Microsoft Word Tutorial

 

 

 My goal with this article is for
you to become proficient in Word if
you've never used word before even if
you've used word before I want to tell
you the features and functionality
that'll make you an expert and make you
very proficient in using word let's say
you're going for a job and they want you
to demonstrate that you know how to use
Word by reading this article you'll be
able to do that
we're gonna do first is I'm going to
tell you how you can even get Microsoft
Word the first way you can do it is most
pcs these days come with word installed
so you could just search for word and
you'll see the app on your computer if
you don't have it though and you want to
pick it up you can go to the website
office comm and then click on get office
and when you do that you'll be able to
buy office for your computer this allows
you to use an offline you have a few
different options you could these two
are subscription offerings one of them
allows you to use it with up to six
people the other one allows you to use
it with one person or you can just pay
one time and you get word if you're not
interested in paying forward you could
also get it for free online simply click
on sign-in type in your username if you
don't have one you could create one and
then once you log in you'll also be able
to use word online entirely for free and
it's it's also pretty good offering a
word on the web and then also word on
the desktop they're both pretty good
so once you have word what you can do is
I'm going to today for this article I'm
going to use the desktop software so I'm
gonna go ahead and open word and when
you first open word you'll land on the
home screen so you see on the left hand
side this one's referred to as home from
home you can create a new blank
came in you also have templates that you
could start from and you also have
recent documents down below with the
templates section up here if you want to
see more templates you simply click on
more templates and you could create from
all types of pre-existing content they
also have different categories or you
could search for templates so you could
start just from something existing verse
trying to start it from scratch here I'm
going to go back with your recent
documents you could search for a recent
document so here if I want to look for
my travel list I could type it in and
here it shows up and there's also an
option for more documents where I can
click on open they go to the same place
and when I click there I could look
across my whole file system I can see
files that have been shared with me or I
could look at my one drive to see if I
could find the file that I'm looking for
today for the tutorial what I'm gonna do
is we're just gonna start with a blank
document so let's jump into a blank
document and what I want to do first is
I want to save this document and I'm
gonna save it to one drive by saving it
to one drive I'm able to access this
document from anywhere so I'll just go
to save as and I'm gonna put it in my
personal one drive account and we'll call
this word tutorial and I'm gonna put
this in my in my videos folder under
tutorials ok
so I've saved my document it's now
available in the cloud so I can now go
on any other device and I could access
the same document so it's available
anywhere I could get it on my phone I
could get it in a web browser or I could
open it from word elsewhere so I could
get it from anywhere so I'd recommend
doing that as the first step by putting
it in one drive not only is it available
anywhere but then you could also
collaborate with others you could share
the document with others some other nice
stuff that you get is you could look at
the version history so as you make
changes it'll save each step along the
way as you're working on the document so
let's say you make a whole bunch of
changes but maybe they didn't really
like the changes that much you could go
back in time to a previous version so
that's some of the benefits of saving to
one drive so here I am on the home pivot
this is the default one that you land on
and so what we can do is I'm in a
document now so I can just start typing
hello my name is
Shahzaib how is everyone doing
today so I'm just typing in some just
general text what I can also do is along
with typing text I could also dictate so
I have this dictate option here and
let's click on that hi my name is Shahzaib
how are you doing today
question mark okay so of course my name
is a little more difficult to spell so
the dictation didn't get that quite
right but that's easy to update and it
did pretty well so whether I feel like
typing whether I feel like dictating a
word can work with me to get my thoughts
and text into Word now that I've entered
some text into Word what I can also do
is I could format my text so what I can
do is let's say hello or let's say my
name here what I want to do is I could
apply bolding I could italicize I could
underline I can also change the font so
maybe I don't like Calibri instead maybe
I want to go with us ago so let me go
with one of these Segoe semi bold and
then I could also adjust the font color
I have lots of different colors I could
also click on more colors and I can
basically get an infinite number of
colors to choose from so I'm going to go
ahead and select that color now what's
nice is let's say I spend a whole bunch
of time working on this coloring of my
name and I want to apply it to this
other kemon well I don't want to have to
go through select the font bold
italicize and do that all that again
that's what can really help me here is
the format painter if you've ever
wondered about what this does is you
simply click on the text that you want
to copy the format of then you click on
format painter and then you simply
highlight the piece where you want to
