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PDM9L6 - IT SKILLS TEXT & GRAPHICS 1: WORD PROCESSING AND GRAPHICS

COMPUTING SCIENCE & MATHEMATICS PAGE 1 OF 15

PDM9L6: TEXT AND GRAPHICS 1 WORD PROCESSING AND GRAPHICS

LEARNING OUTCOMES By the end of this practical students should be able to:

Start MS Word. Identify various parts of the Word interface and understand their uses. Enter, select and edit text. Apply basic formatting to characters and paragraphs. Save a document in a file and open a previously saved document. Insert, resize and position diagrams and graphics within a document. Change the size, font and style of text. Set the justification of paragraphs.

TRANSFERABLE SKILLS By the end of this practical student should have acquired the following skills:

Creating and formatting documents with an industry standard Word Processor. Creating documents suitable for the submission of assessed work. Using the built-in Help function to find assistance.

REMEMBER: Register your attendance in the usual way

Check the PDM9L6 home page regularly for any new links or information

Check your student email accounts for messages relating to the course

There will be an assignment based on the Text and Graphics material. Make sure you get the assignment materials in good time.

Those students taking Education courses should note that since this course is a prerequisite for EDU9A3 (Education - ICT for Secondary Education), you will be expected to have a good grounding in the skills covered in PDM9L6. The Text and Graphics materials are fundamental to this requirement and your thorough grasp of them will be assumed at the start of EDU9A3!



GETTING STARTED WITH WORD We’re going to assume you’re happy with Windows and the basics of copying, moving files, and navigation to your home folder, and so on. If you’re not, then now is the time to practise some more. The better you feel with the system, the easier your life will be in these workshops.

If you have any difficulties ask for help. That’s why we are here. Being confused by computers happens to all of us all of the time. The secret is to develop a relaxed attitude towards being confused

What is a Word Processor anyway? A word processor, at its most basic, is really just a computerised typewriter (what’s a typewriter? – look it up in a history book!). A word processor used to its full potential can be a complete document-publishing tool. We shall be using Microsoft Word, although I think it’s probably safe to say that you won’t ever need many of the features that Word will offer you.

The facility for producing professional-looking documents in a relatively short time has transformed the publishing industry over the last couple of decades. Many small (and larger) businesses owe their very existence to word processing packages such as Word. At a more basic level, if you have ever used a typewriter, the sheer convenience of being able to correct or modify the written document without having to retype whole pages or fiddle around with error-correcting fluid is a major advantage.

WYSIWYG (pronounced ‘wissywigg’) Early word processors required formatting instructions to be embedded in the text, for example, if you wanted to display:

I think therefore I am!

you would have typed something like I <bold> think <endbold> therefore I <bold> am! <endbold>.

There were no facilities for adding graphics either and no way of knowing, in fact, what would appear until you printed the thing out. Things have, fortunately, changed. MS Word is known as a WYSIWYG word processor. That acronym stands for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, and it means that you can view the formatted document as you write it, so, in theory, what you see on screen will be the same what is printed out.

Word processors such as Word can handle a large number of different tasks, from writing reports, essays, CVs or letters, preparing posters, or party tickets and even writing dissertations and theses (although this can push Word’s capabilities to the limit). We will look at some techniques for dealing with large documents in the next session. Let’s start with the basics!

Starting Word and Basic Usage » Start Word. You can double click on the Microsoft Word icon on the desktop or

choose Start: Programs: Applications: Microsoft Word.

When Word starts up, you will be presented with a new empty ‘document’.



Screen Layout

Office 2010 (and also Office 2007) has re-arranged much of the common tools and functions. Previously, office functions could be accessed through menus and toolbars. Now, office functions are arranged into tabs and panels. Each tab contains a number of panels. Each panel may contain a number of buttons.

If you want to find out what a button does, position the mouse pointer over the button and a little description will appear underneath. This is called a tooltip.

