microsoft Office Word 2007.

Create a document part and add it to a gallery.

Create boilerplate text and add it to a gallery.

Make formatting changes to a document part.

Swap one document part for another.

Find a document part to add to your document.

Get acquainted with building blocks in Word 2007

Have you ever been faced with a blank Word document and a deadline looming? We've all experienced the drama of the blank page. We know what needs to be in our document, but we don't always know how to get the parts there quickly and make the document look great, too.

Word 2007 extends some of the familiar document parts — such as headers and footers, cover pages, and tables of contents — with galleries of well-designed and formatted parts that you can insert in your document with just a click or two.

Because the document parts you've known have changed so much in Word 2007, let's call these newly enhanced document parts building blocks. You can think of a completed Word document as a file made up of regular content, such as plain text, pages, and photos or other document objects, and other optional building blocks that you can add to complete your document.

Find document parts in galleries

You can find document parts, or building blocks as we'll call them, in galleries. And you can find galleries filled with headers and footers, watermarks, tables of contents, cover pages, and even boilerplate text, throughout the tabs on the Ribbon. Each gallery contains many built-in designs. For example, if you want to add a cover page to your document, open the cover page gallery and choose a design that works for that business plan you're creating.

Built-in designs save you time because you just choose a design, replace the placeholder text with your own, and you're done.

Find all the building blocks in Word in one place

You can find all of the available building blocks in the Building Blocks Organizer.

You can find the different kinds of building blocks in their individual galleries, but theBuilding Blocks Organizer is the single place where you can view and manage all of the building blocks that are available in Word.

You can also use the organizer to find out more about a particular building block or to insert building blocks in your documents. You'll learn more about using the Building Blocks Organizer later in this course.

Save building blocks

Click Yes at the end of a Word session to save any changes you've made to building blocks.

You save a document that contains a building block, such as a header or footer, just like you would any other

document, by clicking the Microsoft Office Button  and then clicking Save or Save as.

When you exit a session of Word 2007 after making changes to a built-in building block, or after you create or delete a building block, you are asked whether you want to save the changes. Be sure to click Yes.

Swap, format, and remove document building blocks

You've added a cover page to your document. What if you decide at the last minute that you want a different cover page design? You can click a new building block design at any time to see how the building block looks in your document. If you already replaced the placeholder text with your own text, you can still change the cover page design with a single click. Your new design will include the text that you typed in the first design you used.

Each building block is made up of different fields called content controls. For example, a content control in a cover page building block might include a title content control and perhaps a date content control. The important point to remember is that a content control contains information that you can replace with your own text or content.

Create and save boilerplate text

How often do you find yourself re-creating text in the documents you build? Like cover pages and page numbers, boilerplate text, or AutoText as it is called in earlier versions of Word, is a common document part that you might want to create in one document and reuse again in this and other documents.

In Word 2007, you can save a text selection to a building block gallery called the  Quick Part Gallery, where you can easily locate the text to use again and again. We'll show you how in the next practice session.

Format building block text

Make changes to the building blocks and save them to a gallery.

Let's say you want to make some changes to boilerplate text you already created and saved to the  Quick Part Gallery. You can change the font, color, and alignment of the text. You can even redefine the entry for the building blocks gallery so that it's easy to find later. We'll show you how to make formatting changes to the text in the practice for this section.

After you complete your changes, you can select the text and click Save selection to Quick Part Gallery. Your customized boilerplate text is available for reuse whenever you need it.

Remove a building block from a document

If you decide that you no longer want a building block in your document, you can remove the building block from the document as quickly as you added it. Most galleries have an option to remove the current building block from the document. For example, if a header design was added from the header gallery, you can click the Remove Header command at the bottom of the gallery and the headers are removed from every page.

Find and use document building blocks

Preview any building block in the Building Blocks Organizer.

When you're ready to reuse a building block, you can browse the galleries for the building block you want, or you can find all of the available building blocks in Word in one place called the Building Blocks Organizer. You can get to the Building Blocks Organizer by right-clicking any building block in a gallery and then clicking Organize and Delete to open the Building Blocks Organizer.

When you click any building block in the organizer list, a preview appears on the right so you can easily identify whether it's the building block you're looking for.

Sort all of the building blocks in Word

 Click a column heading to sort the column alphabetically.

Sorting makes it easier to find the building block you want, and you can sort easily in the Building Blocks Organizer. Just click a column heading. If you have a lot of boilerplate text, for example, and you know the name of the piece of text that you want, you can find it quickly by clicking Name at the top of the column to see all of the building blocks listed in alphabetical order.

Delete document building blocks from Word

 Right-click any building block, and then click Organize and Delete.

 Click the Delete button to remove the building block from Word.

You can delete a building block from a document, but you can also remove building blocks designs permanently from Word. Keeping Word free of building block clutter is a snap. To delete a specific building block from Word, you right-click the building block design in the gallery, click the Organize and Delete command, and then click the Delete button in the Building Blocks Organizer.

Revise documents with Track Changes and Comments in Word 2007

Goals

After completing this course you will be able to:

Use Track Changes when you want to mark up documents with revisions.

Review tracked changes, and accept or reject them.

Insert, view, edit, and delete comments.

Review documents to ensure that no unwanted revisions or comments remain in the distributed documents.