copy that format over to so I'll do that
and there you see the formatting is
exactly the same so very easy way to
copy formatting what I could also do is
let's say you know I make a whole bunch
of changes here maybe I change the color
here what I can do is I could also just
clear the format so here I highlight it
and I'll click on this clear formatting
option and that gets rid of all of the
formatting on my text what I can also do
is if I highlight text you'll see this
kind of quick formatting tool up here so
especially if let's say I'm going to
type in a few
city names let's say I type in a lot of
text and you know I'm kind of lower down
on the document you know I could go up
here to get to the formatting or I could
simply highlight the text in there I
have quick access to the formatting so
kind of a very quick way to apply your
formatting without always needing to go
up what I can also do is here I've
entered a list of a few cities let's put
in a few other city names in here so I
have four cities what I could do is I
could put this into a bulleted list I
could do a numbered list so many
different options here in terms of
bulleting and another thing I could do
is well is with this list that's not
currently in alphabetical order so I
could click on this sort option and you
know maybe I want to do it in
alphabetical order so I'll click
paragraphs but you can also sort things
based on numbers or dates but I'm gonna
go ahead and alphabetical order and so
there it's adjusted it now so it's an
alphabetical order so some of the nice
controls I have here what I want to talk
about next is this section over here
called styles and I'll tell you what
that's good for so let's say that I have
different headers so maybe vacation
destinations favorite vacations and then
maybe we have dream vacation so I have
different categories and then you know
maybe I have some text under these
headers so what I can do is with styles
I could say hey this is a header so let
me let me apply a style there and I'll
say this is a header apply a style and
then let me highlight this and this is a
style so let's say that oh actually I
don't want this header to be blue I'd
rather have it be red now if you don't
use styles what I'd have to do is I'd
have to go through each and in each
individual one and then change it to red
but I don't want to do that I'd rather
do it all at once and so what I can do
is if I click into Styles here I'm gonna
right-click on the style and I'm gonna
go to modify and when I'm in this modify
screen I can now define what I want this
style to look like so now I'm gonna say
hey let's go with a red color for the
header and so I'll click apply and now
it applied it to all of the different
items that use that style and so this is
really powerful especially when you get
a very long document you could simply
apply a style and it'll update every
single point where
you use that style and so they have
styles for just about everything you can
do it for headers you can do it for just
your text paragraph so you could do it
for titles and anything and that way
it's very easy to update without needing
to go through header by header by header
or paragraph by paragraph by paragraph
and update it so styles are very
powerful another thing that I love on
this home screen is the ability to find
and then also replace and so I'll click
on advanced find and then click on
replace so let's say that I made a bunch
of references to New York and actually
what I meant to do is I wanted to make
reference to another city so let's say
Detroit what I could do is I can simply
click on replace all and then it'll go
through my whole document and replace
all instances where I say in New York
with Detroit so it makes it really easy
to kind of quickly make updates
throughout your document and so those
are the those are the key things on the
Home tab let's jump into the insert tab
next on the insert tab some of what you
can do is we're gonna start over here
you could insert a cover page and the
nice thing is word has a whole bunch of
pre formatted cover pages that you can
insert you could go through and pick
whichever one you think looks nice
there's also this concept of page break
and what you could do there is let's say
I'm typing and then I want to jump to
the next page I could simply hit enter
all the way down until I make it to the
next page but an easier way to do that
is to simply click on page break you'll
see this line is inserted and this just
starts me on the next page now so I
don't have to keep entering down until I
reach the next page I could also insert
things like tables pictures I could also
drop shapes into my into my word
document there's something called smart
art which is kind of neat and you have
all these different things like if you
want to insert a list or a process or a
cycle here I'll go and insert a list and
what you could do is it inserts the
shapes and you just go in and modify the
text to your heart's content so very
easy and you could go ahead and change
the colors on it
you could change the the style or the
bevel or the 3d look to it but there's a
lot you could do to it we're gonna go
ahead I'm going to insert a picture in
here
and I'm just gonna go ahead on my
machine and find a photo of myself and
so here's a here's a picture of me on a
boat and what you'll notice is anytime
you insert an item it'll bring in
another pivot which has formatting for
that item and so here then you could go
in and you could correct the photo or
you could apply different colors or
artistic effects and so you could go
through you could rotate you could crop
the photo so there are lots of different
controls for being able to modify that
photo that shows up when you highlight
the item so there you see that the
picture format disappears if I select
