Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser

Get up and running with Office 2010 and Office 2007

Sean McManus

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780470711965
• eBook ISBN: 9780470970706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Applicazioni desktop

Are you new to Microsoft Office software? Looking for instructions that aren't full of complicated computing terms? Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser can answer all of your queries with its straightforward advice and easy-to-follow layout on using both Office 2010and Office 2007.

Completely jargon-free and aimed at those wishing to extend their computing knowledge, Microsoft Office for the Older and Wiser will have you producing documents in Word, spreadsheets in Excel, slideshows in PowerPoint, and emails in Windows Live Mail in no time.

Learn how to:

• Type and format a letter
• Create an address book
• Produce personalised invitations
• Publish a newsletter
• Form a basic holiday budget
• Create a photo slideshow
• Keep a digital recipe book
• Share and develop ideas over the Internet

U3A is a self-help, learning cooperative for those no longer in full-time, gainful employment. Members come together to share their love of learning through educational, creative and leisure activities. U3A offer their members a wide choice of 300+ subjects in areas such as art, foreign languages, music, history, life sciences, literature, poetry, gardening, philosophy, crafts, field studies, archaeology, astronomy and computing. Currently there are over 230,000 members and more than 740 local U3A groups in the UK. Visit U3A online at www.u3a.org.uk

Part I: Using Microsoft Word

©2010 Stephen Long

Chapter 1: Writing a letter with Microsoft Word

Equipment needed: Computer (desktop or laptop) running Microsoft Word 2010 or Microsoft Word 2007 (see Introduction).

Skills needed: Ability to use a computer keyboard and mouse (or trackball).

People love to receive letters. Not bills or bank statements, but genuine correspondence from friends and family. In this chapter, I'll show you how you can use Microsoft Word to write a personal letter that will delight one of your friends. It's up to you who you send it to.

Although this is a simple project, it's a great illustration of the power of word processing. Unlike a typewritten or handwritten letter, you can easily change your mind about what you want to say, how you want to say it and how you want your letter to look. You can insert new words, sentences or paragraphs and get rid of any that you're not so keen on when you reread the letter.

You can also add some polish, with Word's sophisticated presentation functions. In this chapter, we'll explore how you can modify the text style and alignment, but the next two chapters in Part I will build on these skills to show how you can create professional looking publications.

Starting Word

There are several ways to start the Word program, depending on which version of Windows you are using and how your software has been set up.

First, you need to find the Start button. This isn't the button that you use to switch on your computer or the one on your keyboard. It's on the screen, in the bottom left corner. In older versions of Windows, the button is coloured green and says ‘Start' on it, but in Windows Vista and Windows 7, the button is round and has a Windows icon on it.

Place your mouse pointer over the Start button and click it (by pressing the left mouse button). This will open a ‘menu' of programs. Look to see if Word is among them, and if it is then simply position your mouse pointer over that item in the list and then click it (press the left mouse button).

If you can't see Word on the menu, you need to position your cursor on All Programs at the bottom of the menu, and then click it. A menu of all the programs on your computer will open. Find the folder for Microsoft Office (you might need to use the scrollbar if you are using Windows 7 or Vista). When you click the folder, it will open so you can see the Word entry. Click on that, and Word will start loading. It sounds complicated, but it only takes about four seconds once you know how to do it.

If you're nifty with a keyboard and are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, there's a quicker way. Find the Start key on your keyboard (see Figure 0.1 in Introduction); it is usually on the bottom row and has the same picture of the Windows ‘flag' as the onscreen Start button. Press the Start key, type ‘Word' and then press Enter, and you should see Word fire up.

These are just a couple of many ways you can start Word. You might have a Word icon on your desktop that you can double-click, for example, or you might have Word pinned to your taskbar in Windows 7. Feel free to experiment to find the quickest way to start Word on your PC. The above approach will work for everyone, but it won't necessarily be the quickest way to do it.

Saving your work

Word automatically opens a new blank document when you start the program. So when Word opens, you'll be faced with a sight that will either inspire you with its endless possibilities or strike fear into your heart: a blank page.

Before you let rip with your creativity, though, I recommend that you save your work. If you have used any other programs, you might have saved files before. Whenever you create a new file or make changes to an existing file, you need to save it on your computer's hard disk. It is important to save whatever file you're working on regularly, because anything in the computer's memory (including your current work) is wiped if there's a power cut or your PC freezes (which happens rarely with modern PCs). Anything that you have already saved on the hard disk will be safe, though.

Saving your file also means that you can come back to it again another day to re-read it, work on it or even modify it for another purpose.

Saving is not the same as backing up. When you save something, you store it in a file on your computer so it's still available even after you switch the machine off and on again. When you back up, you make a spare copy of that file, just in case the computer it's stored on breaks down.

Given that you haven't typed anything yet, it might seem an odd time for me to mention this now. After all, you're about to save an empty file. It can be a bit fiddly saving your work for the first time, though, so it's best to cover this first. If you save the file now, you can then easily keep the file updated as you're writing, without interrupting your flow. The easier it is to save your file as you write, the more likely you are to do it and the less likely you are to lose any finely crafted sentences - or worse still, finely crafted paragraphs or pages!

The menus used for saving files are slightly different in Office 2010 and Office 2007, but not so different that there's likely to be any confusion. In Office 2010, you should see a blue File tab in the top left corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 1.1.

When you click the File tab, you're taken to what Microsoft grandly calls the ‘backstage area'. The idea is that this is where you go when you want to save, print or otherwise manage your document. Anything that isn't to do with the content of your document and its appearance can be found backstage.

Figure 1.1

When you click the File tab to go backstage, you'll be shown some information about your document, including how many words and pages long it is (none, so far), and how long you've been editing it. On the left, you'll see Save as one of the options.

In Office 2007, there is a round Office button in the top left corner of the screen, as shown in Figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2

This is where all the file management and printing functions are kept, and Save is one of the options.

Whichever version of Word you are using, the process is the same after this. When you click ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part I:
• Part II:
• Part III:
• Part IV: