Category Archives for "WP Beginners"

As I mentioned in the lesson on Envelopes, even though formatting and printing envelopes and labels is a really basic word processing function, Microsoft Word inexplicably hides it from users on the Mailings tab.

Fortunately, if you're using labels from a major label vendor like Avery, you don't have to bust out the ruler and define the label format from scratch. But knowing how to choose which label format to use can be a bit tricky.

As I mentioned in the Envelopes lesson, the envelopes and labels feature can be found in the same place: the Mailings tab.

This time, we're going to click Labels:

You’ll notice immediately that the dialog box you get is actually for both Envelopes and Labels. Depending on whether you clicked on Envelopes or Labels on the Mailings tab, the correct tab on this dialog box will be selected by default. However, you can always click on the other tab if you’ve changed your mind.

The Labels tab of this dialog box has several sections. Your cursor, by default, will be sitting in the Address section (and you may find that Word has automatically populated an address there, depending on the document you were editing when you starting formatting this label).

Looking down and to the right, you'll see a section called Labels. This is where you can define the size labels you want to use. You may see a particular label size already selected; if that is not correct, then click on Options to change the label definition:

In many offices, the majority of the labels are either Avery brand or a generic brand which corresponds to an Avery size (usually listed on the outside of the package). For example, the Avery 2181 labels are the mini-sheets of plain white file folder labels, the Avery 5163 labels are the full-sheet 2" x 4" shipping labels I use, etc.

Don't use Avery US-sized labels? Your installation of Word will probably list several other label vendors, such as:

Depending on the country in which you purchased your copy of Microsoft Word, your list may vary from mine.

Regardless of what brand of labels you're using, the procedure for picking a pre-defined label size/type is the same:

(Quick tip: if you select the first product number in the list and then type your product number, the cursor will move to the correct label — no need to scroll down!)

Once you've selected the correct label, look over to the right and compare the type, height, width, and paper size to what you have on hand:

Satisfied you've selected the right one? Click OK to return to the Labels dialog box.

At this point, I generally leave "Full page of the same label" selected. Why? Even if I'm just wanting to print one label on the page, it's easier (for me, anyway) to simply put my cursor into the correct label on the page than to designate it in the "Row/Column" fields here. But, hey, if you want to try it, knock yourself out.

So, you've got your label defined. How do you get to the point you can put some text in it? Click "New Document" ...

and your labels will appear in their own document screen:

Notice that what you have on the screen looks a lot like a Word Table. That's because it is one. And this is why I like Labels in Microsoft Word better than the label function in WordPerfect. Once you know how to format table rows, columns and cells, you can do those same things with labels.

For instance, I don't like for my file folder labels to be printed so close to the top edge. But I don't want to skip an entire line down, either. So I go to the Layout tab of the Table Tools contextual menu (if your cursor is anywhere inside of the label table, you'll see it just above the Ribbon on the right — see that yellow block above?) and give the label an inside top margin of 0.1":

If you want to automatically center (horizontally and/or vertically) your label content, it's a one-click operation. Just click the correct visual representation in that same Alignment section of the Layout tab, and you're good to go.

Unfortunately, you can't print labels in Word 365, unless you have a document already formatted as labels (or you're intrepid enough to try to create your own label table). Sorry!

One of the most basic functions in Microsoft Word is printing envelopes and labels. You'd think that such a basic function would be pretty intuitive. It's not. One of the most frequent questions I get from longtime WordPerfect users is, "Where on earth are the envelopes (or labels) in Word?"

In all the Ribbon-based versions of Microsoft Word, the envelopes and labels feature can be found in the same place: the Mailings tab.

Over on the far left are Envelopes and Labels. Let's start by clicking Envelopes:

You'll notice immediately that the dialog box you get is actually for both Envelopes and Labels. Depending on whether you clicked on Envelopes or Labels on the Mailings tab, the correct tab on this dialog box will be selected by default. However, you can always click on the other tab if you've changed your mind.

But what you want to know right now is how address an envelope. By default, you could simply type something in the Delivery address field, put your return address in the indicated field (if it's not there already, which it would be if you'd saved it there, in which case, you may not even need this tutorial), and hit the Print button. And most of the time, that'll work just fine.