Track Changes and Comments: The basics

See revisions

 Deleted text in a balloon in the margin.

 Inserted text underlined in the same color as the deleted text balloon.

 Vertical lines in the left margin indicate changes in lines where text was deleted and inserted.

Insert a comment

You've made some revisions, but you'd also like to explain why you deleted "twelve" in the first sentence. No problem: Insert a comment, which is an annotation that you can add to the document. To do that, place the cursor at the end of the text you want to comment on, "nine" in this example. On the Review tab, in the Comments group, click New Comment.

A comment balloon appears in the document margin. The text you are commenting on, "nine," is highlighted with your review color. You type your text in the comment balloon.

You can tell the difference between a comment balloon and a deleted text balloon by:

The solid color background in the comment balloon. A deleted text balloon has color only around its outside border.

The "Comment" label in the balloon.

The reviewer's initials in the balloon, which indicate who made the comment, along with a number next to the initials, which lets you know how many comments are in the document.

In the practice you'll see how to edit a comment and how to respond to someone else's comment.

Note    You do not have to turn on Track Changes to insert comments. You can add comments at any time.

How to tell which reviewer has done what

 See who made a comment by moving the mouse pointer over it in the document.

 One color for Pilar Pinilla's comments (PP).

 A different color for Richard Bready's comments (RB).

When more than one person reviews a document, you might want to know what changes were made by which reviewer. Here are some ways to tell who did what.

Move the pointer over the inserted text in the document, or over the deleted text balloons in the document margin. For each revision, you'll see a ScreenTip that lists the name of the reviewer and the type of the revision, such as "deleted" or "inserted." The ScreenTip also displays the deleted or inserted text.

Another way to distinguish one reviewer from another is by color. Word automatically assigns each reviewer a markup color, which you see as soon as you make your first revision or enter your first comment. For example, your color might be blue, and the color for another reviewer might be green. To find your own changes and comments, you would look for blue markup throughout the document.

As noted in the last section, you can tell who made comments by the reviewer initials in each comment balloon.

Turning off Track Changes does NOT delete tracked changes or comments

      Next 

Even though Track Changes is turned off, marked revisions are still in the document.

Accept or reject changes and delete comments

 Use the Accept button to accept changes one at a time or in sequence, or to accept all changes at once.

 Use the Reject button to reject changes one at a time or in sequence, or to reject all changes at once.

 Use the Previous button to review each item going toward the beginning of the document.

 Use the Next button to review each item going toward the end of the document.

Track Changes and Comments: Beyond the basics

Word document with revisions made by more than one reviewer.

See a document before and after

Use the Display for Review box to see how a document looks before and after revisions.

Hiding tracked changes does NOT delete tracked changes or comments

Be sure that all items on the Show Markup menu have a check mark next to them

Check for revisions and comments

 Use buttons in the Changes group to accept or reject tracked changes or to delete comments.

 To see if a document contains hidden tracked changes or comments, click any button in the Comments or Changes group. If you get this message, click Show All to display revisions and comments.

Choose how you make tracks

Track Changes Options dialog box

Do you like comment or deleted text balloons, but wish that you could change their width? Or perhaps when text is inserted, you would prefer inserted text to appear with a double underline instead of a single underline?

You have some options for how tracked changes and comments are displayed. On the Review tab, in the Tracking group, click the arrow on Track Changes. Then click Change Tracking Options. There's lots to choose from. You'll see more about these options in the practice that's coming up.

Add headers and footers

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Add page numbers.

Add more elaborate headers and footers, with areas for document title, date, and other information.

Work in the header and footer areas to format content and add text.

Add the document file name and path.

Delete a header or a footer

Add page numbers, date, and more

Typical header and footer information: a document title, file name and path, and page number

If you're unsure what we mean by headers and footers, think of the way pages are formatted in a book. Typically, the book's title appears at the top of one page, and the title of the current chapter appears at the top of the facing page. At the bottom of every page is the page number.

These textual details are headers and footers, and they have a similar application in Word documents. Most commonly, you want page numbers throughout a document. Other information might be the document's title, author, and print date; your company's name and e-mail or Web address; and the document's file name and the path to its location.

There's no prescription for what goes into a header and footer. In your Word 2007 document, you can create the headers and footers you want.

The header and footer workspace

Before we go into specifics, here's a word about the header and footer workspace. This workspace includes areas at the top and bottom of a document page that are specifically for header and footer content. After you've

inserted a header or footer, the areas become active and editable, and they're marked with a dashed line, as the picture shows.

The main point is that header and footer content inhabits a layer of the document that is separate from the main body. This is because headers and footers behave differently than your document's main content. When you add one header or footer, such as a page number or date, it appears on every page. In the case of page numbers, they're also programmed to be consecutive and to update themselves automatically when the number of pages changes.

As you apply and work with headers and footers, you'll get used to the header and footer workspace and see how to open and close it.

Insert page numbers

Page numbers are the most common type of header or footer. They're such a necessary element in documents that they get their own button and gallery of choices.

To add page numbers:

 On the Insert tab, in the Header & Footer group, click Page Number.

 Choose where you want the numbers on the page, at the top or on the bottom, for example.

 Then choose a page number style from a gallery of possibilities.

The page numbers are applied throughout your document. Also, they're set up to automatically renumber if you add or delete content in the document.

