word curriculum

Mary Clemons3122 Mahan Drive Suite 801-194Tallahassee, FL [email protected]

Hi!

I wrote these lessons for my niece (26 years old, married with two kids) so she could teach herself a little bit about Microsoft Word. Word is a good skill to have if you want to get a job in an office with benefits.

If you don’t have a computer, and you can’t find somebody who can loan you theirs, the library probably has one you can use.

To get Microsoft Word installed, you need to buy that first. Your local Walmart probably has somebody who can help you.

Since I wrote this for Ash, it’s designed for her. Don’t feel like you have to follow this strictly. You can change things around. If you run into problems, and can’t find anybody who can help you figure things out, you can send me a letter or an email and I’ll be glad to see if I can help you out.

Thanks,

Word Lesson 11. Create a document

2. Left justify everything. (This means don't put anything in the middle or put anything so it lines up on the right.) This is the default, so you don't have to make any changes to do this.

3. At the top, put today's date spelled out. Like April 10, 2016

4. Then type in an address:

Mr. Davis Whigglebotham

149 Southern Days Lane

Henrietta, GA 37299

5. Then type in the salutation: Dear Mr. Whigglebotham

6. Then type the following paragraph:

In light of the upcoming Canine Conference scheduled for May 12, 2016 in Crawfordville, Florida, I would like to extend an invitation for you and Hearts Desire Chocolate Truffle to open the Conference with a short speech.

7. Then end the letter with:

Thank you,

LouAnne J. Pinkleberry

8. Save the document. We will come back to this document in the next few lessons.

Lesson 2Okay, once you're happy with the first document do this:

Center the date. Highlight the date, then do a Control-E. You should see the date slide to the center of the page.

Fix the lines in your address. Select the entire address. Then go to the Home menu item. Look at the paragraph section on the Ribbon. Hover on the items on the second line and find the one that says Line and Paragraph Spacing. Click it. You should see a form pop up. Look for the Spacing section. In the After field, it says 8 pt. Use the go down arrow to set that back to .0. Click OK. Your line spacing should change.

Add a paragraph: After the paragraph you have now, add the following: Can you forward to me an outline of the speech you are preparing? I will need the topic at a minimum no later than 3 weeks from today. Please let me know if that will be a problem.

Add a third paragraph: Pleaz let me know. The please is intentionally misspelled. You should see a red squiggly line. Put your cursor somewhere in the word. Then right click and you should see a list of words that it could be. Choose Please from the list. It should replace.

Lesson 3:Add a new page. After the last paragraph you added - the one with the PLEAZ that you changed to Please - but before the Thank you, LouAnne part, put your cursor between those two.

Then go to the Insert Menu at the top. Click the Page Break. (It's on the left hand side.) You should see that the Thank You moves down to the next page.

If you don't see that, go to the View menu item and check your views on the left side. Make sure it's set to Print Layout and not Read Mode or Web Layout.

Add a bulleted list. Type this sentence: "Let me tell you what breeds will be appearing in case that helps you with your speech." Then put a line and type a dog breed. (It doesn't matter which one, just any breed.) After you type the name, then go to the Home menu item. On the Paragraph section, the top row has the bullet points. The one on the left side is just a circle. Don't choose that one. Cliuck the down arrow next to it and choose another one.

Now key in about 5 or 6 breeds. You get to choose which ones you want. :)

Change the font for a couple of words. After the breeds, you get out of the bulleted part just by hitting enter a couple of times. Then add a paragraph that says: "It is imperative you understand that no cats will be allowed."

Change the no cats will be allowed to both bold and to a larger font size. Go to the Home menu and look at the Font section. You will have to do two things. I'll bet you can figure out what to do!

Save the document with a new name. AFter making these changes, save the document with a new name. So go to the File menu item. choose Save-As. Remember to Save on This PC and choose Documents. It will show you the current name, but change it to something else. Like maybe add Lesson 3 to the end of the name or something.

Replace one of the breed names. You're going to have Word automatically replace one of the breed names. Say you typed in Yorkie and you decide you want it to be Yorkshire Terrier. From the Home menu item, find the Editing section. It's all the way on the far right side. Click Replace.

