Word 97 marks a major upgrade from previous versions.
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Word users can now take advantage of some important developments in technology - the Internet and the World Wide Web.
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The Internet is a global computer network that enables users in different parts of the world to exchange and share information.
And the World Wide Web is a service that provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for the Internet.
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Word users are working in an increasingly "connected" environment.
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So one of the design goals of Word 97 was to integrate Internet tools seamlessly with word-processing tools.
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You can now create and access Internet documents in Word, so there is no need to learn to use other applications to carry out these tasks.
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Word 97 has also been designed to make basic tasks associated with writing easier.
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For example, the Letter Wizard simplifies letter writing by automatically addressing and formatting the letter, leaving you to concentrate on the content.
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You can have Word check your grammar and spelling after you have finished writing your document.
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But Word 97 can also check your grammar and spelling as you type, ensuring that your writing is letter perfect.
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Several features of Word 97 make producing professional-looking letters, e-mails, faxes, and so on easy.
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For example, the table drawing tool uses a pencil/eraser metaphor that makes it simple to create and modify tables.
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And Word 97 now offers all the powerful graphic effects previously available only in PowerPoint.
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PowerPoint is a program used to create graphic presentations.
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<f>Word is also now completely integrated as a member of the Office family.
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The components of the Office 97 suite are designed to be used together, look alike, and work alike.
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They include a word processor (Word 97), a spreadsheet (Excel 97), and a presentation program (PowerPoint 97) as well as other programs designed to assist with the everyday tasks of a modern office.
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Now that you've seen something of Word 97's capabilities, let's take a look at the application itself.
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To open Word, you click the ^UStart^u button on your desktop.
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And locate the ^UMicrosoft Word^u menu option in the menu hierarchy.
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Because the ^UStart^u menu is customizable, the Microsoft Word entry may be located in a different part of the menu on different computers.
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Wherever Microsoft Word is located in the ^UStart^u menu on your machine, clicking it will start Word.
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Alternatively, you may have a ^UShortcut^u icon for Word on your Windows desktop.
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If you have, you can start Word by double-clicking this icon.
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When Word opens, you will be presented with the application window, which includes a blank document for you to begin work on.
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However, before starting to write with Word, let's take some time to look at the different parts of the window.
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At the top of the screen is the ^Rtitle^r ^Rbar^r, which shows the title of the document you are working on.
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The right side of the title bar contains three buttons for controlling the application window.
These buttons enable you to minimize, maximize, and close Word.
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Just below the title bar on the Word screen is the ^Rmenu^r ^Rbar^r.
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Clicking one of the menus in the menu bar, such as the ^UFile^u menu, opens a list of options.
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Clicking one of the options in a menu performs the task listed there, for instance printing documents or opening a file.
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Some menu options open a submenu of further options.
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The right-hand side of the menu bar contains three control buttons identical to those on the title bar.
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These control buttons minimize, maximize, and close the document window.
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Clicking the ^UClose^u button in the document window will close only the document you are currently working on.
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You will be given a chance to save your work before the document closes.
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And any other documents you may have open will remain open.
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The main Word toolbar, known as the ^RStandard^r toolbar, is below the menu bar.
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Each button in this toolbar has an icon that illustrates its function.
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So the ^UPrint^u button, for example, has a picture of a printer.
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You can also find out what each button does by positioning the mouse pointer over it (without clicking).
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Leaving the pointer in position for a moment will display a short description of the button's function.
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To use the toolbar buttons, simply click once.
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Depending on which button you click, the function may be performed immediately.
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Or a dialog box may open requesting further information before your command can be carried out.
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Not all the controls in the Standard toolbar are buttons.
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The ^UZoom^u control is a drop-down list box, not an ordinary toolbar button.
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Just below the Standard toolbar you will see the ^RFormatting^r toolbar.
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This contains a selection of controls that allow you to change the appearance of your text.
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All the toolbars and the menu bar in Word 97 are movable.
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If you click the left edge of one of the toolbars and hold the mouse button down, you can drag an outline of the toolbar onto the document window.
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When you release the mouse button, the toolbar you dragged reappears and becomes a "floating" box, which you can click and drag to any part of the screen.
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You can drag and drop the toolbar back into its original position at any time.
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A ^Rruler^r appears below the Formatting toolbar.
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This is used for setting the margins and tab settings on your document.
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Below the ruler is the document itself.
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At the top of the document you can see a vertical bar flashing on and off.
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This is known as the ^Rinsertion^r ^Rpoint^r.
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The insertion point marks the place where text will appear as you type.