Edit the page numbers

When you insert page numbers or other headers and footers, Word opens the header and footer workspace. This enables you to make formatting changes or add text of your own. For example, select the page number and use

the Mini toolbar to change the font size. Various commands within Header & Footer Tools help you do other things.

Other headers and footers

Page numbers are one type of header or footer. Now see what else is available by looking at the Header and Footer galleries. On the Insert tab, click Header or Footer right next to the Page Number button, and choose what you want. You can select header and footer styles that match, such as the Alphabet style. Note that some of these include a page number, so you wouldn't have to add that separately.

Add the current date

Some of the headers and footers available in the galleries include a special text area for the date. But you can also add the current date, and time, separately to any header or footer. Here's how:

 Click in the header or footer where you want the date to go. If there's text there already that you don't want, select it.

 In the Insert group, click Date & Time.

 Choose a format. You can have just the date, just the time, or both.

 Select the Update Automatically check box.

The current date and time will show whenever you open the document. You can also update while the file is open, and set Word options to update before printing. You'll see more in the practice session.

Note    The Date & Time feature has this updating capacity because it is a field. A field has functionality built into it that makes it perform certain actions. You'll see more of these as you work with headers and footers.

Add the document path and file name

Another common need in document headers or footers is to include the file name for the document and the path to its location. To insert this information, you once again use fields. Don't worry, no special training in fields is required.

First, position the insertion point where you want the file name and path to go. Then follow these simple steps:

 In the Insert group, click Quick Parts, and click Field.

 In the Field dialog box, under Field names, click FileName (you may have to scroll).

 Click the Add path to filename check box to select that option.

The FileName field gives you a way to automatically update the path if you have moved the document. You'll see how.

Caution    Be careful about the information you expose when including a path for your file. For example, you may not want a path on your company's internal network displayed.

Remove a header or footer

You might inherit a document and find you need to remove header or footer content.

 For example, say that the footer information, such as a document path and file name, is no longer current or desired.

 In the Header & Footer group, click Footer.

 At the bottom of the Footer gallery, click Remove Footer.

That wipes the footer clean.

The Page Number and Header galleries have a similar "remove" command on their gallery menus.

Note    There are cases in which this command won't remove the header or footer — typically when the information has been inserted manually rather than from the Header, Footer, or Page Number galleries. So always check to make sure the header or footer was deleted. If it isn’t, click each part of it to select it, and press DELETE.

The Document Inspector helps you remove headers and footers from documents, if that's what you want. See the Quick Reference Card for details.

Using Word 2007, create headers and footers in a document that has several parts

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Create document sections by adding section breaks.

Work within sections to create varied headers and footers.

Apply a different-first-page setting for headers and footers.

Create headers and footers for facing pages.

Varying your headers and footers

You have a multipart document, and you want to create headers and footers that go with each part. The picture shows examples of how you might want the headers and footers to differ to fit parts of the document.

For the cover page, you may want no page numbers at all, or any other header or footer text.

For front matter, such as the table of contents, headers and footers should reflect that this part is not yet the body of the document.

For chapters, headers can serve effectively as signposts to readers, reminding them of which chapter they're in and who wrote it.

You already know that the handy quality of headers and footers is that you can apply one once and have it appear everywhere. But for the multipart document, you need more control. How do you get that?

Create different sections

If your document has several parts to it, and you want unique headers and footers for each part, the first thing you need to do is to create section breaks between the document's parts.

A section break enables you to create a unique page layout for the pages in that section. With the unique layout established, you can set up the headers and footers the way you want them for that section.

Note    If it's only the cover page that you want to be different from other pages in terms of its headers and footers, you can apply a different first page so that you don't have to create sections. There's more on this later in the lesson.

How to create section breaks

You insert section breaks in the main body of the document, not anywhere within the header and footer space. So, you would close the header and footer workspace before doing these steps. Then:

 Place the cursor where you want a new section to start.

 On the Ribbon, click the Page Layout tab, and click Breaks.

 Under Section Breaks, click Next Page.

Word creates a section break before the position of the cursor.

Note    The actual section breaks in the document don't show automatically. You can expose them in Print Layout view, with the header and footer workspace turned off, by clicking the Show/Hide button on the Home tab. You can also see them in Draft view.

(You might want to see a section break in case you change your mind and want to delete it. You'll go through this in the practice session at the end of the lesson.)

Tip    You can also set up section breaks when you want content to start on odd- or even-numbered pages. See the Quick Reference Card for more information.

How sections are shown in headers and footers

The section break means that what comes before it is one section, and what's after it is another section. So, with the section break inserted before chapter 1, all the front matter — the cover page, table of contents, list of illustrations, and so on — becomes section 1, and all the chapters become section 2. (This assumes that all pages and chapters are in one document.)

When you open the header and footer workspace, markers appear there that define the sections and keep you oriented. As the picture shows, the header and footer areas indicate the sections and give each a number.

 This footer is at the end of section 1.

 The header below is at the start of section 2.

 And you'll notice another tab: Same as Previous. What does it mean?

It means that, though you've created distinct sections in the document, Word still gives you the option of having header and footer content carry over between sections. In the illustration, the Same as Previous tab on the header's dotted line means that header content for the new section is linked to header content in the preceding section. If you want the headers in the new section to be unique, you have to break the link to the earlier section.