You have two fields. Find what. And Replace with. So, type in whatever you currently have (Yorkie) in the Find what. And then type in what you want to change it to - (Yorkshire Terrier) in the Replace With. Then click Replace,.

It will find the word and highlight it. Click Replace again and it will replace the word and go to the next one it finds. IF it doesn't find the word again, it will tell you it's done searching.

Add a picture. After the line about no cats allowed, insert a picture of a cat. If you don't have a picture of a cat, then just find any picture. If you don't have any pictures on that laptop, then let me know.

From the Insert menu, click the Pictures button. It will let you go pick the file you want. Just select the file and click Insert. You should see the picture appear in your document.

We will do more with the picture in the next lesson, so go ahead and save the file. (You don't need to do a new name.)

Lesson 4Open up your last document and go to the picture.

Change the size of the picture. IF you click on the picture, you can see that small circles appear in the corners and around the sides. Hover the mouse over the circle in the upper right. The mouse will change to one where there is an arrow at both ends. Drag towards the middle of the picture.

You should see the picture change size. It will get smaller.

Experiment. Now mess around and see how dragging each of the circles in different directions changes things. You can make the picture bigger or smaller or stretch it.

If you hover over the circle at the top, the one in the middle, you see a looping arrow. It's sort of a circle but not quite closed in with an arrow on the right side. Hover your mouse over that looping arrow until your arrow changes again and looks like a looping arrow. Drag the mouse down and see what happens!

Add a caption. Once you're done messing with how you can change the picture, right click the picture and choose Insert caption. In the caption field, type something. In the Position field, choose Above selected item.

Now, click on the caption. You see the same circles and can do the same things to the caption. Except that it does not change the size of the caption.

See how text wraps around the picture. Now start typing above the picture. You can type real words, but when I just want a bunch of text without caring what it says, just type randomly. Keep typing until you've got enough letters to go past the picture and see what happens

Moving on from pictures for now....

Highlighting text with font color. Sometimes (not for a business letter but maybe for a brochure or other marketing material or possibly for an internal email) you want some text to really stand out. So you want the font to be red. So type something in your document, like I Love Maddie and then select it with your mouse. In the Font section there is an A with a red underline. If you click that, it will change the font to red.

With your text still highlighted, drop down the arrow to the right of the A with the red underline and choose another color, like blue or purple. Your text changes to the color you picked, but if you notice, so did the underline. Now you've set that new color as the default.

Highlighting text with background color. Sometimes you may want more of an emphasis. So highlight some text. On the Font tab there's a lower case ab just to the left of the A with the underline. Click the dropdown to the right of the ab and choose whatever color you like. Now your text is still in the original color, but the background has changed from white to your color.

Undoing changes. Now let's say you decided that background color was horrible and you hate it and you just want to undo it. In the upper left of the screen, right next to the little disk symbol is a curvy arrow pointing to the left. If you click that curvy arrow, it will undo the last thing you did.

If you click hte arrow to the right of that curvy arrow, it will last your most recent changes and you can choose multiple things to undo. But you must undo in the order in which they were done. YOu can't jump to an action halfway down the list..

Redo change. Now let's say that you suddenly decide you do like the color you pick and you wish you hadn't undone it. No problem! Just click the curvy arrow that points to the right. And your undo is undone.

Lesson 5Open your document about the Canine Conference.

Add the following paragraph: AT the end of the document, add this:

I am please to announce that the Barasuprane breed is being added to our line up this year. This illustrious dog from the snowy mountains of Tanzania will make an exciting addition to our Conference.

Add to the dictionary: Barasuprane isn't a real dog, but who knows? Maybe some day they will name a breed like this. You wouldn't want that word to always show up as being misspelled. So you can add it to the dictionary. Right click the word and choose Add To Dictionary. Now you should see that it's no longer marked with the red squiggly that means misspelled.

So, now we're going to do a few things that are a little more advanced. Hold on to your hat!

Change the orientation. So you know the difference between landscape and portrait? Landscape is when you turn the paper so that the long edge is on the bottom. Portrait is when you turn the page so the long end is on the side. Business letters are printed in portrait. But sometimes you need to put, say, a chart in there and it just makes more sense for that part to be in landscape. YOu can have pages with different orientations in the same document.

