CIS 150 February 24, 1999

A Review for the second exam

Recall that the second exam is scheduled for next Wednesday. Make sure to bring a number 2 pencil to the exam. Below is a review of the topics we have discussed.

General Concepts

Windows 95 is a multitasking operating system, meaning that we can run several applications simultaneously. That is what allows us to run Microsoft Word and Netscape at the same time so that you can view the topics on this web page while you still have a document open in Microsoft Word.
Like in other Windows 95 applications, when you place the mouse pointer somewhere within the Microsoft Word window and click the right mouse button, an appropriate quickmenu (shortcut menu) appears.
If we create a document in Microsoft Word which we feel worthy of legal protection, then we may obtain a copyright for our document which provides legal protection to a written or artistic work, giving the author exclusive rights to its use and reproduction.
The Microsoft Word window contains several parts.
1. The Title Bar contains the name of the document, the minimize, maximize/restore, and close buttons.
2. The Menu Bar contains various menus of options.
3. There are special toolbars available that contain shortcut icons to various commands and operations in Microsoft Word.
4. Horizontal and Vertical Ruler Bars are available under certain conditions.
5. The Status Bar contains useful information such as the page number, section number, current page number/total number of pages. It also indicates in what row and column the insertion point is located.
Microsoft Word is one word processor which will allow you to save files as html documents so they may be viewed on the World Wide Web. To save a document as html, go to the File Menu and select Save as HTML...

Inputting text into your document

The Insertion Point is the flashing vertical bar that indicates where the next character you type will be placed.
Microsoft Word also possesses the WordWrap feature. That is, when you get to the end of the line, the software will automatically advance you to the next line without you having to hit enter. This is called a soft return. If you hit enter to go to the next line, this is called a hard return. So for documents such as memos, when you get to the end of a line or a sentence you don't have to hit the enter key. You would hit the enter key after you have entered an entire paragraph. Recall that to see where we have made hard returns we can click the Show/Hide Paragraph mark icon or button on the Standard Toolbar. It is an example of a toggle key. The Caps Lock key is also an example of a toggle key.
Recall the difference between insertion and typeover mode. In insertion mode when you type the text to the right of the insertion point moves to the right. When you are in typeover mode when you type the text to the right of the insertion point is replaced. To change between insertion and typeover mode, you can check that option on the Edit tab of the Options dialog box under the Tools Menu.
Whenever text is highlighted, the next character we type will replace that text.
To move the insertion point to the beginning of the document hit CTRL-HOME. To move the insertion point to the end of the document hit CTRL-END. To move the insertion point to the beginning of a line hit HOME. To move the insertion point to the end of a line hit END.
Footnotes and Endnotes may be added to our documents. We use footnotes or endnotes to give information about a word or phrase in our document that would not be appropriate to place in the main document. That is, we may have a limited amount of page in our document but have several unfamiliar words or phrases we need to use. We may use footnotes and endnotes to elaborate on these words or phrases. Recall that footnotes do not have to begin with 1, and when we insert or delete new footnotes or endnotes, subsequent footnotes or endnotes are automatically renumbered. In Page View we can see footnotes or endnotes as they appear in the document. If we decide that we don't want a reference to be a footnote, we can convert it to an endnote.

Editting text in your document

The Grammar Checker can find an inconsistency between subject and verb in a sentence, indentify incorrect punctuation, and be asked to explain the grammatical rule it is trying to enforce.
The Spell Checker will indicate possible misspellings of words. The possible misspelling is indicated by the software with a wavy red line underneath the possible misspelling if the autocheck feature is selected. The Spelling Checker will not automatically correct a misspelling. This task falls to the AutoCorrect feature for specific misspellings which are enumerated by going to the Tools Menu and selecting the AutoCorrect... dialog box.
The clipboard is a special temporary area of memory that is used in association with certain operations in Microsoft Word. Three of these are the cut, copy, and paste operations. When we perform the cut operation, the selected text is removed from its current location and placed onto the clipboard. When we perform the copy operation, the selected text is copied onto the clipboard. The paste operation copies what is on the clipboard to a specified location. So the cut and copy operations affect the contents of the clipboard, but the paste operation does not.
The copy, cut, and paste commands can be accessed through the Edit Menu, special icons on the Standard Toolbar, a quickmenu, or the shortcuts listed below.
CRTL-C is a shortcut for the Copy command.
CTRL-X is a shortcut for the Cut command.
CTRL-V is a shortcut for the Paste command.
The Backspace key deletes text to the left of the insertion point, and the Delete key deletes text to the right of the insertion point.
Autocorrect can correct mistakes as you type by substituting one character string for another and substitute symbols for their typewritten equivalents.
We can scroll through the document to edit different parts. We can move to different parts of the document using the scroll bar. Notice that when we move to other parts of the document using the scroll bar, the insertion point does not move. This is important to remember because it can save you aggravation if you search for awhile for a part of your document using the scroll bars, then as you begin to type, you are sent back to where you started.
When we select a group of characters in a document, there are several actions which will unselect that group of characters. If we hit the Page Up or Page Down keys, hit one of the arrow keys, or click anywhere outside the selected text, then the text will be unselected. If we simply move the vertical scroll bar either up or down the text is not unselected. Recall that after we select the text if we type any character that is printable, i.e. a letter, a number, a symbol, etc., the the selected text will be replaced by that character.
We can select an entire sentence by placing the insertion point in the sentence and clicking the left mouse button while holding down the CTRL key.