The same will be true for all the footers in the new section. They'll carry over footer content from the previous section unless you break the link in the footer.

Create unique text in a header

The animation demonstrates how you'd break the link in a header, which frees up the header for content that's unique to this section. You place the cursor in the header you want to break the link for. Then, in the Navigation group, click Link to Previous to turn that setting off. Click Play to see this demonstrated.

Note    You have to break header and footer links separately.

Tips for working with different headers and footers

Keep the following things in mind as you set up unique headers and footers in a document:

Break links for each document section

Each of the sections you create with a section break will start out with the Same as Previous setting in place. If you want headers to be unique in all sections (to put the title of each chapter in that section's headers, for example), you'll need to toggle off Link to Previous for the headers in each section.

Break header and footer links separately

Breaking the link in your headers will do nothing to the link in the footers. If you don't want footer content to be the same for all sections, you'll need to break the links accordingly. This also applies to headers and footers for odd and even pages (more about these, later).

Mind your page numbering

Chances are you will want the page numbering for your front matter to be different from that in the main body. Use the Page Number Format dialog box, shown in the picture here, to set the numbers to flow and look as you want. For example, for introductory material, you can use roman numerals. And this dialog box also allows you to restart the page numbers in a new section if you want to.

You'll change page number formatting in the practice session.

Create a different first page

Once you've turned your front matter into its own section, you can subdivide it even further, in case you want nothing in the headers and footers on the cover page.

 Use Word's Different First Page setting, shown here, to do this. If you select this setting, you enable the header and footer areas to be different from the rest of the pages in the section. You can do this for any section in the document.

 The section's header and footer areas will now have text above them saying "First Page Header" and "First Page Footer." (This appears only in the header and footer workspace.)

If you've already applied page numbers, the Different First Page setting will suppress the page number on the cover page.

Different headers and footers for odd and even pages

As you use the galleries of designed headers and footers, you'll see that some are set up for odd and even pages. This puts the content on the outer edge of the page, like a book does for facing pages. If you're binding your document, you might want this format.

To apply headers and footers to odd and even pages, you go through the same process described above: Create document sections, break the links between them, and then add the header and footer content that you want in each section.

But be sure to note the following about using this format:

If you want the "odd" or "even" headers or footers to sit at the edges of the margin, as for facing pages, you must turn on the Different Odd & Even Pages setting on the Design tab before you apply the headers or footers.

This is a document-wide setting. While you can still create unique header and footer content within document sections, you cannot change the odd, even layout.

For step-by-step guidance on how to specify headers or footers for odd- and even-numbered pages, see: Insert headers and footers.

Table of Contents I: Create an automatic TOC

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Prepare your document to use an automatic TOC.

Create an automatic TOC.

Update your TOC.

Get started on a table of contents

A TOC may be a simple list of chapter titles, or it can include several levels, as shown in the picture. It provides an overview of what is in the document and helps readers quickly find a particular section.

Word has an automatic way for you to create a TOC. This lesson will take you through the steps you need to take to create it.

How it works

There are two steps you take to create an automatic TOC:

Prepare your document by assigning heading styles to the chapter titles and headings that you want to appear in the TOC.

Collect those titles and headings into the TOC.

We'll explain each step in the following sections.

Tip    If you have already used Word's built-in heading styles, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Heading 3, for your chapter titles and headings, you can skip step 1 and go straight to step 2. Check your chapter titles and headings by clicking the title or heading and then looking in the Styles group on the Home tab. If they are set up as Heading 1, Heading 2, or Heading 3, you're all set.

Click Play to see how to prepare your document and create an automatic TOC.

Step 1: Prepare your document

After you have decided on the chapter titles and headings that you want to appear in the TOC, you will need to apply specific styles to them so that Word will include them in the TOC.

These styles are on the Home tab, in the Styles group. For each chapter title and heading:

Place the cursor in the chapter title or heading.

In the Styles group, click Heading 1 for the highest level, such as a chapter title; Heading 2 for the next level, maybe a section heading; and Heading 3 for a sub-heading.

The heading styles and the automatic TOC work together. Word designates Heading 1 titles to the highest level in the TOC; Heading 2 corresponds to the next highest level; and Heading 3 is the following level.

You will see these hierarchical levels when you create the TOC in the next step.

Step 2: Create your TOC

After the heading styles are applied, it's time to collect them all together in the TOC. This is where Word does the work for you.

First, place the cursor where you want the TOC to appear, usually at the beginning of the document. Then, on the References tab, click Table of Contents, and click either Automatic Table 1 or Automatic Table 2, whichever TOC looks best to you in the instant preview.

That's it! Quick and simple.

When you click in an automatic TOC, it will be displayed in a light blue box. This is okay; it's a visual cue to let you know that it's an automatic TOC. Then when you move the pointer away from the TOC, the entries will turn gray and you will see the cursor where you initially clicked.

Update your TOC

After you have created your TOC, you will probably have to maintain it. The TOC is automatically updated whenever you open the document; but it's a good idea to also update it whenever you add more titles or headings in your document or when you add more content that may affect the page numbers that appear in the TOC. It's easy — just two steps.

You update the TOC by clicking the References tab and then Update Table in the Table of Contents group.

When you update the TOC, you will be asked if you want to update the entire TOC, or just the page numbers. Choose the page numbers option only if you've been adding body text but no new headings — it's faster and will save you time in a long document. But if you have added or changed a chapter title or heading, choose the Update entire table option.

