Some Basic Info To Know…

As you type in Word, you are creating text. Each keystroke creates a character, whether a letter, number, or symbol. Sometimes these characters are invisible--like when you press the spacebar, the tab or enter keys. These invisible characters can be seen by using the Show/Hide command in our toolbar. Many times this is helpful to see what is causing the empty space on a page. It’s important to remember that these screen symbols do not print out.

Anything you create in Word is considered a document and you may see the letters doc added to the end of the filename when you save it. This brings us to the word file. Any information you create and save on a computer must be saved in something called a file, whether it’s a Word document, a picture you draw in paintbrush or a spreadsheet you create in Excel. Of course, if you save your creation you must give it a name so you can find it later. This is called a filename. Older programs would only allow up to 8 characters to a filename, but newer programs allow longer filenames to make it easier on us humans. (Remember to give a file a name that makes sense to you, so you can recognize what it is months later.) Every time you save a file the computer adds a period and a three-letter extension to its name like .doc (report.doc) to a Word file, or .bmp to a paintbrush picture (picture.bmp). As you get to know file extensions it helps you understand what type of a file something is. For example, when you receive an attachment in mail, you can tell if it is a picture, a document, or something else by it’s file extension.

You have learned that Word and other computer programs give you many options or choices. These choices are given to you in the form of menus. You see a menu bar at the top of your screen and each menu word has a drop-down menu with more choices. You can right-click your mouse and get a short-cut menu. Many times when you make a choice by clicking on something from a menu the computer needs more information from you. It displays a dialogue box in an attempt to ask you questions like: where to print, how many copies to print, or which pages to print. You can go along with the choices the computer has made for you or make your own choices. The choices the computer has already made are called defaults. As you type, the letters come out in the color black; you can change this, but the default is black. When you print, the printer’s default is to print one copy, but you can change this to two if you wish.

If you want to start a brand new file, you would choose the command New. As you type, the document is being stored in the computer’s memory. If you didn’t want to keep it, then you would choose Close without saving and the document would disappear from the screen and the memory. It would be gone for good. If you wanted to keep it, however, you’d choose Save, give it a filename and the computer would write it on a disk. If you want to open a file that already exists, you would choose the command Open. The computer will check the disk, find the file, and put it in its memory and on the screen for you. When you’re done with making changes to the file, you would choose the command Save and overwrite the old version with the new version. When you close the file, the computer will forget the file by removing it from its memory and it disappears from your screen. So the memory of a computer is only a temporary area to keep something a disk is a permanent place.

Each time you open a file and save the changes you make, it overwrites the old version with the new version and the computer doesn’t ask you anything about saving it again—no dialogue box. But, if you want to save the file to a different place (like a floppy to take with you) or save it under a different filename, then you would use Save As because the dialogue box will come up again—asking for more information about what you want to do that is different than what you did last time you saved it.

When you are ready to print a file, it’s wise to Preview to see what it will look like before you print. This way you can see if there are changes needed. If you want a printed copy of the file to take with you, then you would choose to Print. Remember to choose the correct printer when printing on the school network.

As you type a document in Word there are empty spaces around the edges that you don’t get to type in. These are called margins. You can change the margins if you wish. Also, as you type you don’t have to worry about running out of room at the right margin, because the computer will automatically go to the next line of writing if it runs out of room. This is called word wrap. How wonderful!

J. Callahan

Berkeley Preparatory School

Updated August 2000