Note: Word will actually insert the address for you if you have your cursor right before the address:

Let's explore this Envelopes tab a bit further so you'll know how to tweak the settings on your own. Click the Options button.

Since I'm in the U.S., this is defaulting to a standard No. 10 envelope, but the drop-down provides a whole list of choices. Microsoft Word also has some embedded default settings for the placement of both the delivery and return addresses, but you can adjust those too, as well as the font used.

Let's switch over to the Printing Options tab:

Again, Microsoft Word (based on your printer driver) will set a default feed method for your envelope. Most of the time, you can just leave this setting alone. However, if you find that your envelope needs to be fed into the manual feed or envelope tray in a different way or position, you can reset that here.

Going back to the Envelopes and Labels dialog box, we see that we have two options for producing the envelope: Print and Add to Document. Clicking on Print, obviously, sends the envelope straight to the printer. Clicking on Add to Document inserts a page at the top of your document formatted as an envelope.

One of the advantages of doing Add to Document is that you can go back and change the envelope if you need to. A disadvantage, however, is that you have to be careful how you print the document, particularly if the envelope has to be manually fed and the remainder of the document does not. Experiment and figure out which works best for you and your particular setup.

Speaking of "what works best for you," this brings me, as an aside, to my own preferred method for creating envelopes. Every morning, when Microsoft Word opens a blank document upon start-up, I go ahead and format that document as an envelope, with the margins set up to place the delivery address 2.5 inches from the top and 4.0 inches from the left (standard for a no. 10 envelope).

To do this, I go to the Page Layout tab and perform several actions:

First, I set the Paper Size/Type to a No. 10 envelope:

Next, I set to the page orientation to Landscape:

Finally, I set the margins to 2.5 inches top, 4.0 inches left, and 0.5 inches bottom and right.

And yes, it's possible to do all these steps within the Margins and Paper tabs of the Page Setup dialog box itself by clicking on that tiny grey launcher arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the Page Setup section of the Page Layout tab (or double-clicking on the horizontal or vertical rulers):

To make this even easier for myself, I've created a macro for these settings and placed a shortcut button on my Quick Access Toolbar. That way, every time Microsoft Word starts up, I just click that button to run the macro on the blank document and, voilà, I have an envelope form I can start using immediately. Another reader suggested simply having an envelope template (a .dotx file) that I could simply retrieve whenever I need a pre-formatted envelope. I've done that, too.

Either way, this enables me to print multiple letterhead envelopes throughout the day (since the margin settings above prevent my putting in a return address). All I have to do is copy and paste addresses from letters in progress and print from the envelope form. Once I have the envelope(s) I need, I can simply delete the address(es) and reuse the form.

This method may not be for you. That's okay. But this just illustrates that there's always more than one way to accomplish something in Microsoft Word.

Adding to the list of limitations of Word 365, Microsoft advises that, while the online version can open a document previously formatted as an envelope, you can't create a new envelope or print one.

Now that you've stepped through all the basic formatting for your document, it's time to finish it up so that you can print or send it. But before you hit the print button, there are a few things that still need to be taken care of. After all, you want to make sure that your document is truly ready before you send it out.

Be warned: by default, Microsoft Word Spell Checking feature in the desktop versions (not 365) also checks Grammar at the same time. If at any time the Grammar Check stops in what it believes is a grammatical error, you can click either of the Ignore buttons (as appropriate) or Next Sentence to move on, click Change to accept the suggestion being made, or click on Explain for the explanation of the grammatical rule you are (allegedly) breaking.