Avoid editing entries in the TOC itself — if you ever update the TOC you will lose those changes. To change text that appears in the TOC, be sure to edit this text in the body of the document  — not in the TOC — and then click Update Table to compile the changes.

Note    It's also a good idea to update the TOC before printing or sending the document out; that way you will include any last-minute changes.

More changes to your TOC?

There are many more ways that you can change your TOC.

Besides being able to choose from a variety of built-in styles and formats, you can also decide on the details for your TOC, such as how many levels to include, whether page numbers will be displayed, what the dots between the entry and the page number look like, and much more.

Use mail merge

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Understand how mail merge works so that you can get the results you want.

Set up a document for a mass mailing.

Use the Mail Merge Wizard to perform a basic mail merge.

Suppose that you need to send to each of your employees a letter or e-mail message containing personal tax withholding and salary information.

Creating each letter, e-mail message, or envelope individually would take hours. That's where mail merge comes in. Using mail merge, all you have to do is create one document that contains the information that is the same in each copy, and add some placeholders for the information that is unique to each copy. Word takes care of the rest.

How it works

In any mail merge, you'll deal with three different elements:

  The main document that you start with.

  Recipient information, such as each person's name and address that you want to merge with the main document.

  The finished documents, which include the information in the main document plus each recipient's unique information.

Understanding these elements will help you get the merge results you want and expect. Later in the course we'll get into the details of how to perform a mail merge

Main document

The main document is your starting point. The main document can be a letter, envelope, e-mail, or even a coupon. It contains:

 Content that is identical in each copy, such as the main body text of a form letter. You only have to type this text once, regardless of how many letters you intend to print.

 Placeholders for each recipient's information. For example, in a form letter, the address block and greeting name would be unique in each copy.

Recipient information

 

In a mail merge, the recipient's information, which is unique in each merged copy, fills in for the placeholders that you added to the main document.

Recipient information might be: Addresses on envelopes or labels, names in the greeting line of a form letter, salary amounts in e-mail messages that you send to your employees, personal notes about favorite products in postcards that you mail to your best customers or numbers on redeemable coupons.

Recipient information must be kept in a data source. Data source is an umbrella term that covers a whole category of files you work with all the time. For example, your Microsoft Office Outlook contacts list is a data source. Other examples of data sources include: a Word table, an Excel worksheet, an Access database, or even a text file.

The recipient information is usually listed in columns and rows, as shown in the table in the picture. The data source file must be structured in a way that makes it possible to link specific information with the placeholders in the main document.

Finished set of documents

When you finish a mail merge, you have:

The set of individual finished documents, which you can print (for example, letters, labels, envelopes, or coupons) or which you can transmit electronically during the merge process (for example, e-mail messages).

The main document. This is the document you used as a starting point, which remains a separate document. It is not automatically saved after the merge. You should save it because Word will remember which recipient list you connected to it and when you open it again, you can quickly complete a new mail merge.

Note    Optionally, if you're creating letters, envelopes, or labels, you can also generate a "comprehensive document" that contains all the merged documents in one file. More on this at the end of the last lesson.

Set up your recipient list

You know what the basic elements of a mail merge are. Now you'll learn how to set up your main document and connect it to the recipient list.

The recipient list, along with the placeholders that you add to your Word document or envelope, is the heart and soul of mail merge. They work together to get unique information into the final individually merged copies. After you understand what these two key components are and how they relate, you'll be able to set up and run successful mail merges.

More about the recipient list

A recipient list can be any file that organizes the recipient information into columns and rows. You can create it using lots of different programs, such as Excel, Access, or Outlook.

 The columns in a list represent a category or type of information. Each column is identified by a column heading. For example, in a customer list you might have columns for Name, Last Name, and Street Address.

 Each row in a list represents one recipient's complete information. In the customer list, for example, one row contains all the information about one customer: the customer's name, address, and so on.

It's these columns and rows that make it possible to get unique recipient information into documents during a mail merge.

From the main document, you connect to the list and then you can add any column heading as a placeholder into the main document. (Officially, these placeholders are called fields. More on fields in a moment.)

When the mail merge is complete, there will be a finished document for each person that contains information from the entries in one row of the recipient list.

Tip    For the best results, set up your recipient list so that each column represents the smallest possible piece of information. For example, use separate columns for First Name and Last Name rather than just a Name column. This gives you the most flexibility when you arrange fields in the main document and lets you, for example, greet customers by their first names.

 

Where the recipient lists come from

In many cases, the recipient list that you want to use will already exist. For example, you might have access to a file with a list of:

Customer or contact names, addresses, and more.

The products or services your company offers.

Information about your employees.

If the list exists, you can just connect to it during the mail merge (you'll get a chance to try this during the practice session in the next lesson).

But don't worry if you don't have a list yet. The mail merge process includes a step where you can create a recipient list from scratch. More on this in the next lesson.

Note   You can make changes to the data in the recipient list at any time by opening the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box during the merge or by opening the data source file directly.

Fields

After you connect to the recipient list, you can specify the information that you want to include in the mail merge by using fields.

A field is a set of codes that instructs Word to insert information into a document automatically. Informally, you can think of fields as placeholders.