Formatting your document

The Paragraph dialog box under the File Menu allows us to change line spacing, indentation, and some other appropriate options for paragraphs.
We have talked about several different print enhancements.
1. Boldface - can be accessed through the Formatting Toolbar.
2. Underline - can be accessed through the Formatting Toolbar.
3. Italics - can be accessed through the Formatting Toolbar.
4. Small Caps - can be accessed through the Font dialog box under the Format Menu.
5. Drop Caps - can be accessed through the Format Menu.
We discussed a reverse in a document, that is having white text on a black background. We can accomplish this through the Shading tab on the Borders and Shading dialog box under the Format Menu.
We can also shade paragraphs by using the Shading tab on the Borders and Shading dialog box under the Format Menu.
There are four different alignments we can give to the text in our document.
1. Left Justified - the text is flush against the left margin and possibly ragged on the right.
2. Right Justified - the text is flush against the right margin and possibly ragged on the left.
3. Center Justified - each line of text is centered around the midpoint between the left and right margins. The left and right margins are possibly ragged.
4. Full Justified - the text is flush against both margins.
Recall that it is not considered good design practice to use many different typefaces and styles in a document.
We can also use ClipArt, Watermarks, and WordArt to format our document. Recall that you can either have text written through an image like ClipArt or a Watermark or you can write on top of it. A ClipArt image can be resized preserving the original proportions of the image by clicking on and dragging the sizing handle at one of the corners of the object. WordArt allows you to enhance words by adding various features such as colors, rotations, shadows, arch text, printing upside down, add three dimensional effects, and displaying text vertically down a page. In order to select a graphics object click on that object, and sizing handles will appear.
We can also format how our document will print out. Recall the difference between the landscape and portrait orientation. Portrait orientation is how we normally print out a document. In Landscape orientation, the normal position of the paper is tilted to the right by 90 degrees. Recall that if we change between Portrait and Landscape orientation within our document, Microsoft Word inserts a section break.
Recall that we also have an AutoFormat feature which works behind the scenes to produce an attractive document while we concentrate on the content. When we use the AutoFormat feature can also apply styles to an existing document. Examples of what AutoFormat can do are replacing common fractions with 1/2 and converting ordinal numbers such as 1 or 2 to 1^st or 2^nd.
Since we have many different formatting options, uppercase letters and underscores are not the best way to emphasize large blocks of text.
We can also format the text in our footnotes or endnotes if we wish. Our footnotes or endnotes are not required to have the default Microsoft Word font.

The Menus in Microsoft Word and the operations they contain

We have discussed the various menus on the Microsoft Word Menu Bar. The main ones we have discussed are as follows.

