"How to Article"

Today I am going to write an article to everyone who is confused or don't really know how to navigate through Microsoft Word. Some people out there are used to the older versions of Microsoft Office and don't want to upgrade to the 2013 version. This may be helpful to the more older generation and hopefully everyone who does come across this article will find it helpful to them and will be able to share this knowledge to someone else. I will first talk about the general use of each program and then get into detail about how to expand the general uses of them.

When you open up Word, the first screen that comes up, is a template choosing where you can choose either a blank document, which is mostly used, or there will be more templates you can choose from such as a cover letter or a resume. You also have easy access to recent saved documents on the left hand size allowing you to open past documents much quicker. So once you choose blank document, usually you will want to save the document, if you are doing something that you want to keep for the future. For saving you can click on the save icon in the upper left hand corner or go into the FILE menu and save that way. 

The first tab I want to talk about is the HOME tab. This is the most used tab in Microsoft Office. Within this tab you can change the font of your paper. Within the font column, this is where you can bold words, make them italic, underline certain words, highlight words and change the color of different words as well, and change the size of the letters to better see what you are writing and allow readers to better read your document as well. Another column is the paragraph and style column where you can position where you want to portray your word document, make bullet lists and number lists, and you can modify the spacing throughout your paper document.

The insert tab is next to the Home tab and this is where you can insert any type of illustrations from shapes to pictures. This tab is where you want to add a table, add ins, videos, links, a header and footer, If you want to get creative with inserting fun and exciting fonts to your words or titles, WordArt is located here and will give you exciting options to format your titles. The Design tab is to portray your theme in the Word document to whoever is reading this. There are many different styles you can choose to transform your document to make it look more presentable and not as boring to the readers. Along with formatting your document to a specific theme, you can also change the color, font, paragraph spacing, and the effects of the entire document from this tab.

If you want to adjust how your document/page is viewed you want to spend some time in the page layout tab. You can setup your page so the margins are big or small, the landscape of the document is in portrait or landscape form, you can adjust the size of the entire document, and you can eliminate page breaks. If you copy and paste a picture into your document, an important step is to change the format of that picture and by positioning or changing the format of the picture so it goes behind your text or around it. The References tab is important for very large documents that require a table of contents or footnotes/endnotes. I'm a college student and I just used footnotes for a research paper I had for another class. Citing sources is also important so you don't plagiarize and copy someone esle's work.

I haven't used the Mailings tab but if you need to create a mailing list and create recipients or addresses, this is the tab you can go to because it will help you with the layout of your mailing objective. When you are done writing a paper or done with an assignment in Word, the review tab is an important tab you want to go back to because this will help you with your spelling and grammar and you could also change the language as well. If you are revising someone else's work, you can add comments without interfering with the person's document layout.

After you are all done creating a document and writing or creating a full page or whatever your goal is, you can view your document in the View tab and make sure you are satisfied with the layout. You can view the Print Layout to see how it will be printed or the Web Layout to see how it will portray on the web. You can also change the view of the entire page or go to the lower right hand corner and zoom in and out with the scale. Saving the document is very easy as I said in the beginning of this artilce. You can press the icon or go into the file menu and save or save as to name the document a specific name so it will be easy to find later on. The File menu gives you a list of different opportunities to go from. You can create and open a new blank document or different template, open a new document from your recently saved documents, print the current open document, or share/export the document onto the web or email. The features I like about Microsoft Word 2013 is when you do open the file menu, everything can be show in the screen right next to the side panel. This allows very easy access and allows you to open recent documents immediately rather than going through the document folder and finding your way to where you saved it last. I hope that by reading this article, you are now aware of the new features Microsoft Word 2013 offers and you are able to navigate and create new documents all by yourself or even share this information with your friends!
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