the photo again the picture format
reappears some of the other things that
I could insert I could insert a chart
the nice thing there is it has all the
same charts that you get in Microsoft
Excel
so here I can insert a column chart and
what's nice about this is you know
insert the chart and then it brings up a
little dialog similar to Excel where I
can then modify the values directly in
line and that'll update my chart in
Microsoft Word so some nice
functionality there what I can also do
some other things that are worthwhile
knowing about you can insert headers you
can insert footers and I could also
insert a page number on every single
page within my document that's something
that you have to do in school very often
where you need to put down the number of
pages so I'm just gonna go with plain
number one and so here you see now I
have a page number and that'll be on
every single page so I go down to my
second page and you see page two hey
well now that we've looked at the insert
tab there's lots of different types of
content that you can insert the next
thing that I want to show you is the
design tab so I'm going to click on
design and you're when you click on
design the first thing you'll notice is
you have this thing that's referred to
as themes now we previously looked at
styles and you could insert headers you
can insert different paragraphs what you
could do with themes is it takes all of
your inserted content so I'm gonna go
dip back down to my headers and I could
apply a different theme and so as I
click on the theme what it'll do is
it'll take all my styles that I've
inserted and it'll update them based on
that theme so there you can see very
quickly so instead of you going through
and trying to figure out well hey you
know let me insert a header and let me
figure out what looks the best instead
you could use these built-in themes
and there are all sorts of themes that
you could choose from you have many
different options you could also adjust
the coloring you could adjust the font
so you could adjust the paragraph
spacing there's all sorts of
functionality on modifying the look and
feel with themes but the nice thing
about themes is once you apply your
different styles selecting a theme
applies that theme to your entire
document so it makes updating the look
and feel of your document very easy the
other thing I want to touch on on the
design pivot is watermark so what you
could do with watermark is let's say
that you're working on a draft or maybe
we're working on a confidential document
here I can click on confidential and
what that I'll do now is every single
page in my document will contain that
watermark in the background so in kind
of a nice way especially if you want to
say it's confidential or draft you can
insert text behind there are a few other
things you could adjust the background
color the page borders so some other
functionality under the design the next
thing we're gonna look out look at is
layout within the layout pivot some of
the things you could do is you could
adjust margins so let's say you're
working on a paper and you have to keep
it to one page you could adjust the
margins make them a little more narrow
so you could fit a little bit more
content on your document you can also
adjust the orientation so it's a
landscape and instead of portrait and
that's the key functionality here that I
wanted to show on layouts the next thing
we're gonna look at is references and
this is something that's very helpful if
you're putting together let's say a big
document with lots of content the first
thing we're gonna look at is the table
of contents and so I'm just gonna go
ahead and insert the automatic table of
contents what this does is once again
here this looks at the different headers
that I apply to my document and that's
how it forms the table of contents so
here you'll see I put in three headers
in my document earlier and it forms the
table of contents from that so here I
have my vacation destinations favorite
vacations end dream vacations what I can
also do is if you're working on a paper
you might need to add footnotes for
different content so here hello my name
is Kevin Stratford maybe I need to
backup that that is in fact my name and
maybe I'll show my birth certificate so
what I could do is I'll click on insert
footnote and then I could say Shahzaib was
born on 8:11 and maybe I provide
additional detail but what you'll see
happened is
is here inserted the the footnote here
and the footnote appears at the bottom
of the first page so that's how you
insert footnotes the next thing that
we're gonna do is we're gonna look at
the review pivot if you're interested in
the mailings one this alone is a pretty
big topic I have other article on mail
merge you could take a look at those if
you're interested in learning about this
functionality just a quick description
of what you could do with mailings is
let's say that you want to send out an
email or a letter and you want to
customize information within that that's
called mail merge and like I said I have
article on that if you're interested in
learning more about that but that's
beyond a basic knowledge of Microsoft
Word so the next thing we're gonna do is
we're going to click on the review tab
and once you've typed your document this
is where you check to make sure what you
typed actually makes sense so hi my name
are Shahzaib how you is doing today and
then maybe I'll misspelled day and so
some of the things you'll see is as
you're typing you get these different
squiggly lines that means it's spelled
incorrectly and so here if I right click
on it I could see what the suggestions
are so I'll change that to today how is
you be doing today so the grammar is
pretty bad there and so I can click on
check document and so here you'll see