The bit at the bottom is Word’s status bar, which, when you don’t have the mouse over something worth knowing about, displays some information about the document you’re looking at, such as page number, number of pages in document, and so on. In the middle of the screen is the actual document area where the text you type will appear, at the position of the cursor.

You can work with more than one document at a time. These come up in separate windows, like separate versions of the Word program. The View tab helps you organise these windows.

At the bottom of the window is Word’s status bar, which displays some information about the document you’re looking at, such as page number and number of pages in document:

You’re in control You can maximise, minimise, resize and restore the Word window using the control buttons on the top right just as with any other window.

Entering Text » Type a few lines of text. Use the keyboard. Just type in any old rubbish…

As you type, the words appear in the document area of the screen. You do not need to press the Return key at the end of each line. The word processor will automatically start a new line for you when no more complete words can be fitted on to a line. The Return key is only used when you wish to start a new paragraph.

If you make a mistake when typing, you can use the Backspace key to delete the character immediately to the left of the insertion point (cursor). The Delete key will delete characters to the right of the insertion point.

Document

Tab

File

Tab

Panel Ribbo



Word will let you insert or delete text in any part of the document at any time. To do this the insertion pointer must be moved to the part of the text you would like to change. There are two ways to do this:

1. By using the mouse to move the mouse pointer to the part of the text where you wish the insertion pointer to appear and then click the mouse button. Note that the cursor changes

from an arrow to an I-bar shape when moved inside the document area.

2. By pressing the arrow keys (the bottom centre group of keys on the keyboard) to move one character or line at a time.

Selecting Text To select some text, move the cursor to the left of the piece of text you wish to select. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the mouse over the text you wish to select. Each character selected will be displayed in reverse video effect.

» Try each of the following:

To select a single word, double click on it. Triple clicking inside a paragraph will select the entire paragraph. Using the Select All option in the Edit menu will select the text of the entire document. Alternatively use the Shift key in conjunction with the arrow keys to select text.

Position the cursor in the middle of the text, hold down the Shift key and press the right arrow key for a couple of seconds. Try it with the left arrow key. Using the up or down arrow keys will select entire rows above and below the cursor row.

Editing Text In (almost) all Windows applications, there is an Edit menu. Within the MS Office suite, the common edit tools are found within the Clipboard panel found within the Home tab. In this panel, there are three standard options, namely: Cut, Copy, and Paste.

That means they should always be present in the menu. It doesn’t mean you’ll always be able to select them, because sometimes, for example, you may not have selected anything to Copy…

Cut: This option removes selected text from the document. Rather than lose the text, however, Windows provides a temporary area (the Clipboard) where the text is placed for later retrieval.

Copy: As you might expect, this places a copy of the selected text onto the clipboard, but without deleting the selection.

Paste: This option takes a copy of whatever is on the clipboard from a previous cut or copy and places it immediately to the right of the insertion point in the document.

The clipboard can hold up to 24 items at a time. As we shall see, we’re not restricted to text either. When you cut or copy something, it’s like putting it into temporary storage. More often than not, you will paste whatever you have cut or copied straight away so it isn’t really necessary to see the contents of the clipboard. At any time choosing Paste will paste the most recently cut or copied item by default.

» Select some text you want to delete from the document. Just one word will do.



» Choose the Cut option. The text you selected will be copied into the clipboard and will disappear from the screen.

» Select another word and now use the Cut option again. Access your clipboard: Look for the small arrow within the bottom-right corner of the Clipboard panel and click on it.

» Click back in the place where the first word was cut from and then just select it the Task Pane. It should reappear, that is it should be pasted back in to the document. Do the same for the other word.

One other variation of this cut-and-paste routine is that if you select some text immediately before pasting something from the clipboard, then the selected text is replaced by the pasted text.

Often you will want things to happen in a way that you choose which is different from the way that Word does things by default. To see what options you can set, choose Word Options from the File tab and have a look around at all the settings (you will probably just want to close this box again and stick with the default settings just now).