If Grammar Check is not appropriate for the document you're working on, or you simply find it annoying (as I do), you can uncheck the box next to Check Grammar and have Spell Check proceed to only check the spelling of your words. I'll show you in a moment how to turn off Grammar Check permanently if you wish, but first, let's see Spell Check in action:

In the above example, Spell Check has stopped on the word "Lorem." As with Grammar Check above, you can click either of the Ignore buttons if that's not actually a misspelled word, or click Add to Dictionary if that spelling is both correct and something you frequently use. If the word is misspelled, however, find the correct spelling in the Suggestions list and click either Change (to change adjust this instance of the misspelled word) or Change All (to change all of the instances of this misspelled word to the Suggestion you chose). If that particular misspelling is a typo that you frequently make, you can choose the correct Suggestion and click AutoCorrect to add that to the AutoCorrect dictionary, which will prompt Microsoft Word to correct that typo whenever you make it in future documents.

To end Spell Check, you can either complete it by going through the entire document as above or clicking Close to close the dialog box. If you spell check the entire document, a small confirmation message will pop up to let you know that Spell Check is complete.

Click OK to return to your document.

In any of the desktop versions of Word, if you go to the File tab and click on Options, then go to Proofing, you'll see some options for customizing how Microsoft Word checks spelling and grammar.

These options are mostly self-explanatory. For example, if you commonly use acronyms such as NASA, you'll probably want to check the box next to Ignore words in UPPERCASE. If you want Word to catch instances in which you've accidentally repeated word (like "that that"), then check the box next to Flag repeated words.

Word can also check spelling and grammar as you type, which can be particularly convenient if you don't want to have to remember to spell check when you're through editing. If the options "Check spelling as you type" and "Mark grammar errors as you type" are checked, you'll see green (spelling) and red (grammar) squiggly lines underneath any words or phrases caught by the Spell and Grammar Check.

I tend to find this method more convenient because I can visually scan the document as I'm editing and make corrections. If Word marks something as an error when it's actually correct, you can simply right-click on the squiggly line and click on Ignore to instruct Word to skip over any other instances of that word or phrase in that document.

Now that we've gotten to page formatting in this series, take a moment to pat yourself on the back a bit. After all, you've learned quite a bit so far — how to get around in Microsoft Word's Ribbon interface, how to open and navigate in existing documents, how to create and save new documents, and some basic character and paragraph formatting skills. That's a lot!

So for this lesson, we're going to pull back a little bit and talk about page formatting. When I say "page formatting," I mean what size/format paper you print on (US letter or legal size, A3 or A4, envelopes, etc.), what page margins you use, and what page orientation (portrait or landscape) your document has.

Let's get to it.

In Microsoft Word, three of these basic items of page formatting are controlled in the Page Setup area of the Page Layout (or Layout, in some versions of Word) tab of the Ribbon.

We're going to work our way from right to left of the Page Setup area, starting with Size:

First, let's decide the size of the page we'll be printing on.

In the U.S., the Normal template as delivered defaults to letter-size paper, so that when you open a new document, it's set to print on 8.5" x 11" paper. The most popular choices for your particular language version of Word will be shown at the top of this list, but you can scroll down to find the paper you need (including envelope forms). (The list of choices in Word 365 is shorter.) If none of those paper sizes are what you want, you can always click More Paper Sizes (or Custom Page Size in Word 365) at the bottom of the drop-down to access the full Page Setup menu.

If none of the predefined sizes there are right for you, you can always input custom measurements for the paper you're using (see above examples), then click OK when you're done.

Next, let's decide which direction the text will print: Portrait or Landscape. If you're not familiar with those terms, the difference between them is illustrated in the Orientation drop-down:

Here, you've only got two choices. Pick one, and we'll move on to margins.

Like Page Size, the Normal template as delivered defaults to a particular margin setting, but you can change it in the Margins drop-down.

As before, you can pick one of the predefined settings by clicking on it, or you can click on Custom Margins to define your own.

As you can see above, you're taken back to the Page Setup dialog box, but this time you're on the Margins tab. You can either type the margin settings directly into the boxes for Top, Bottom, Left and Right, or you can use the up and down arrows on the right edges of the boxes to increment the setting up or down. Once those are set, click OK to close the dialog box.

You may have noticed a tab called Layout in the dialog box above:

In the upper part of this dialog box, you can set some preferences for your headers and footers (we'll get to those in a moment), but one feature I want to point out is that you can set the vertical alignment of the entire page - Top (the default, meaning your text starts at the top margin), Center, Bottom, and Justified.