So, first, we need a new blank page. But don't use the Insert > Page Break. If we do that and then change the orientation it will change the whole document. We need to do things just a little differently so we can change the orientation for only the one page.

Insert a section break. A section break is a way to have things apply only to pages in this section, not to the whole document. So go to the Layout menu. In the Page Setup part, there is a Breaks item with a down arrow. Click the down arrow.

There are two pieces - a Page Break and then a Section Break. From the Section Break piece, choose Next Page. Now you have a new page, but it's in a different section.

Change to landscape. So now put your cursor on the new blank page. Again from teh Layout menu, find the Orientation dropdown on the Page Setup section. Choose landscape. You should see that the pages before the last page are still portrait but the last page is now landscape.

As you can see, it's wider, so we have more room to put a chart.

Insert a table. Word can do graphic charts. LIke the sort of line graph you might see that shows how prices go up and down. Or pie charts and other things. We'll do that later, but for now, we just want a text chart. So we don't use Chart yet.

From the Insert menu, click the Table on the section that says Tables. It shows you a miniature table, and drag your mouse to decide how many columns and how many rows you want. Let's add 6 columns and 2 rows. Columns go across and rows go down.

YOu can add more columns and rows later on if you need to. When you let go of the mouse you should have a table inserted into the document.

Set the header row. In the columns going across, type the following:

Column 1: NAmeColumn 2: WeightColumn 3: ColorColumn 4: TemperamentColumn 5: HealthColumn 6: Notes

Fill out the rows. Now for each row under the header, enter information about various dog breeds. Like boxers, chihuahua, terriers, pomeranians, etc. As many lines as you want. You don't have to match the bulleted list in the earlier part of the letter.

Save the document. We'll do more with the table in the next lesson.

Lesson 7 – More About Tables

Open your document. Go back to the table you added at the end. We’re going to do some things to make it look a little different.

Resize the columns. When you create a table, each column is exactly as wide as all the other columns. This may not work well for your data. Weight may not take up much room, but Notes and Health may be a little longer. So, the idea is to make the width of each column based on what’s in there.

This is the table I started with, but just as an example. You’ll be working on your table with the information about dogs.

Month Holidays CommentsJanuary New Year’s Day Starting the year off right!February Valentine’s Day Oh darn, I don’t have a dateMarch St. Patrick’s Day Gotta wear green!!April National Jelly Bean Day Yummy!May Memorial Day A 3 day weekendJune Flag Day Honor the US flagJuly 4th of July Fireworks!August National Marshmellow Toasting

DayAnother Yummy one!

September Labor Day 3 day weekendOctober Halloween Scary and not so scaryNovember Thanksgiving Turkey Turkey TurkeyDecember Christmas Unfortunately commercialized

but still a nice one to look forward to

If you notice, there’s a lot of space in the Month column but some of the Holidays and Comments are wrapped to the next line. (Wrapping means when the text is so long it goes to the next line and you don’t even tell it to.)

Hover your mouse over the vertical line between the columns – the line between Month and Holidays for example until the mouse changes and you have two arrows – one pointing left and the other pointing right. Then you can drag the line and change the column size. This is what I ended up with:

Month Holidays CommentsJanuary New Year’s Day Starting the year off right!February Valentine’s Day Oh darn, I don’t have a dateMarch St. Patrick’s Day Gotta wear green!!April National Jelly Bean Day Yummy!May Memorial Day A 3 day weekendJune Flag Day Honor the US flagJuly 4th of July Fireworks!

August National Marshmellow Toasting Day

Another Yummy one!

September Labor Day 3 day weekendOctober Halloween Scary and not so scaryNovember Thanksgiving Turkey Turkey TurkeyDecember Christmas Unfortunately commercialized but still a nice one

to look forward to

This looks a bit nicer – without all the white space.

Now Bold the column titles:




to look forward to

Now center the column titles: On the Home menu, there’s a Paragraph tab. On the bottom row of icons, you have an align left, a center, an align right, and then a justify. Highlight your titles and click Center.




to look forward to

Change the background color for the title row. Put your cursor anywhere in the row with the titles and right click. You should see Table Properties towards the end of the list. Click the Borders and Shading button at the bottom on the right.