If you were using your own machine at home you could select your preferred options on a permanent basis. On the University machines, any settings that you choose will be lost when you log off. Each time you log on to a machine, programs like Word are configured afresh according to a pre-set policy.

Keyboard Shortcuts Copying, cutting and Pasting are such common activities in all Office applications, that it is worth mentioning the keyboard alternatives for these operations as it can become a real pain (literally) to use the mouse repeatedly to perform these actions.

You can move the cursor around the document using the four arrow keys towards the bottom-right of the keyboard next to the number pad. As already mentioned, you can select text by holding down the Shift key and using the arrow keys to control the area selected. Having selected your text:

To cut the selection use Ctrl+X (think of scissors). To copy the selection use Ctrl+C (think of C for copy). To paste the selection use Ctrl+V (think of the V as an arrow meaning ‘insert here’).

Note that because Cut, Copy and Paste are used very frequently there are speed buttons for these commands in the top toolbar.

- Cut (Ctrl+X) - Copy (Ctrl+C) - Paste (Ctrl+V)

To find the keyboard equivalent for other commands, hover your mouse cursor over the button.

Keyboard equivalents can be really useful. You’ll probably get quite fast at using the keyboard shortcuts once you learn the ones you need a lot. (Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V are the ones I use all the time.)

Oops! It’s all gone horribly wrong! If you make a mistake at any point, you can go back a step by clicking the undo button found above the Home tab.



By pressing the anticlockwise arrow, you can undo the effect of the last thing you did. Pressing it again will undo the thing before that. Pressing it again… Are you getting the idea? Alternatively, Ctrl+Z has the same effect.

OK, so this gives you a lot of freedom to try things out. Suppose you decide that you want to undo the last seven or eight steps. (You tried some things and you decide you didn’t like the final result, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.) So undo, undo, undo, undo, undo, undo… Oh drat, you’ve gone too far!

Wouldn't it be great to have a button for redoing what you've just undone? Well guess what! Placed right next to the Undo button is the Redo button. Alternatively, Ctrl+Y has the same effect.

Clicking on the downward pointing arrows to the right of the undo/redo buttons will present you with a quick way of undoing/redoing several of the most recent actions.

» Try it! The undo/redo function is a Totally Cool Thing!

It’s all getting a bit too much! Are you feeling the effects of information overload? Well, don't panic!

You may be asking:

Q. Why are there always two or three or more ways of doing the same thing?

A. Because, as word processors have evolved, the normal way of doing something may have been replaced by an even quicker and slicker way, so that people who are just learning to use them can accomplish more in a shorter time. However, wait a minute! If we replace the old way with the new way, that means that existing users will have to retrain, so why not introduce the new features in addition to the existing ones. Am I labouring the point? Anyway, it’s called backwards compatibility and it is a Good Thing. Stick with the way you find easiest but don’t be averse to learning new ways!

Q. How am I expected to remember all the steps for each task?

A. You’re not! You become better at using word processing applications through practice. In addition, the designers of Word claim that it is user-friendly, that is, much of the functionality should be intuitively obvious. What do you think?



Saving your stuff to a file Saving to a file is an essential part of working with a computer, and it is done in the same way from inside all applications, so let’s save your Word document now. It doesn’t have to be a work of art, but there should be at least some text in it. In order to do this we need to tell the machine two things:

1. Where you want to save the file.

2. What you want to call it

» Open the File tab and select the Save option.

Because this file has not been previously saved, the Save As dialog box should appear. If a file has already been saved, then choosing Save will simply overwrite the previous version with the new version and you won’t see the Save As dialog. If you want to save the new version of the file without overwriting the old version (possible but unlikely) then choose Save As… to force the dialog to appear and then save the file under a different name and/or in a different place. Sensible really!

In this case, you should save your document in the Text and Graphics folder you created last time.

» In the Save dialog, open your PDM9L6 folder, then your Text and Graphics folder.