There is no equivalent of the Layout tab in Word 365.

You don't need me to tell you what a paragraph is — it's a block of text that ends with a "hard return" you insert by pressing the Enter key. In Microsoft Word, paragraph formatting covers such attributes as justification, indentation, line spacing, and what WordPerfect calls "block protect" (called something else by Word, but we'll get to that later).

Our first lesson in paragraph formatting focuses on justification and line spacing. Some of these instructions will be familiar to anyone who's worked with a Windows word processor before, but here's how you can set each of these attributes in Microsoft Word:

Justification (some prefer the term "alignment") refers to how the paragraph is aligned horizontally.

And it's super easy — here's how you do left-justify, right-justify, center, and full-justify in Microsoft Word (either with your mouse or your keyboard).

Paragraph formatting is controlled by the Paragraph section on the Home tab of the Ribbon:

You can control justification/alignment of a paragraph by clicking on the following buttons:

More paragraph formatting commands (including those we'll be talking about below) are contained in the Paragraph dialog box. To open the dialog box, click the launcher (the small arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the Paragraph section of the Home tab of the Ribbon):

That will bring up the Paragraph dialog box. The justification settings are near the top, in a drop-down box:

Setting line spacing is easy, too, and you've got the same options here: Ribbon and keyboard.

There are two places on Microsoft Word's Ribbon that you can adjust line spacing. You can either use the drop-down in the Paragraph section of the Home tab:

... or you can click the dialog launcher arrow in the Paragraph section of the Layout tab (called the Page Layout tab in Word 2010) to bring up the Paragraph dialog box:

If you choose Multiple (see the area inside the red square above), you can use any positive number for the "at" value (the area inside the blue square above), and Word will adjust the spacing based on the number of lines ("3" would be triple-spacing, for example). If you need to be more precise, choose "Exactly" and use points, centimeters, or inches as your unit of measurement in the "at" box.

You speed typists out there can use the following shortcut keys for these standard line spacing options:

In addition to setting line spacing <em>within</em> a paragraph, you can add extra space between paragraphs. This option comes in especially handy in a couple of situations:

This, by the way, is the feature that's often behind this complaint: "I chose single spacing, but I still see extra spaces between my paragraphs!" If you run into this predicament, you'll soon know how to check (and correct) this setting.

Again, you can access these settings via either the Ribbon or the keyboard. On the Ribbon, you can use the spinner (a field with up and down arrows on the side that enable you to change the value in the field up or down) in the Paragraph section of the Layout tab (called the Page Layout tab in Word 2010 and Word 365).

You can also adjust these values in the same Paragraph dialog box shown above.

That check box for "don't add space between paragraphs of the same style" deserves a special mention. It's handy when you're working with headings (you want space before and after a two-line heading, but not space between the first and second lines separated by a hard return).

Where that check box becomes a bit of a pain in the neck is when it's checked for regular text paragraphs. Don't get frustrated if you reset before/after paragraph spacing and it doesn't seem to "take". Select all of the text that doesn't seem to be behaving properly, then head into the Paragraph dialog box (click the launcher arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the Paragraph section of either the Home or Layout/Page Layout tabs) to make sure this box isn't ticked.

In this lesson, we turn our attention to the basics of formatting characters: fonts; bold, italic and underline; subscript, superscript, strikethrough, small caps and other specialized formatting; and how to change the case (uppercase, lowercase, etc.) of already-typed text.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record here, but once again, depending on your preference, you've got more than one way to change the fonts in your document. Here are your choices:

To change the size of the font, you can:

1) Use the drop-down just to the right of the font name in the Home tab on the Ribbon and pick a size from the list (or type in a number yourself):

2) Use the Font dialog box above (pick a font size under Size on the right).

3) Use keyboard shortcuts to increase or decrease the font size by set increments.

To make characters boldface, italics, or underline, you can:

Take your pick — use whichever method is easiest for you!