In a mass mailing, the fields you use are called merge fields, and they are the placeholders for the unique information that comes directly from a recipient list. For example, in the illustration, merge fields have been added for information stored in the Address and Name columns of a recipient list.

Merge fields

You can create a merge field by combining other fields, or you can group fields and then use spaces, line breaks, and punctuation marks as you would normally in a sentence. For example, you might want to create a courtesy title before the surname or full name and set up fields in your document like this:

«Title» «Last Name»

«Street Address»

«City», «State» «Postal Code»

You can also control how recipient information looks in the merged documents by formatting the fields. For example, you might want names to be bold or colored red. In the main document, select the field, including the surrounding chevrons (« »). On the Home tab, click any command in the Font group or the Paragraph group, or click the Dialog Box Launcher for either of these groups and choose the formatting options that you want.

Perform a complete mail merge

Now you'll walk through the process of performing a mail merge by using the Mail Merge Wizard.

At the end of this lesson you will learn about another way to perform a mail merge.

Then you'll have a chance to practice a mail merge on your own using the recipient list that you revised during the practice session in the previous lesson.

Open the Mail Merge Wizard

To perform a mail merge, click Start Mail Merge on the Mailings tab, and then click Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard.

The wizard opens on the right of the window in a task pane. The task pane can be moved (undocked) by clicking the title bar and dragging it to a new location. You can also resize it by dragging a resize handle on the sides of the task pane.

To use the mail merge, follow the prompts and click Next at the bottom of the pane to step through the wizard (or Previous if you need to go back to an earlier step).

In Step 1, the wizard opens with a question. It wants to know what type of document you want to merge information into.

Set up the main document

The second step in the wizard is to set up the starting document. You may be sending a direct mail letter, or an e-mail message, or perhaps you want to start with envelopes and labels. Or you may want to create a directory to store listings of data, such as customer names and addresses, product information, and personnel contact data.

The options you see in the wizard vary according to the type of document you selected in the first step. Because we selected envelopes, the options are:

Change document layout This option is selected because a blank document was open when you started the wizard. You want to change the open blank document to an envelope document. Click Envelope options and choose the envelope size and other options you want, and then the envelope document replaces the blank document.

Start from existing document If you have a previously saved envelope that you want to use for the mail merge, but your screen currently has a blank document open, select this option to replace the blank document with your envelope.

Note    The Use the current document is not available when you start with a blank document. Current document means the document currently open on your screen. If you had first opened an envelope document and then started the wizard, you could use this option.

Connect to the recipient list

In Step 3, you connect to the recipient list that you want to merge into your documents. You have three options:

Use an existing list If you already have a recipient list that contains the information you want to merge, select this option. Then, click Browse in the wizard to locate and open that file.

Select from Outlook contacts If you want to use your Outlook contacts list as your recipient list, select this option. Then, click Choose Contacts Folder to locate and open the correct contacts list.

Type a new list If you don't have an appropriate recipient list and want to create one, select this option. The new list is saved as a mailing database (.mdb) file in the My Data Sources folder, which is located in your Documents or My Documents folder. You can reuse the file for future mail merges.

Tip    During the mail merge process, when you connect to the recipient list you want to use in the merge, Word looks first for the file in a folder called My Data Sources in your Documents or My Documents folder. It's probably most convenient, therefore, to store your recipient list there. But, you can connect to any recipient list in any location on your computer or on a server.

Choose the recipients you want in your mailing

After you connect to the recipient list, you choose the recipients that you want to include in your mailing. For example, you might want to send a form letter to only those customers in your file with a specific postal code. Or, you might want to create a directory that includes only one product line.

You do all this in the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box that opens automatically after you connect to or create a recipient list. In the dialog box:

 All the recipients have a check mark next to their name and are included in the mailing by default. You can clear the check mark for individual recipients or clear all the recipients by clearing the check box in the column heading then check the box next to the name of the person you want to include in your mailing.

 Refine the recipient list by clicking Sort… to choose the column name that you want to view and arrange (either ascending or descending); or clicking Filter… to enter the fields and values of the recipients that you want to view. You can also click Find duplicates… to run a report that lists the recipients that might be in your list more than once; or click Find recipient… to locate a specific person. The Validate addresses… feature is available if you have a validation program installed.

Arrange the main document

In Step 4, you arrange the main document. Arranging the main document means putting content into the document. That content consists of:

Information that stays the same in each merged copy.

Placeholders (fields) for the recipient information in each merged copy.

For an envelope, the information that stays the same in each merged copy is the return address that you type in the upper left corner. The placeholders are the addresses of each recipient.

The quickest way to add a delivery address is to click Address block in the wizard. It adds a pre-designed «AddressBlock» field to the envelope, which includes First Name, Last Name, Street Address, City, State, and Postal Code.

Tip    You can assemble your own address block if you prefer. Click More items in the wizard to open the Insert Merge Field dialog box where, with the Database Fields option selected, you see a list of the column headings in your recipient list. You can insert any of these into your main document as a field.

Preview

   

After you've added all the content and fields to the main document, you're ready to preview how the merged documents will look. When you click Next at the bottom of the wizard to move to Step 5, the first merged document automatically appears. Depending upon how the first document looks, you have a number of choices:

If things don't look right, click Previous at the bottom of the wizard. By returning to the previous step, you can add, delete, or match fields, or make other corrections so that the information is displayed correctly.