We are ready to specify a name for the new file. Note that Word will suggest a name for the file consisting of the first line of text, which could well be the title, so it’s not a bad guess sometimes! But not in this case…

» Delete the contents of the File name box and call it First (for first document!)

» Choose Save. Your Word document has now been saved in a file. Let’s check that this has worked.

» Close down Word.

» Navigate to your home folder. Remember there's an icon on the desktop that takes you straight there (My Documents).

» Open your PDM9L6 folder, then open your Text and Graphics folder in the window that appears. Inside that you should see your file. If it isn’t there, ask for help. You may have saved it somewhere else by mistake. We’ll find it (maybe)!

Opening an Existing Word Document Double-clicking on a Word icon in a folder will cause Word to start up (if it’s not already running) as well as opening the document itself. This is because files whose names end with

Where you want to save your file, is somewhere inside your home folder (My Documents), which, with a bit of luck, should be what the dialog box is showing. Windows will try to guess where you might want to save but, if it doesn’t know, it will try to guess anyway! This is not always helpful so pause whenever you are presented with a dialog box. Make sure the Save in box shows your home folder. If not, navigate to it!



‘docx’ or ‘doc’ filename extensions are associated with Word. Different types of files can be associated with different programs so that opening a file causes the chosen program to start up at the same time. Otherwise you would always need to start Word from the Start menu and go through the process of finding the file using Word’s Open menu option within the File tab.

» In your Text and Graphics folder, double click on the First.docx icon. Sometimes filename extensions are hidden from you, so you may just see First.

Formatting Text Before we start this, a reminder about the PDM9L6 Groups folder on the V: drive. Generally, you copy stuff from the Groups folder into your home folder, and then work on your copy. Think of the files on Groups as master copies, which you can copy for your own use.

» To find the groups folder, double click on My Computer on the desktop and look for the icon called Groups on ‘Wide’ (V:). Double click on it and then open the PDM9L6 folder. Remember, this is a completely different folder from your own PDM9L6 folder. It just happens to have the same name.

This should be clear from the address bar near the top of the window. It should say V:\PDM9L6. If you were looking at your own PDM9L6 folder, it would say H:\PDM9L6. I have prepared some files for you to use so first you have to copy them.

» Drag the folder called T&G Worksheet1 from the Groups folder to your own Text and Graphics folder. Now you have your own copies of files that you can work on!

» Close the Groups folder and open the folder you just copied (i.e. your T&G Worksheet 1 folder). You should find a Word file called Guide.docx and some other (picture) files. We’ll come back to the picture files later (I bet you can hardly wait!)

» Open Guide.docx. This file contains some text from a University visitor’s guide but all the formatting has been removed. You are going to transform it into a thing of beauty!

Sexing up your text The size, font and style of text can be set before or after typing the text. If you wish to apply formatting to text, which has already been typed, select the text and then choose the formatting options. Alternatively, changing an option as you type means that whatever you type, from now on, will have the new format until you switch it off or change to some other style. The main formatting options appear in the Font panel within the Home tab:

It’s really important that you copy the stuff over into your own folder, because if you just open the files in the Groups folder you won’t be able to save your changes. Having said that, if you try to save a file and you get a message to say that the file is read-only and that you cannot save it, all is not lost. Just choose File: Save As… and then navigate to your home folder and save it there. This will save a copy of the file, which is what you should have done in the first place!

NOTE: The file may be called Guide.docx or just Guide, depending on which machine you’re using or which lab you’re in. the ‘.docx’ on the end tells Windows it’s an MS Word 2007 document, and that’s okay. Sometimes Windows tries to be clever and hide these file name extensions. Anyway, you can tell the thing is a Word file, because of the icon, which looks like a page of writing, but with a big blue 'W' on it.



The current size of the text (in points1) is displayed in the Size Box. To change the size, click the arrow to the right of the box and select a size as you would select an option from a menu. The current font used is displayed in the Font Box. To change the font, click the arrow to the right of the box and choose the required font from the list.