The File Menu
1. New allows us to create a new document or start a wizard to create a template for a publication, letter, or memo.
2. Open allows us to open an existing document and bring it into RAM. We can have multiple documents open simultaneously.
3. Close removes an open document from RAM.
4. Save stores the document you are currently working on. Recall that Microsoft Word has a default folder where our documents will be saved. We can change that by going to the Tools Menu and selecting Options... and selecting the File Locations tab. Recall that we do have the option of choosing to make automatic backup copies of our document each time we save it and have automatic backup copies made periodically. However, if you exit a document without saving, do not rely on the automatic backup copy because it will not contain any changes you have made since your last save. So ALWAYS save your document before you exit Microsoft Word.
5. Save As allows you to give a name to a document so you can save it or give the document a new name to use for saving.
6. Page Setup allows us to set margins, change the paper size, choose between portrait and landscape orientation, change the paper source, and the layout of our document.
7. Print Preview allows us to zoom out to get a better perspective of how our document will look when printed.
8. Print allows us to print out our document. Recall that we can also print out by using CTRL-P or the print icon or button on the Standard Toolbar.
The Edit Menu
1. We have the option to undo actions. We can get a list of all actions that can be undone. If we choose to undo an action that is not the last action performed, then we have to undo every action which occurred after it. We can also redo some or all of the actions we have undone. The Undo command allows us to undo up to the last 100 actions.
2. We can also perform the cut, copy, and paste operations from the Edit Menu.
3. We can go the Find/Replace/Goto dialog box. Recall that Find allows us to find a particular word or phrase in our document, Replace allows us to find a particular word or phrase in our document and replace it with text we specify, and Goto allows us to jump to a particular point in our document. The replacement phrases does not have to correspond in any way with the search phrases, i.e. it does not have to be the same length or case, etc.
The View Menu
1. We can control how we view documents on the screen. The default is a normal view. If we want to see horizontal and vertical rulers bars and our footnotes and endnotes as they appear on the page, then we select the Page Layout view. If we are in Normal View, then we will not see the footnotes or endnotes as they appear in our document. We would have to go to Print Preview.
2. We can also select which toolbars we want active.
3. Selecting header and footer allows us to insert a header and/or footer line in our document.
The Insert Menu
1. We have discussed using the Insert Menu to insert Breaks such as line breaks, page numbers, footnotes, and pictures. Recall that we can start a page numbering at whatever number we want. We don't have to start with page number one.
2. Recall that when we delete or insert footnotes all subsequent footnotes are automatically renumbered. We can delete a footnote or endnote by moving to the reference number that is in our document and hitting the DEL key.
3. We can also change the appearance of the footnote and not affect the text in our document.
4. We can use Picture to insert ClipArt or Watermarks into our document. To delete a graphic object from your document click inside the object until the sizing handles appear around it, then hit the delete key.
The Format Menu
1. Font - we can change the typeface, typestyle, typesize, character spacing and animation of our text.
2. Paragraph - we can change indentation, line spacing, and other various options appropriate for paragraphs. There is also an option under Pagination on the Line and Page Breaks tab called Keep Lines Together which will move an entire paragraph to the next page if it does not fit at the bottom of the precedding page.
3. Borders and Shadings - we can place borders around our text and create a color shading for our text.
4. Tabs - we can create tab settings for use when inputting text. Hitting the Tab key will advance the insertion point to the next set tab stop.
5. Drop cap - formats a letter, word, or selected text with a large initial or dropped capital letter.
6. Change Case - we can change the case of a word or phrase that is selected.
The Tools Menu
1. We have talked about the Spelling and Grammar Checker and Thesaurus. Recall that a Thesaurus contains synonyms and antonyms of words and short phrases.
The Window Menu
1. We can get a list of all currently open documents. The document actually displayed will have a check by it.
The Help Menu
1. We can get a great deal of online help, including tutorials and a searchable index.

The Toolbars in Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word includes various toolbars which contain shortcut icons or buttons for various commands and operations.
The Standard Toolbar contains icons such as the Print icon, the Print Preview icon, a show/hide paragraph mark icon, a button that allows us to change the magnification of the text on the screen, buttons to open or save a document, and other icons.
The Formatting Toolbar contains options which allow us to change the typeface, font size, appearance (boldface, italics, and underscore), text alignment, and various other formatting features.
The Standard and Formatting Toolbars are displayed by default when we create a new Microsoft Word document.
We have seen other toolbars such as the Picture Toolbar and the Drawing Toolbar. We do not have to have any of the toolbars displayed. Under the View Menu there is an option called Toolbars which contains a list of all toolbars that Microsoft Word offers and an option which allows us to customize the toolbars to our liking.

Special Features of Microsoft Word

We have discussed various special features that Microsoft Word possesses.
A wizard is a feature of Microsoft Word that makes a multi-step process easier by asking a series of questions, and then creating a customized document called a template based on your answers.
Microsoft Word comes with several wizards for creating various documents like memos, publications, letters and forms, resumes, and web pages. To use one of these wizards go to the File Menu and select New... and then select the appropriate tab.
We don't modify the wizards that come with Microsoft Word, but we are free to do what we like to templates by their very nature.
Recall that Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is the technology that allows us to create compound documents containing objects from multiple applications.
Headers and Footers may be inserted into your document. Recall that a header is a line or lines of text or other objects that appears on the top of each page (or all pages but the first) in a document, and a footer is a line or lines of text or other objects that appears on the bottom of each page (or all pages but the first) in a document. A document can contain both headers and footers.