the grammar check that pops up and here
it says my name are Shahzaib and here it
suggests is and then how you and then
here it suggests are how are you doing
today
and so what it'll do is as you're typing
it'll underline things if it's spelled
incorrectly but you could also go ahead
and click here
one of the things you can also do is
instead of saying doing I could click on
the thesaurus and you could see other
variations that you could insert instead
and especially if you're in school and
you're constrained to a certain word
count there's a word count capability
here where you can see how many words
are in your document or if let's say
you're a journalist and you're paid by
the word
maybe I don't know you could use that as
well to see how much money you're going
to get so now that we've looked at how
to review a word document the next thing
I want to talk about is how you can
collaborate on a doc
you know it's no fun just working on a
document by yourself and today more and
more in school and in workplace you're
expected to work with others on a
document so how do you do that well what
we could do is first off there's a share
button in the top right hand corner if
we click on share that will bring up a
share dialog and earlier I saved this
document on one drive so it's already
cloud file you could type in names here
or you could simply copy a link so I'll
just go ahead and copy a link and you
could send this link to anyone and
they'll then have access to this
document what's nice too is once you
share your document you could work in
real time with other people so as you're
typing in the document they can also
type in the document when you can also
do is once you share your document you
can leave comments for each other so
here I could click on new comment and I
could type in a little message that says
please review this paragraph and then I
could go ahead and I could leave that
comment in the document and when my
co-workers or money classmates go in
they'll see those and what I could also
do is if I'm worried about making a
bunch of changes and other people not
knowing what I've changed I can track
the changes that I'm making to the
document and then if I click on all
markup it'll show the changes that I've
made so I'm going to turn that off for
now
one of the other things I've showed a
whole bunch of functionality within word
what you can also do is sometimes it's a
little difficult to remember what pivot
wasn't it was it in how can I get back
to that let's say I'm on home and I want
to know word count well I could click on
this search box at the top and then I'll
type in word count and there it shows me
the action right there so I'll click on
that and that'll do a word count so if
you don't remember where things are but
you know what you want to do simply
search for it it's an easier way to
navigate the interface now a few other
advanced things that I wanted to
highlight that's all kind of the core
basic functionality of word if you're
able to follow along with all of that
you're pretty proficient in Word already
but I want to show you a few advanced
things I'll really wow people if you
know how to do it some of the things you
could do is clicking on the file menu
there's an option called transform with
transform what you could do is you could
transform your word document into a wet
page an interactive web page it actually
does a really nice job of doing that
it's responsive so if you're on a mobile
device on a or on a desktop it looks
really nice that's a really nice
advanced capability another thing you
can do is if you have text here what I'm
gonna click on is we're gonna go to the
review pivot and then I'm gonna click on
translate and so I can translate this
selection this is bringing up a
translator and here I have it translate
to English hello my name is Shahzaib get
as hi to so it's a little translations
not perfect but you get the idea does it
does a I guess a decent job of getting a
translation and if you're working on a
resume there's something called resume
assistant if I click on that it brings
up the resume assistant let's go ahead
and get started and I could type in my
role or the job that I have so I'm a
senior program manager and then I can
click on that and industry is technology
and then I could see examples from other
resumes so that's kind of a nice feature
within word some of the other things
that I could do is when I'm in a
document let's say I have a long
document and I want to refer to
different spots within the document I
could click on view there's something
called split screen and then I could
let's say scroll down and one window to
my picture maybe and then I could scroll
up to my table of contents so you could
look at two areas of your document at
the same time and then the last thing is
if I click on file and go to info what's
nice is because I saved this on one drive
there's something called version history
and so here I can see as I've been
working on this document I can now go
back to different versions of that
document so like I said before if I made
a bunch of changes and I'm unhappy with
them I could simply jump back to a
previous version well that's all the
core functionality of word that I wanted
to show you not only did this cover the
basics of word and how to just kind of
get a basic command of this application
I also showed you some of the more
advanced things that many people
probably haven't seen before haven't
heard of the nice thing about having
word that comes with office 365 is
anytime new features and functionality
is added into this application you get
it first since you have a subscription
to it you could also use it on the web
and there too you also get the lead
and greatest functionality and that
won't cost you anything.
hope you enjoyed it I'll see you next
time bye