On the Shading tab, click the arrow on the Fill. You’ll see what’s called a color palette. Just choose whatever color you want to be the background.

Then in the Apply To field, choose Cell. If you had multiple cells highlighted in the table, it will do that background color for all:

Month Holidays CommentsJanuary New Year’s Day Starting the year off right!February Valentine’s Day Oh darn, I don’t have a date

You could also do each cell individually and have a different color for each:

Month Holidays CommentsJanuary New Year’s Day Starting the year off right!February Valentine’s Day Oh darn, I don’t have a dateMarch St. Patrick’s Day Gotta wear green!!April National Jelly Bean Day Yummy!

As you can see above, you have to be a little careful about the colors you pick – that March line isn’t that easy to read!

So, now choose the colors for your own table. You can do just the title row, or add in color to some of the other lines. Maybe you have a new breed that’s been added to the Canine Conference and you’re excited so you show that new line in yellow or something.

Lesson 8 – More about Formatting Tables

Sometimes your chart of information contains a lot of data that is very similar. Let’s say that you also include a chart of the supplies available during the Conference. That might look something like this:

Item Price

Dog Shampoo 11.99

Flea Comb 44.57

Deshedding Tool 28.21

Clippers 4.54

Nail Grinder 17.66

With a long list, it’s easy for your eye to lose track and think that a Deshedding Tool is $4.54. So you can shade every other line to make it a little easier to read. You could do that manually, with the table properties like we did in the last lesson. But there’s an easier way.

Styles are a way to do a lot of formatting all at one time. You pick the style and all those settings get applied at all once.

To apply a style to a table: Click the Design menu item. Then click in the table. Then find the second Design menu item to the right and click on that second Design. You should see a section called Table Styles on the ribbon. \

There are many, many styles. Even though you only see one row of styles displayed, at the end of the row is a drop down, so you can go through more. If you hover over a given style, you will see your table change. It shows you what the table will look like if you choose that style.

Item Price

Dog Shampoo 11.99

Flea Comb 44.57

Deshedding Tool 28.21

Clippers 4.54

Nail Grinder 17.66

Create a chart to list prices for souvenirs you can purchase at the Canine Conference. Explore Table Styles and choose one for your list.

Some things you might be able to buy: photo of you and your pooch. Photo of just your pooch. Customized dog collar. Customized dog collar with jewels. Gold inlaid dog tag. Adjustable harnesses and leashes. Nylon water bowls emblazoned with the words “Canine Conference 2016” on it. Memorial brochure and conference agenda. Glow in the dark collars.

Add a row to a table. Now let’s say that you realized that you forgot to put something on your souvenir list. You want to put that item at the very top of the list right under the header row. Let’s say it’s a Deluxe Dog Bed for $99.99.

Put your cursor on the header row or the one underneath. Right click. Choose Insert. Then choose to insert Row Above or Row Below, depending on where the row needs to go. You should see a blank row appear. Fill in the information for the deluxe dog bed.

Add a column to a table. After thinking it over, you realize you might want to add a description to the list. Decide where you want the description to go, and then put your cursor there. Right click and choose Insert > Insert Columns (right or left, depending).

Now, add the descriptions.

Lesson 9 – Page NumberingNow you’ve got some basics down. We’re going to switch gears and look at some things that don’t necessarily apply to letters.

Let’s say that you want to supply each Conference attendee with a brief history of the Canine Conference, as well as some information on all the good work that the Conferences does, and a list of organizations that could use some support.

Start a new document in Word. Put History one the first line, Charity on the second, and Other Organizations on the third. Go ahead and save this document and call it History or something.

After history, add a brief paragraph. Something like: “The Canine Conference was started in 1993 by Mr. Joseph X. Nefarious as a way to spend time with his beloved dogs – Max and Myssee. It has grown from a single two hour presentation in 1993 to a full-scale multi-day Conference today.”

You can add whatever you want in this section. Even some random letters if you like. Just something to fill up part of the document.

Since this is going to be more than one page, let’s add page numbering.

Add page numbering. ON the Insert menu, find the Header & Footer section. Click the Page Number icon. Then choose where you want the page number to print. You will see all your options.