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The horizontal bar, here just below the insertion point, marks the end of the document.
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As nothing has been typed in this document yet, the end point is right at the top.
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Along the bottom and right-hand side of the document window are the horizontal and vertical scroll bars.
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These help you to navigate quickly through long documents by scrolling to the part of the document you want to view.
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There are two ways to use the scroll bars.
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You can click the up, down, right, or left arrows at the ends of the scroll bars to move gradually through a document.
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You can also click the rectangular block in the scroll bar and drag it to move about the document rapidly.
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When you drag the block in the vertical scroll bar, a label appears to show you which page in the document you have reached.
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At the bottom of the vertical scroll bar are the ^UPage Up^u and ^UPage Down^u buttons.
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You can jump up or down between pages in your document by clicking these buttons.
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The button between the ^UPage Up^u and ^UPage Down^u buttons will open a menu.
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This menu enables you to set the ^UPage Up^u/^UPage Down^u buttons to browse through items other than pages in your document.
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For example, selecting ^UBrowse by table^u in this menu will enable you to skip to the previous table or the next table in your document.
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The four buttons on the left side of the horizontal scroll bar are for selecting different views of your document.
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At first, you should leave the view at its default setting, which is the Normal view.
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Just below the horizontal scroll bar is the ^Rstatus^r bar.
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This provides you with information about your document at a glance.
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For instance, you can see the page number, section number, and the exact position of the insertion point here.
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Now that you are familiar with the Word screen, let's look at how to create the most common type of document created on word processors - a letter.
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Here we'll use a business letter as an example.
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Say, for example, that Ken Schultz is the Events Coordinator for the Human Resources department of Centurion Technologies Incorporated (CTI).
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CTI are a large software company with offices around the United States and in many other parts of the world.
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Ken is organizing the company's annual awards dinner, an event at which employees and partner companies are rewarded for good performance during the past year.
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He has visited many CTI sites to make these arrangements, and has decided to write a letter to his boss to report on his progress.
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Let's see how Ken proceeds with this task.
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When Ken opens Word, he is presented with the blank default document, "Document 1."
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He begins by typing the date.
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And then presses the ^UEnter^u key to move to the next line.
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He presses ^UEnter^u once more, to insert a blank line after the date, and then begins to type the address of the recipient.
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Then he presses the ^UEnter^u key again to start the next line.
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Notice that the name "Chavis" has been underlined with a wavy red line.
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This is Word's spelling checker, which can check text as you enter it, indicating that it doesn't recognize this word.
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If you prefer to check spelling when you finish a document, you can turn this feature off.
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Let's do this now.
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To turn off this part of the spell checker, you open the ^UTools^u menu and select ^UOptions^u.
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Select the ^USpelling & Grammar^u tab to view the required settings.
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You click the checkbox marked ^UCheck spelling as you type^u to turn this feature off.
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The grammar checker underlines grammar mistakes, but uses a wavy green line to distinguish these from spelling errors.
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And click the ^UOK^u button to have the new settings take effect and return to your document.
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Ken completes the address, and begins the text of the letter.
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As he types ^RDear Tonya^r, the Office Assistant appears and offers help.
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The Office Assistant is an intelligent help feature that can recognize what you are trying to do and offer appropriate help.
In this case, it knew Ken was creating a letter when he typed ^RDear Tonya^r.
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Ken chooses to do without help for now, so he clicks the ^UJust type the letter without help^u option.
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As he types ^Rshow^r at the end of the first line, you will notice that there is not enough space left to accommodate the whole word.
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When there is insufficient space for a word on a line, it is automatically "wrapped" onto the beginning of the next line.
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Ken completes the first paragraph, inserts a blank line, and moves on to the next.
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At this point he decides to insert an extra phrase.
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To do this, he needs to move the insertion point.
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The simplest way of moving the insertion point is to use the mouse.
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You can also move the insertion point using the up, down, left, and right arrow keys on the keyboard.
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Notice that as you move the mouse onto the document from the toolbars, scrollbars, and other parts of the window, the pointer changes from an arrow to what looks like the letter "I".
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This is known as the ^R^UI-beam^r^u.
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You can move the I-beam to any point in a document, and place the insertion point at that location by clicking once.
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Here Ken has used the I-beam to place the insertion point just before the word "will".
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Now he types ^Uthis year^u into the sentence.
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When you insert text in this way, Word will automatically move the surrounding text to accommodate the new text.
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But this feature can be switched off, in which case Word overtypes text instead of moving it aside.