You can apply other styles to the text too. For example:

will make the text bold.

will make the text italic.

will underline the text.

To stop using a particular style, click the button a second time. Text typed after the second click will not have the style applied to it. Of course, it is possible to apply more than one style to a piece of text, for example you could have bold, italic and underlined all at the same time (wow!).

1 A point is a measurement which is equal to 1/72 of an inch. It is used in printing. This document is printed in 11 point type. (12 points = 1 pica, and 6 picas = 1 inch and there used to be 240 pennies in £1, honest!)

Fonts have funny names such as ‘Times New Roman’, ‘Comic Sans MS’ or ‘Lucida Console’. Mostly they fall into basic categories. Fonts are either proportional or monospaced. Proportional fonts have characters whose width varies from letter to letter so that an m will take up more space on a line than an i will (they look more natural on the page):

mmmmmmmmmm iiiiiiiiii Monospaced fonts have characters, which take up the same width on the line (useful if you want your text to appear in a predictable way with, say, a fixed number of characters on a

line): mmmmmmmmmm

iiiiiiiiii

Fonts can also be serif or sans serif. A serif is a little decorative flourish at the extremities of a character so a sans-serif font is a font without serifs! Allegedly, serif fonts look better on the printed page whereas sans serif fonts look better on screen.

M I - serif (Times New Roman) M I – sans-serif (Arial)



Paragraphs The Paragraph panel (found next to the Font panel) contains a number of options for formatting large chunks of text. (If you can’t find this panel, make sure you have the Home tab selected).

The group of four buttons to the right of the style buttons is used to align your text. Selecting a portion of text and then clicking these buttons have the following effect:

The Align Left button aligns text to the left margin, or left aligns (left justifies) the text - this is the normal setting.

The Center button aligns text centrally - useful for titles and graphics.

The Align Right button aligns text to the right margin, or right aligns (right justifies) the text - useful for…umm?…and finally…

The Justify button aligns text to both the left and right margins, as in a book or newspaper. This is called justified text.

Let’s format the text in Guide.docx!

» Using the Font panel, try some fonts and sizes (9 point Comic Sans MS is nice and friendly).

How about a title?

» Click at the top of the page (before the first letter).

» Type A Visitor's Guide to Stirling University and press Return to start a new line.

» Now select the title you have just entered and change the font to Comic Sans MS, size 20. Always select the text you want to format, then apply the formatting. That’s the way!

We will return to text formatting next week, but now for something completely different…



INSERTING GRAPHICS In order to improve the visual appeal of your document, or just to show off, you can add graphics, diagrams pictures, etc. We’ll be messing about with images quite a lot over the next couple of weeks but first let's look at some of Words built-in graphics (called Shapes). For this we will use the Illustrations panel. This can be found within the Insert tab. Select this tab, and locate the Illustrations panel.

» Click on the Shapes button. A menu will appear with a number of built-in shapes.

» Find the Stars and Banners sub-heading in the menu.

» Choose the five-point star. Actually, choose whatever you like!)

» Insert it into the document near the top left corner. Just move the cursor, which will looks like crosshairs, and press the mouse button to place the graphic on the page. The exact position does not

really matter - we’ll tidy it up in a minute. The star will probably appear on top of the text and should be surrounded by little blobs. These are called handles and their role in life is to allow you to manipulate the graphic.

» Move the cursor over the graphic and it will change as it moves. Within the area of the image, it should become a four-pointed

arrow. Clicking and dragging will cause the whole image to move around the page.

» Move the mouse over one of the corner handles (if they are not visible, click once on the graphic to select it). Notice that it changes to a diagonal two-headed arrow. Clicking and dragging now will reduce or enlarge the image. Try it! (Remember you can always undo or redo steps using the friendly undo/redo buttons.

To give our document a bit of star quality, we are going to use the star graphic as a paragraph marker, to symbolise the fact that the University is a star attraction. We need to find out how to prevent the text from being obscured by the image.