When you pick a page number, it goes into a special place. At the top of the page, it goes into a section called the Header . At the bottom, it’s called the Footer. These are special sections because you normally can’t type in these areas.

You’ll notice that when you pick the page number, it automatically puts your cursor where the page number will print. The rest of the document is grayed out. Just double-click somewhere in the body of the document – like where the history paragraphs are – and you’ll get out of the header/footer.

When you go back to the body, you find that the header/footer is disabled. To get back to the header/footer, just double-click the page number.

Remove number. If you decide you don’t’ like the page number, you can change it. Or even delete. Go back to the Insert Menu > Header & Footer > Remove page number. Then your page number goes away!

Once you’ve removed the page number, put it back so it’s there in the final document. I just wanted you to know how to do that.

Now, add in some text to the Charity section. “The Canine Conference proudly donates blankets and food to local shelters, takes the lead in finding and training foster parents, and works with veterinary hospitals to ensure quality healthcare for low income families.

Add more if you like, even if it’s random letters.

And list some organizations who could use some support:

Crawfordville All-Access Animal Hospital

Rainbow Bridge Memorial Services

St. Lutheran Animal Services

You can make up more if you like. And add some addresses, phone numbers, and director’s names.

Or even just put random letters in here to make it a bit longer.

Lesson 10 – Applying Styles to the Document, not the TableIf you’ve noticed, the lesson numbers and title are in a blue font that is a little bigger than most of the text.

I could do that manually. Or I could just apply a style. This isn’t the Table Style you worked with before, but it’s very similar.

Apply Heading 1 style to your 3 sections – History, Charity, Organizations. Highlight one of them. Go to the Home menu item. There’s a Styles section which will probably be defaulted to Normal. Look down a little ways and you’ll see Heading 1. Click that Heading 1 and you should see History turn blue and get a little bit bigger.

Now, repeat for the other two – Charity and Organization.

So now you have nicely formatted headers.

Add some page breaks so that each section starts on a different page. You can even add multiple pages to the sections just to get a longer document.

Now we’re going to add a table of contents. Put your cursor at the beginning of the document. Go to the References menu item. On the Table of Contents section (at the far left) there’s a Table of Contents. Click the drop down arrow and choose your style.

Once you’ve added the table of contents, you need to insert a page break so that the table of contents is the only thing on the page.

Finally, we’re going to add a Cover Page. Go to Insert Menu and from the Pages tab, insert a Cover Page. Choose the one you like best, and fill in the sections. For example, a brief description might be: A companion piece for the Canine Conference 2016 that describes the history and good works the Canine Conference has accomplished through the years.”

At this point, you might email or print your document. If you were going to print it:

File > Print. Then you’d choose your printer, which pages you wanted, and depending on the printer, maybe even if you wanted it printed on both sides of the paper. (Also called duplex printing.)

Lesson 11 – ExplorationNow that you’ve seen a bit about Word, choose one or more of the following exercises:

Write a letter to Santa Claus. Not as a child, but as a grown-up, asking him for whatever you’d want him to bring you as a grown-up. And explain why you deserve it. For example, if I were going to write a letter to Santa, I’d ask him to bring me about 4 more inches of height, explaining why life is a little bit difficult when you’re only five feet tall!

Create a pricing list for a spa. Include all the services you can think of. Not for Evolution, though. This will be a price list for a spa that pampers Tigers. Or Clowns. Or little green Martians. Or Cave Women like Wilma Flintstone. Or Elves, like the ones in the Lord Of the Rings. Or Superheroes, like Batman or Wolverine.

Write a biography of yourself. Include headers for sections for Childhood, Teen-age Years, Young Adult, Motherhood. (Or whatever sections you like – “The Dogs I Have Loved”, “The Places I Have Lived”, “The Fun I Have Had”)

Play around with some of the things we haven’t touched. Like the Insert Menu has an Illustrations section where you can insert Screenshots. Or Shapes. Insert also has a Symbols section where you can insert funky symbols. The Design menu has Watermarks, Page Color, and Page Borders. Watermark is just like putting a stamp on the page – like Confidential or Draft. Page Color changes the page from white to whatever color you pick. Border just puts some type of border around your pages.