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1
Finding your way around
This chapter quickly gets you started with Word 2019. It shows you how to launch Word and explains all the main areas in its screen layout. You’ll try some basic text editing as well as the main controls and how they are organized and accessed.
Introduction
Starting Word 2019
The main screen
The Ribbon
The Mini Toolbar
The Quick Access Toolbar
The Status bar
Getting help
Text editing
Selecting text
Working with files
Click and type
Basic navigation
Themes for Word’s interface
Word 2019 vs Office 365
Introduction
Word processing was one of the first popular applications for the modern personal computer. In the early days it provided little more than the ability to enter and change text on the screen. Today, many more people have computers and tablets at home and in the office, and virtually all use a word processor regularly. As the years have passed, the capabilities of the computer and its software have dramatically increased, far beyond the expectations of the early generations of users back in the 1970s and ’80s.
Almost since the beginning, Microsoft Word has been acknowledged as a leader in its field. It is one of the best selling software applications in any category. It grew in complexity from a program with a handful of menu commands to one with an astonishing array of features.
In creating Word 2019, Microsoft has built logically on the foundation of the previous versions. Rather than relying on complex menus, Word works with tabbed visual controls that reconfigure themselves to suit what you’re currently doing. Accordingly, this book works as a graphical teaching guide – wherever possible, pictures and worked examples are used to demonstrate concepts. It’s not intended to replace Microsoft’s documentation; instead you should view it as a way of getting up to speed quickly in a wide range of useful techniques.
The full range of Word’s features is covered in this and the following chapters – from creating and editing simple text-based documents to tables, graphics and research tools as well as more advanced techniques such as viewing and editing documents on the web.
How to use this book
To gain maximum benefit from this book, make sure you’re first familiar with the Windows operating environment (using the mouse, icons, menus, dialog boxes and so on). There are a number of books in the In Easy Steps range that can help you here.
It’s a good idea to start off by going through Chapters 1 and 2 fairly thoroughly, since these introduce basic concepts that are added to later on. Once you’ve done t...