» Select the graphic and switch to the Format tab which appears (under Picture Tools). Locate the Arrange panel.

» Select the Text Wrapping button.

» Note: we could have done the same thing via the Format menu but often you can use the right mouse button to reveal a context sensitive menu, which may allow you to access the required function more quickly.

The icons and descriptions indicate how the text can be wrapped around the graphics. There are a number of options. Most of them are self-explanatory.

» Choose the wrapping style called Square (click on the picture icon).



» While you’re here, locate the Shape Style panel, and using the Shape Outline and Shape Fill buttons, give the graphic a thicker outline (a line weight of 2 pt, for example) and a colour fill (yellow’s nice and cheerful!).

» Press OK. The graphic should push the text out of the way but allow it to appear down the right side. If it doesn’t, try moving the graphic around until it does (ask for help)!

» Make a copy of the graphic. To do this, select the graphic by clicking once on it. The handles should appear.

» Choose Copy followed immediately by Paste from the Clipboard panel in the Home tab. A new copy should appear somewhere close to the original; just drag it to the beginning of the next paragraph.

» Format each paragraph to look like the first one. You can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to fine-tune the position of the graphic when it is selected. There are many different types of graphic that we can use in our documents. AutoShapes is but one type; let’s look at some others!

and Now…

WordArt is a built-in part of Word that provides you with a fast way of producing highly eye-catching (and often tacky!) text formatting. Some of the more exotic formats wouldn’t look out of place as movie titles but are a bit over the top for printed documents. Anyway, let’s make a fancy title for the Visitors Guide!

» Select the whole of title you made earlier.

» Make sure you have the Insert tab selected. Locate the Text panel.

» Press the Word Art button.

» Choose a style (be outrageous!) Click on OK. A dialog should appear with the selected title already inserted. If it’s not there type it in.



» Click OK. The title should appear, in the form you chose. WordArt can be manipulated just like AutoShapes. To do so, right click on the WordArt and choose Format WordArt…

Floating or In-Line? In a Word document, graphics, or WordArt, can be floating or in-line. Floating graphics can be moved around as if they were separate from the text, whereas in-line graphics are fixed in amongst the text and cannot be dragged about.

Depending on the setup on your machine, graphics may be inserted as in line with the text or floating above it. In line means that although the graphic is a kind of picture, it appears

amongst the text as if it were just another character (albeit a big extravagant one). Notice the extra space left above the previous line because of using an inline graphic.

Floating means that the graphic can be moved around independently of the text and can be formatted to wrap the text around it in many different ways as we’ll see.

You can always convert in-line to floating or vice versa if you choose.

If you want to change the content of the WordArt you can’t just edit it like a piece of text (because it’s a sort of picture). However, double clicking on it will bring up the aptly named Edit WordArt Text dialog box.

Inserting Pictures This is very similar to adding graphics. Earlier you copied the T & G Worksheet 1 folder. This folder contains some suitable pictures for our visitor’s guide.

» Firstly, position the cursor between the first and second paragraph in your document, where you’d like a picture to appear (just pick a spot; you can always move it later).

» Now choose Picture from the Illustrations panel (on the Insert tab). You’ll get a dialog box inviting you to find the picture (file) you want to insert. Navigate to the T&G Worksheet 1 folder inside your Text and Graphics folder (which should be inside your PDM9L6 folder inside your home folder).

Before you choose a picture, you can view the contents of a folder in a number of different ways as you navigate around. This is especially useful for picture files as you can see small thumbnail versions of the images to help you decide which one you want. You can even change the way you view the contents of a folder while you are navigating using the Views menu in the dialog box.

» Insert the picture called campus.jpg (it may be called campus) first. Select the file and choose Insert.

» Resize the picture so that it is about one third of the width of the page (just drag one of the corner handles).