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To switch between these modes, double-click the ^UOVR^u box in the status bar.
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When the ^UOVR^u box is grayed out, Word is in Insert mode, and when it is in bold, Word is in Overtype mode.
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While entering a new paragraph, Ken decides to replace the phrase "Catering will be supplied by" with "Catering will be provided by".
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To replace the word "supplied", he moves his mouse pointer to the middle of that word and double-clicks, which highlights the entire word.
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He removes the word by pressing the ^UDelete^u key.
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To complete the replacement, he simply types the new word in place of the deleted one.
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Instead of deleting the word "supplied" before replacing it, Ken could have highlighted it and just typed ^Rprovided^r.
Word would have replaced the highlighted word with the text being typed.
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Now suppose Ken decides he prefers the original word after all.
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The Undo command will replace the original word without the need to delete and retype all over again.
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The ^UUndo^u and ^URedo^u buttons are located here on the Standard toolbar.
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Clicking the ^UUndo^u button will reverse your last action (typing ^Rprovided^r).
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And clicking it again will undo the action before that (deleting the word "supplied").
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You can click this button to continue to step back through your actions one at a time.
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And you can step forward through them again using the ^URedo^u button.
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You can also choose a point in the sequence of actions up to which you want to undo or redo.
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For example, clicking the arrow beside the ^URedo^u button displays a list of your actions so far.
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This allows you to choose to undo or redo a number of actions at once.
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Ken finishes his letter, and can now run the spelling and grammar checkers before printing it.
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However, his next task should be to save his letter to ensure the work he has done so far is safe.
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Now that you've seen a few of the basic tasks associated with entering and editing text, let's put the theory into practice.
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The following exercise will allow you to delete some text, then use the Undo and Redo commands to reverse and restore this edit.
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You should save your work regularly to ensure that none of it is lost.
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As this is the first time this document has been saved, you need to open the Save As dialog box to tell Word where you want to save your document and what you want to call it.
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The first time you save a document, clicking the ^USave^u button will open the Save As dialog box.
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Alternatively, you can select the ^USave As^u option from the ^UFile^u menu.
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When you first open the Save As dialog box, a folder called My Documents is displayed by default.
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This folder has been created by Office 97 for you to store your documents, worksheets, presentations, and so on.
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As you can see, the My Documents folder is currently empty.
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If you want to save a document in a different drive or folder, you can select a location from the Save in drop-down list.
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Ken decides to use the My Documents folder, so he doesn't need to change the location.
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Having chosen where to save your new document, you need to give it a filename.
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The name is entered in the File name drop-down list box.
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As you can see, Word has suggested "January 19", derived from the first two words in the letter.
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To change the filename, you click once in the File name drop-down list box to place the insertion bar at the beginning or end of the existing filename.
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Then, holding the mouse button down, drag the bar across the filename to highlight all of it.
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You can then delete the name using the ^UDelete^u key or simply type in the name you want to use - in this case ^RLetter to Tonya^r.
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To finish saving your document, you click the ^USave^u button or press ^UEnter^u.
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From now on, as long as the document is open, you can save it by simply clicking the ^USave^u button in the Standard toolbar.
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To ensure that you do not lose work because of a powercut or other mishap, Word can save your documents automatically.
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This feature is known as ^RAutoRecover^r.
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You can turn AutoRecover on and off and change the period between saves by selecting ^UOptions^u from the ^UTools^u menu.
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The settings for AutoRecover are located in the ^USave^u tab of the Options dialog box.
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You can turn AutoRecover saves on or off using the ^USave AutoRecover info every^u checkbox.
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The box to the right of this checkbox allows you to set the period between AutoRecover saves.
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You can increase or decrease this period by clicking the up and down arrows at the side of the box.
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Or you can use the I-beam to place the insertion point in the box and type the number.
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Clicking the ^UAllow background saves^u checkbox will turn this feature on and off.
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When it is on, you can continue to work on your document while Word performs a save.
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When Word is carrying out a background save, a pulsing disk icon appears in the status bar.
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Background saves use additional system memory, so you may want to turn this feature off if you need to save system resources.
If Word can't perform a background save, for instance if you are saving to a floppy disk, it will perform a normal, foreground save instead.
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You will notice that the ^UAllow fast saves^u checkbox is selected.
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This option is faster, because it saves only the changes made to a document rather than the complete revised document.
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This is particularly useful when working on large documents.
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However, there are times when it is better to turn this feature off and perform a full save.