Tip    When you preview, if you still see fields and chevrons in your document instead of the values for those fields, click the Preview Results on the Mailings tab. Besides showing the individual merged documents, the Preview Results command also toggles between showing the field codes and showing their values.

If things look good, click the double right arrow button at the top of the wizard to page through a few more of the merged documents, as shown in the picture.

If you want to view the merged document for a particular recipient, click Find a recipient to search for that person. As you page through the documents, you can exclude any person from the merge by clicking Exclude

this recipient.

Note    You're excluding a recipient only from the final merge results, not deleting anything from the recipient list.

If you realize that the merge includes some recipients you don't actually want to include, click Edit recipient list to open the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box. As described previously, you can use this dialog box to narrow down the recipient list

Complete the merge

When you're satisfied with previews of the merged documents, you're ready to print the final results. Click Print to open the Merge to Printer dialog box.

Last minute changes?

If you still want one more chance to review the results, or if you want to customize selected envelopes, click Edit individual envelopes in the wizard.

This creates a separate comprehensive merge that contains all the envelopes in a new Word document. After you review or modify the envelopes in this comprehensive document, you can print them immediately.

Or, just save the document and print the envelopes later. If you want to keep the changes you made to individual envelopes, make sure you save this document. This comprehensive document is separate from the main document and will be larger in size.

Caution    If you create a set of merged e-mail messages, preview the messages carefully before you complete the merge. With e-mail messages, you won't have the option of creating a separate comprehensive document. After you click Electronic Mail in the wizard and identify the column in your recipient list that contains the recipients' e-mail addresses, the messages get sent.

Cancel or resume a merge

At any time before you complete your mail merge, you can always cancel it. To do this, close the document and choose not to save the changes. The document will be deleted along with the connection to the recipient list.

But if you just need to stop working on the merge and want to come back to it later, save the main document. By saving the main document you will retain the connection to the recipient list as well as the fields you added to the document. When you open the document again, Word will ask if you want to keep the connection to the recipient list. Click Yes to resume the merge.

Introducing mail merges using the Ribbon

Did you notice that the commands in the Mailings tab become available as you step through the wizard?

The Ribbon is also a handy way to do a mail merge and the process is very similar to the steps in the wizard. Using the Ribbon, you'll have access to more features, such as automatic checking, which looks for errors

before you complete the merge. There are also advanced elements, such as using fields to perform actions or calculations within the main document.

The commands you use on the Mailings tab are in these four groups:

 Start Mail Merge This is beginning point where you pick a document type and then select, create, or edit the recipient list.

 Write & Insert Fields Here's where you can insert the merge fields, match your fields, and use Rules to perform actions in your documents.

 Preview Results Besides viewing the individual merged documents, you can use an automatic error checking feature.

 Finish Complete the merge and combine your individual documents into one comprehensive document, or print them out, or send them electronically.

You'll get a chance to use the Mailings tab and create a more complex merge in the next mail merge course, Mail merge II: Use the Ribbon and perform a complex mail merge.

Mail merge II: Use the Ribbon and perform a complex mail merge

GOALS

After completing this course you will be able to:

Use the Mailings tab commands to perform a mail merge.

Use Word fields to personalize form letters, e-mail messages, or to number coupons.

Perform a complex mail merge that merges several unique elements into a set of otherwise identical documents.

Use the Ribbon to perform a mail merge

You have taken the first mail merge training course, Mail merge I: Use mail merge for mass mailings, so you're already familiar with the wizard that steps you through the mail merge process. But mail merge isn't always as simple as just adding a name or address as a field. Sometimes you need to do something a little more complicated, such as tailoring a letter to specific recipients, or adding sequential numbers to a series of coupons.

You can do these merges by using the Mailings tab on the Ribbon.

Use the Ribbon to perform a mail merge

The Mailings tab on the Ribbon is where you can perform a mail merge by using these four groups:

 Start Mail Merge This is the beginning point where you pick a document type and then select, create, or edit the recipient list.

 Write & Insert Fields Here's where you can insert the fields and if necessary map your fields to your recipient list.

 Preview Results View the individual merged documents before you complete the merge.

 Finish Complete the merge and combine your individual documents into one comprehensive document, or print them out, or send electronically.

You begin with the Start Mail Merge command and then progress to the right across the Ribbon to complete the mail merge at the Finish group.

Step 1: Start the mail merge

You may be familiar with starting the Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard by clicking the Start Mail Merge command. Using that same command you can also go directly to the type of document you want to use in the mail merge.

To start a mail merge, click the Mailings tab and the Start Mail Merge command. Then choose the type of document you want to use in the mail merge.

Step 2: Select the recipients

Next you connect to your recipient list by clicking Select Recipients. You can either type a new recipient list, browse to select an existing list, or select your Outlook Contacts.

When you browse to an existing list, Word will first look in the folder, My Data Sources. Because it opens first, this folder makes it a convenient place to keep your recipient list. When you select the file that you want to use for your recipient list and click OK, you've connected your document to the list.

At this point, you'll see that additional commands become available on the Ribbon. You'll learn about these commands in the next screens.

Step 3: Insert fields

You have probably written the text that will be the same in every copy of your merge document, so this step is where you can add the Address Block or Greeting Line fields. Or click Insert Merge Field to add any other information from your recipient list that you want.

