word-excel-access-help.com logo
Microsoft Word Help
Home
Word 2007
Excel 2007
Access 2007
Word xp
Excel xp
Access xp

Microsoft Word Help
Additional Resources



Microsoft Word Help


Microsoft Word Help

Microsoft Word Help: On-screen Elements

Microsoft Word XP logo
Microsoft Word help with all the Microsoft Word on-screen elements. Find out what they are and do. Given below is a graphical representation of the Microsoft Office Word screen layout, showing you each on-screen element's name and gives a description of each.

Word Office Helper What's on this page...
What all the stuff on-screen is
What is a document?
Moving around in a document
Understanding how paragraphs work
Zipping around with the scroll bar
Working in many documents at once
Zooming In or Out
Exiting Microsoft Office Word

What all the stuff on-screen is

Seeing the Microsoft Word screen for the first time is sort of like trying to find your way through Tokyo’s busy Ikebukuro subway station. Just check out the screen. It’s intimidating. But once you start using Microsoft Word, help will quickly follow and you'll find out what everything is. In the meantime, the following table and image gives you some short descriptions.

Microsoft Word help: on-screen elements

Part of Screen What It Is...
Title Bar At the top of the screen, the title bar tells you the name of the document you’re working on.
Control Menu Icon Click here to pull down a menu with options for minimizing, maximizing, moving, and closing a window.
Scroll Bars The scroll bars helps you get from place to place in a document.
View Buttons Click one of these to change your view of a document.
Status Bar The status bar gives you basic information about where you are and what you’re doing in a document.  It tells you what page and what section you’re in, the total number of pages in the document, and where the cursor is on the page.

What is a document?

A document is just a fancy word for a letter, report, announcement, or proclamation that you create with Microsoft Word.

When you first start Microsoft Office Word, you’ll see a document with the generic name “Document1”.

But if you already have a document on-screen and you want to start a new one, click the New Blank Document button from the Standard toolbar.

A brand-new document opens with the generic name “Document2” in the title bar. (The title bar is the bar across the top of the computer screen where Microsoft Word help you with identifying the document.)  It’s called “Document2” because it’s the second one you’re working on.  The document keeps that name, “Document2”, until you save it and give it a name of your choice.

Microsoft Word help : new blank document button New Blank Document button

Moving around in a document

Documents have a habit of getting longer and longer, and as they do that it takes more effort to move around in them. Microsoft Word help with this by making it easier to move around. Here are some keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor around in documents.

Key to press Where it takes you...
Page Up The cursor moves Up the length of one screen.
Page Down The cursor moves Down the length of one screen.
Home The cursor moves to the beginning of a line.
End The cursor moves to the end of a line.
Ctrl + Page Up The cursor moves to the previous page in the document.
Ctrl + Page Down The cursor moves to the next page in the document.
Ctrl + Home The cursor moves to the beginning of the document.
Ctrl + End The cursor moves to the end of the document.

TIP
Microsoft Word help - tip

I'm not getting there!


If pressing CTRL + Home doesn’t get you to the top or bottom (CTRL + End) of a page, it’s because you click the Select Browse Object button at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar, so Word goes to the next bookmark, comment, heading, or whatever. 

 Click the Select Browse Object button and choose Browse by Page to make these key combinations work again.

Microsoft Word Help: Browse Object button Browse Object button

Understanding how paragraphs work

Back in English class, your teacher taught you that a paragraph is a part of a longer composition that presents one idea or, in the case of dialogue, represents the words of one speaker. Your teacher was right, too, but for Word Processing purposes, a paragraph is a lot less than that.

In Word Processing, a paragraph is simply what you put on-screen before you press the Enter key. For instance, a heading is a paragraph. So is a graphic. If you press Enter on a blank line to go to the next line, the blank line is considered a paragraph.

If you type "Dear John" at the top of a letter and press Enter, “Dear John” is a paragraph.

It’s important to know this because paragraphs have a lot to do with formatting. If you choose the Format ►Paragraph command and monkey around with the paragraph formatting, all your changes affect everything in the paragraph that the cursor is in.

Microsoft Word help you to make formatting changes to a whole paragraph, all you have to do is place the cursor anywhere inside the paragraph. You don’t have to select the paragraph. And if you want to make formatting changes to several paragraphs in a row, all you have to do is select those paragraphs first.

Zipping around with the Scroll Bar

Microsoft Word help by letting you use the scroll bar to get around in documents. The scroll bar is the vertical bar along the right side of the screen that resembles an elevator shaft.

Here's how to move around with the scroll bar:

To move through a document quickly, grab the elevator (called the scroll box) and drag it up or down.  As you scroll, a box appears with the page number and the names of headings on the pages you scroll past (provided you assigned Word styles to those headings).
   
To move line by line up or down, click the up or down arrow (scroll arrows) at the top or bottom of the scroll bar.
   

To move screen-by-screen, click anywhere on the scroll bar except on the arrows or the elevator.


Working in many documents at once

Microsoft Word help you to work on more than one document at the same time. This can be a lot of fun, but even sometimes confusing.

When you open a new document, a new button is placed on the Taskbar. To go from one document to another, click its taskbar button. You can also click Window from the menu bar and click the name of the document to see it on-screen. 

And if you want to see all open documents at once, choose Window ►Arrange All. To go from one document to the next, either click in a new windowpane or press CTRL + F6.

To focus on one window when several are open, click the minimize button of the windowpanes you don’t want to see anymore. By doing so, you remove the other documents from the screen. Click the Restore button to enlarge the window, you want to work on, to full screen size. To see a window you minimized, either click Window from the menu bar again and choose it from the menu or click its taskbar button.

Zooming in or out

Eyes were not meant to stare at computer screens all day, which makes the Zoom command all the more valuable. Microsoft Word help you to use this command freely and often to enlarge or shrink the text on your screen and preserve your eyes for more important things, like gazing at the horizon.

Zoom in or out using any of the following two ways:

Click the down arrow in the Zoom box on the Standard toolbar (the box on the right side that shows a number followed by a percent symbol) and choose a magnification percentage from the drop-down list.

Microsoft Word help : zoom control button The Zoom Control button

   
Click inside the Zoom box, type a Percentage of your own, and press Enter.

Exiting Microsoft Office Word

When it's time to say good-bye to Microsoft Office Word, save and close all your documents. Microsoft Word help with this task easily.

To exit Microsoft Word, do one of the following:

Choose File ►Exit.
   
Click the Close button on the right side of the title bar.
   Microsoft Word help : close button Close button
   
Press ALT + F4.
 
Back to Microsoft Word XP from Microsoft Word help with on-screen elements
 
Microsoft Word XP
Q & A
Antonyms
AutoCorrect
AutoShapes & Text Boxes
Bookmarks
Borders
Bullets
Change Case
ClipArt
Columns
Convert PDF to Word
Convert Word to HTML
Convert Word to PDF
Customize Menus
Customize Shortcut keys
Customize Toolbars
Delete a File
Delete Text
Download Borders
Download Fonts
Drop Cap
Envelopes
Find & Replace
Fonts
Footers
Format Painter
Headers
Highlight Text
Indent
Labels
Line Spacing
Macros
Mail Merge
Margins
Move or Copy
Numbering
Open a File
Outline Numbering
Page Numbers
Page Orientation
Page/Section Break
Password
PDF to Word Converter
Print
Print Preview
Rename a File
Save a File
Screen Layout
Selecting Text
Special Characters
Spelling & Grammar
Styles
Symbols
Synonyms
Tables
Tabs
Text Wrap
Thesaurus
Undo
Word Counter
Word to HTML Converter
Word to PDF Converter
WordArt
Zoom