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Some occasions when it is better to perform a full save rather than a fast save are
ò before you share a document
with other people
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ò when you finish work and save
a document before closing it
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ò before you begin a
memory-intensive task,
such as searching an index
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ò before you transfer the
document to another program
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If you are working on a document across a network, fast saves will not work and should be turned off.
Also, selecting the ^UAlways create backup copy^u option will automatically turn fast saves off because backup copies require a full save.
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Your next step is to choose a location to save your document in.
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Let's save this document in the My Documents folder.
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Having selected the filename suggested by Word, you can now type the filename of your choice.
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Let's call this file "Letter to Tonya".
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If you need help on any aspect of Word 97, there are a variety of ways to access help in Word itself.
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Let's begin by looking at the options offered by the ^UHelp^u menu, located here on the menu bar.
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The first option, ^UMicrosoft Word Help^u, will activate the Office Assistant.
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You can also activate the Office Assistant using the question-mark button on the far right of the Standard toolbar, or by pressing the ^UF1^u key on the keyboard.
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This feature acts as an interface to online help, making it easier to use.
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However, before we look at the Office Assistant, let's look at online help itself.
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To view the topics covered by online help, select the ^UContents and Index^u option from the ^UHelp^u menu.
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This will open the Help Topics dialog box.
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The ^UContents^u tab contains a list of all the topic books contained in online help.
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Double-clicking any of the items in this list, or selecting them and clicking the ^UOpen^u button, will usually open a further list of sub-topic books.
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When you open these, you'll see a list of individual help topics within that book.
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You can display a help topic by double-clicking it.
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Or you can select it with the mouse or keyboard and then click the ^UDisplay^u button.
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Each help topic presents advice on a particular aspect of Word.
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It may also provide links to related topics, allowing you to navigate from topic to topic until you find the help you require.
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For example, clicking any of the items in the list here headed "What area do you want to read about?" will open the appropriate help topic.
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You can print a copy of a topic by clicking the ^UOptions^u button in the topic window and selecting ^UPrint Topic^u from the menu.
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The ^UIndex^u tab in the Help Topics dialog box allows you to jump straight to the help topic you want to view.
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You can scroll down the list and select a topic to display.
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Or you can type a word, or the first letters of a word, in this box and the index will jump to the nearest match in the list, which you can then display.
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The ^UFind^u tab provides a powerful tool for searching for individual words.
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Entering a word in the first text box initiates a search for every occurrence of that word in online help.
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You can narrow the search by choosing one of the related words in the second text box.
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And you can choose which of the topics to display using the third text box.
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At the top of the Help Topics dialog box, there is a button with the question-mark symbol.
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This is a ^UWhat's This?^u button, which can be found in many of the dialog boxes in Word.
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Clicking the ^UWhat's This?^u button will change your mouse pointer to a mouse pointer with a question mark.
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When you next click an object in the dialog box, a caption with a description of the object appears.
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Here, for example, is a caption that opened when the ^UDisplay^u button was clicked in this way.
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You can access the What's This? feature for the Word screen itself from the ^UHelp^u menu on the menu bar.
You can also access the What's This? feature by right-clicking parts of the screen and then clicking the ^UWhat's This?^u menu option when it appears.
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The Office Assistant is common to all Office 97 applications, and can provide help for a variety of features specific to the program you are working in.
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In many cases, the Assistant can identify the task you are performing and suggest relevant help before you ask for it.
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For example, if you click the Assistant while you are making changes to a table, it will return topics about working with tables.
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The Office Assistant can also provide tips on how to use program features or keyboard shortcuts.
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You can tell a tip is available when a yellow light bulb appears in the Assistant.
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To display the tip all you do is click the light bulb.
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The Office Assistant makes it easy to access online help topics.
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You can type a question in the text box, and have the Office Assistant display a list of relevant topics for you to choose from by clicking the ^USearch^u button.
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Clicking any of these topic suggestions will display the relevant online help topic.
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The Office Assistant is also customizable.
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Clicking the ^UOptions^u button will display the Office Assistant dialog box, in which you can change settings for the Assistant's capabilities and tips features.
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You can change the appearance of the Office Assistant by opening the ^UGallery^u tab in this dialog box.
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You can move backwards and forwards through a selection of different Assistants until you find one you like.
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To select a new assistant, simply click the ^UOK^u button.
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Finally, you can access help across the Internet using the ^UMicrosoft on the Web^u option in the ^UHelp^u menu.
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You need to have Internet access and a Web browser, such as Internet Explorer, to take advantage of this feature.
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Selecting one of these menu options will open your Web browser and connect you to the relevant part of the Microsoft Web site.