There is also another command called Rules that you can use to insert special fields. A special field can be a response to a question, for example, or it can be conditional text. An example of conditional text might be inserting "she" versus "he" in a sentence.

You'll get to try this in the practice session in the next lesson.

Step 4: Preview the merged documents

 

After you are through writing your document and inserting fields, click Preview Results to see an example of a merged document.

You can look at each additional merged document by clicking the Next Record or Previous Record arrows.

Looking for a specific person? Just click Find Recipient and enter the recipient's name.

Step 5: Edit individual documents

Your merge is ready, but you have the option to review all the merged documents (or just some) if you want.

Clicking Finish & Merge and then clicking Edit Individual Documents creates a separate comprehensive document that includes every recipient in the merge. Here's where you can take a final look at each merged document. Just scroll through the set of finished documents to review and modify them. After you're done, you can print the finished documents immediately.

Note    The Edit Individual Documents options are available only for a mail merge you intend to print. It's not available for a mail merge you plan to distribute electronically as e-mail messages.

Step 6: Print the merged documents

If you skipped the option to edit individual documents and are ready to print all the merged documents, simply click Print Documents from the Finish & Merge command and the Merge to Printer dialog box opens. This dialog box is where you can choose to print all the merged documents or just specific ones.

If you are distributing your mail merge documents electronically, use the Send E-mail Messages command.

Step 7: Save the documents

If you plan to use the main document again for another mail merge, it's a good idea to save it. Saving the main document means that you will keep the connection to the recipient list. When you open the document again, you will be asked if you want to connect to the same list.

To save the document:

 Click the Microsoft Office Button.

 On the menu, click Save. Then choose a location and name for the file and click Save again.

Note    If you used the Edit Individual Documents option, you can save the separate, comprehensive document also, but keep in mind that it's going to be a larger file.

Keyboard shortcuts and the Ribbon

In the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, some programs — Word, Excel®, PowerPoint®, Access, and parts of Outlook® — have been redesigned for greater efficiency and ease of use. Along with the new look come new keyboard shortcuts for accessing and executing commands.

Keyboard shortcuts called access keys relate directly to the tabs, commands, and other things that you see on the screen. You use access keys by pressing the ALT key followed by another key or a sequence of other keys.

Every single command on the Ribbon, the Microsoft Office Button menu, and the Quick Access Toolbar has an access key, and every access key is assigned a Key Tip.

How to use Key Tips

Press the ALT key.

Badges showing the Key Tips appear.

Press the key for the tab or Quick Access Toolbar command you want.

If you press a tab Key Tip, you see the Key Tips for every command on that tab. If you press a Quick Access Toolbar command Key Tip, the command is executed.

Press the key (or keys) for the tab command you want.

Depending on what command you choose, an action may be executed or a gallery or menu may open; in the latter case you can choose another Key Tip.

Tip    If the Key Tip badge shows two letters, press them one after the other.

Other ways to navigate the Ribbon

You can also move around the Ribbon by using the arrow or TAB keys.

Press the ALT key to move the focus to the Ribbon.

Move around the Ribbon:

Move left, right, up, or down by pressing the relevant arrow key.

Move from command to command within a group, then on to the next group, by pressing the TAB key. Press SHIFT+TAB to move backwards through commands and groups.

Use Microsoft Office 2003 access keys

Most Office 2003 menu access keys still work. However, you'll need to know the full shortcut from memory. There are no on-screen reminders of what keys you need to press.

In previous versions of Office, you pressed ALT, E to open the Edit menu, and then you pressed an underlined letter to execute a command. In the 2007 Office system Ribbon programs, when you press ALT and then one of the old menu keys, you won't open a menu. Instead, you'll see a message telling you that you're using an Office 2003 access key and to press ESC to cancel. If you know the key sequence you want, you can just carry on and initiate the command. Otherwise, do as the box says and press ESC to see the Key Tip badges.

Note    You can also move the pointer around the screen without the mouse by using the MouseKeys. These enable the arrows on the numeric keypad on your keyboard to move the pointer around. For further information about MouseKeys, see Microsoft Windows® Help.

Combination keyboard shortcuts

A key combination keyboard shortcut is a set of keystrokes that, when pressed together, initiate an action. You can find the key combination for a command by resting the mouse pointer over it. If you're not using a mouse, there are no on-screen reminders of the key combinations — you have to memorize the keys. Practically all of these shortcuts work in exactly the same way as they did in previous versions of Microsoft Office.

Other helpful keyboard tips and tricks

Use the TAB key and arrow keys to navigate a dialog box.

Activate a command by pressing ENTER. In some cases, this opens a gallery or menu so you can choose what you want and then activate it by pressing ENTER again. For some commands, like the Font box, use the arrow keys to scroll through lists. Once you've got what you want, press ENTER.

CTRL+TAB cycles through the tabs in a dialog box.

SPACEBAR selects and clears check boxes.

SHIFT+F10 opens the shortcut menu, which opens when you right-click an item.

ESC closes an open dialog box or shortcut menu. If nothing is open, it takes the focus away from the Ribbon and back to the main document.

To close a task pane, first press CTRL+SPACEBAR to open the task pane menu. Then press C to select Close on the menu.

ALT+F4 (pressed simultaneously) closes the active window.

F1 opens the Help window.