While boldface, italic and underline will get you through most character formatting challenges, Microsoft Word has more in its arsenal for formatting text (as opposed to inserting special characters or formatting with styles) via the Format Font dialog box (accessible via the Ribbon by clicking the launcher arrow in the bottom right-hand corner of the Font section of the Home tab):

Let's go through what's available here:

If you've ever decided (or been told) <em>after</em> you've already typed something that what's in lowercase letters now needs to be UPPERCASE, or vice versa, you don't have to retype a single letter.  No, no, no.  You just need to use Microsoft Word's Change Case feature.

Select the text you want to change the case of, using your mouse or keyboard.

On the Home ribbon, go to the Fonts section and click the arrow next to the Change Case button.

Choose the appropriate option.

As an example, here's what various types of text look like before changing case:

And this is what it looks like after each type of change:

Want a keyboard shortcut instead? Done! Just click SHIFT+F3 repeatedly to cycle through the four choices above.

Microsoft Word's really not very different from most word processors in the way it retrieves current documents, and most common editing tasks will be familiar to anyone who's worked with a word processor in Microsoft Windows. Let's go over some of the basics.

There are several ways to open the document already saved in Microsoft Word. You might remember the File tab and the Quick Access Toolbar from the previous lesson. Either of those can be used to retrieve a document:

In Word 2010, you'll be taken to the familiar Windows Explorer to find the file you're looking for. Simply navigate to the correct drive and folder, double-click on the file name, and you're in.

In Word 2016, here's what you'll get when you click on the File tab:

The default view shows your most recent documents (convenient!). But you can navigate to your OneDrive cloud account or a local or network drive to find any document you need.

For those of you who prefer to use the keyboard over the mouse, here's a quick shortcut key to take you directly to the File > Open area: CTRL-O (hold down the Control key and type the letter "O" for Open).

... then navigate to the correct folder in Windows Explorer (either on your PC or on your network and double-click on the file name to retrieve it.

The Open File icon should be in your Quick Access Toolbar by default. If it is not, just click on the drop-down arrow at the end of the QAT and make sure Open is checked in the list:

Click here for a more detailed demonstration of how to customize your Quick Access Toolbar.

If you simply want a completely blank document with no pre-existing content and with just standard formatting, there are three ways you can create a new document based on what Microsoft Word calls the Normal template:

Click on the File tab on the left-hand side of the Ribbon, then click on New:

You'll be asked which document type you want. Choose "Blank Document" ...

... and a new blank document will appear in the editing window.

This method is even quicker. Floating above the tabs on the Ribbon is something called the Quick Access Toolbar. While that's covered in more detail elsewhere, your Quick Access Toolbar (QAT) gives you one-click access to your most frequently used commands. By default, you'll have at least the New Document, Open Document, and Save Document icons on the QAT. The New Document icon looks like a blank sheet of paper. Click it, and up pops a new document.

If for some reason you don't see that icon on your QAT, it's easy to add. Just click the drop-down arrow at the end of your Quick Access Toolbar and make sure that New has a check mark next to it:

Look above at the illustration of the Quick Access Toolbar. See what's written next to the word New? That key combination, <strong>CTRL-N</strong>, is the default keyboard shortcut for starting a new document. (If you find that doesn't work for you, it may be that someone else using your PC has designated that shortcut for another function. To learn how to restore it to its original function, click here.)

Navigating in a Microsoft Word document is very much like navigating in any word processing program in Microsoft Windows, including WordPerfect. There are, of course, some differences, but regardless of those, let's talk about the various ways you can get around in Microsoft Word.

Getting around with your computer's mouse is probably the most intuitive way of navigating Microsoft Word. To move vertically through the document, you can simply drag the scroll bar on the right, or click above or beneath it depending on whether you want to move up or down.

You may notice that there something on the bottom of the vertical scrollbar in Microsoft Word 2010 (sorry, this isn't available in version 2013 or 2016) that you don't see in most programs (not actual size):

Click on that little round button in the middle, and you'll get this menu:

These buttons are called the Select Browse Object menu, which allow you to go up and down in the document by various criteria - by page, heading, graphic, table, etc. We'll leave most of these functions for a later lesson.