The picture will be inserted at the position of the cursor. Word will treat the picture as if it was just another piece of text, so if you select the picture, you can cut, copy and paste it just like any other piece of text.

Inline graphics usually have black, square handles inside the border of the graphic whereas floating graphics usually have white, circular handles round the perimeter.

This is quite useful behaviour some of the time when we want to ensure that the picture appears inline with the text but it does not give us many options for laying out our documents.

Resizing



As mentioned above in relation to WordArt and AutoShapes, it is also possible to have pictures as floating graphics, which means that the image appears to float above the text allowing us to move it more freely. This is how the star AutoShape appeared by default.

» To make the picture float, right-click the image and select Text Wrapping, then select Square or Tight. Because the picture is rectangular, square and tight text wrapping amount to the same thing in this case. You might look at the other options in your own time.

» Now add airthrey.gif (or airthrey) and pathfoot.gif or (pathfoot). That’s the easy bit. Often the hardest bit is making the picture appear exactly where you want it, making text flow round about it and so on.

Exercise Here’s one I made earlier. See if you can get yours to look better. I've placed images in the first, third and fourth paragraphs using the Square layout option. The title is WordArt.

Try out different wrapping styles and sub styles, move the pictures around to see how they move the text out of the way. Play!

» Save your document in your Text and Graphics folder. Call it uniguide! We’ll return to it later.

Checkpoint Now show a tutor your version of the Visitor's Guide to Stirling University. It should demonstrate use of headings, different font styles, and pictures placed in the text with suitable wrapping. Make sure we mark you down as having reached this stage.

Working with several documents Sometimes, you will want to have more than one Word document open at once. You may be producing alternative versions of a document for different categories of user or you may be producing a summary report containing extracts from several source documents. It makes sense, therefore, to be able to jump between several different Word documents copying bits from one to another. This is easy!

All you need to do is open all the documents you need, either by double clicking their icons, or by using the Open button on the standard toolbar and then navigating to the document. Each Word document will open up in its own window and you can resize and arrange them on the desktop so that it is possible to move from one to the other by clicking on a window to bring it to the front.

Whenever the taskbar becomes crowded with buttons, windows reduces the width of the buttons and, where possible, creates multiple program icons instead of individual ones.

When this happens, clicking on the multiple button reveals a list of the currently open documents, allowing you to switch between them.



Previewing and Printing! You’ll recall Word is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) application? Let’s put it to the test, shall we…

The uniguide document that you have just formatted should fit on one page. If it doesn’t, don't worry, we’ll just set up to print the first page. First, it’s possible to check what is going to be printed. Word, and most programs of its kind, has a Print Preview mode, which allows you to see what the printed version of a document will look like. (Hang on, I thought you said that Word was a WYSIWYG application! Well OK I should have said WYSIHWYG - What You See Is Hopefully What You Get!). However, Print Preview will always show you what will appear on the printed page (actually I’m lying about this as well!). Oh dear! Anyway…

» Select the File tab and select the Print option. You should see various Print options and a print preview.

Basically, the Print Preview can be used to give you an idea of the layout of things on a page or set of pages, and as such can be useful (it saves paper). For example when you spot that there’s a big waste of space at the end of a paragraph, which goes onto a new page. Somehow, surely, you can get rid of that?

» When you’ve seen enough, press the ESC to return to the document. To print the document

(not really necessary), push the Print button in the Print screen. We covered printing in the labs last week.

NEXT TIME In the second Text and Graphics practical we’ll cover more advanced things, like document styles and more advanced formatting. In the third Text and Graphics workshop we’ll have a look at how to improve pictures and at some special effects. Before then, get comfortable with what we covered today. It’s really all you need to get Word to work for you, rather than the other way round.

Before next session: just practise. Type in an essay or something for another subject, for example, and format it to your liking. Later we’ll see about spell checking it and making it look even better! Whatever you do, come into the lab for another go at this worksheet. You’ll be glad you did when we do more advanced stuff in the next practical.