In Word versions 2013 and later, you can select browse objects through another tab on the Find and Replace dialog box, accessible by either clicking on one of the PAGE elements on the Status Bar below your document <strong>or</strong> by pressing CTRL-H <strong>or</strong> using the Replace button on the far right edge of the Home tab.

While we're here, let's go over some of the basic browse criteria.

The double up and down arrows normally allow you to go up and down by document page (as opposed to by screen length, as the Page Up and Page Down buttons on your keyboard do). To go back one page, click the double up arrow in the Select Browse Object menu; to go down one page, click the double down arrow.

There is one caveat, however. If another Browse Object has been previously selected in Word 2010, the double up and double down arrows will browse by that object instead of by page. Yes, it's confusing, but let me illustrate:

As you can see from the Select Browse Object menu above, you can browse by virtually any criteria you can think of — by page, section, footnote or endnote, even by line. Clicking on the center button shown above brings up the Browse Object dialog box:

One of the really neat things about using Go To is how versatile it is. Notice that you can browse by an absolute value (such as a specific page or section number) or you can put the + or - symbol in front of a number to go back or forward that many objects (in other words, if you put +4 in the field above with Page selected on the left, you'll go forward four pages in the document).

If you're a speed typist and prefer to keep your hands off the mouse as much as possible, there are a multitude of keyboard commands available in Word to take you around the document:

(Remember, when the table above says something like KEY1+KEY2, that means you hold down the first key and press the second key while still holding down the first key. If there are three keys listed, you hold down the first two keys and press the third one while still holding down the first two keys.)

If you're coming to Microsoft Word from WordPerfect (or even upgrading from Microsoft Word 2003 or earlier), the first task is understanding the Ribbon interface. Microsoft introduced this into its Office suite in the 2007 version, and it's very different from what you're used to in Windows programs, particularly WordPerfect.

The Ribbon in Microsoft Office organizes the commands you're used to seeing in menus in a graphical interface. The Ribbon is organized in a series of Tabs, which in turn have Command Groups. Let's look at the Home tab as an example:

As you can see above, the Home tab is the current tab selected (usually done by clicking on it with your mouse or, if your mouse has a scroll wheel, scrolling through to it). Within the Home tab, there are several Command Groups: Clipboard, Font, Paragraph, Styles, and Editing (listed along the bottom and separated by vertical lines).

Within each of those Command Groups, there are individual <strong>Command Buttons</strong>. For example, in the Font group, you can see there are commands for boldface, italics, underline, and other font-related functions. The same is true for each of the Command Groups. Some of them are one-click buttons, like the boldface command, and some of them are drop-down commands, like the font selector you see just above the boldface/italics/underline commands.

(Having trouble finding a command you need? Here's a great reference from Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15614)

There's one more feature in each of these Command Groups, but it's a little difficult to see. Since there's not enough room to store every command on the Ribbon, many of the Command Groups feature a Dialog Launcher as a downward-facing arrow in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on that Launcher brings up a dialog box that allows access to more commands within that Command Group. For example, let's click on the Paragraph Dialog Launcher and see what happens:

If you're familiar with earlier versions of Microsoft Word, you'll recognize this dialog box. In fact, most of the dialog boxes brought up by these launchers will look familiar to anyone who's worked with Microsoft Word before. These dialog boxes work the same way here as they do in other Windows applications: select a command or adjust a setting, then click the OK button.

The tabs you see above are not all the tabs are available in Microsoft Word. Occasionally, when you're using a particular feature like Tables, Headers and Footers, or Pictures, a set of Contextual Tabs will appear on the right-hand side of the Ribbon. To illustrate, I'm going to put a table in my document and show you the contextual tabs (Table Tools) that pop up for tables on the far right:

Now that I've placed a table in my document and have my cursor within it, two more tabs pop up under Table Tools: Design and Layout. If I click outside of the table in my document, those tabs will disappear. But anytime I have my cursor within a table, Table Tools will pop up to give me all the available commands for formatting tables.

(You may have noticed that, in the screenshots above, I have a Developer tab in my Microsoft Word. Without getting too complicated, it is possible to enable or disable individual tabs, but that will be the subject of another tutorial.)