Formatting Documents, Working with Pictures

Intermediate Microsoft Word:

Formatting Documents, Working with Pictures

Welcome to the Intermediate Microsoft Word class from Williamsburg Regional Library. To take this course, you should already have taken Basic Word or have equivalent experience with computers and basic text entry with Microsoft Word. This class builds on that foundation, adding skills such as cut, copy, and paste; formatting the document’s margins and spacing; and adding and positioning pictures. Off we go!

Please start Microsoft Word on your computer. On the first line of the new document, type your first initial and last name, then save the document. Go ahead and use the default name and location to save the file.

OBJECTIVE 1: Cut, copy, and paste text within a document or from another source.

In the first class, we created a document from scratch, but depending on how you use Word, you might reformatexisting text as often as you do original data entry. To move text around, you must learn how to cut, copy, and paste.

For our first exercise, we’re going to find text from another source, on the internet, and then copy and paste it into Word. We’ll use that block as the text we’ll format for the rest of the class.

Step 1: Select the Text

1. Open an Internet Explorer window, by clicking the blue “e” icon on the taskbar.
2. Go to WRL’s Blogging for a Good Book site:
3. With your instructor’s guidance, go to the newest entry in the blog and click on the title of the item.
4. Highlight or select the text of this entry (not the title, pictures, or other content on the web page) from this post, using the techniques you learned in Basic Word (Reminder: start at one end of the text, then click, hold down, and drag over the text until you reach the other end, then let off the mouse button.) When the text is highlighted it will have a gray or blue background.

Step 2: Copy the Text onto the Clipboard

1. Once text is selected, there are three ways to copy it. The first is to go to the “Edit” menu in Internet Explorer and then from the options that drop down, click Copy;

OR: Right click on the selected text. In the dialog box that appears, click Copy;

OR: Hold down the Ctrl key and then press C (for “copy”).

1. No matter which method is used, nothing visual will happen, but if you’ve done the task correctly, a copy of the text will be placed on the computer’s clipboard.

Step 3: Paste the Text into your Word Document

1. Return to Word by clicking the button for it on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
2. Place the cursor one line below where you typed your initial and name, then…
3. On the Home tab on the ribbon, click the Paste button (it’s on the far left of the ribbon and looks like a clipboard);

OR, right-click on the point in the document where you want to paste the text and from the box that appears, choose Paste;

OR, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and press the V key.

1. No matter which of the three methods is chosen, the copied text should paste into the document. If it doesn’t, go back to Step 1 and repeat the process until you have success. Get the instructor’s help if you need it. Don’t repeat the “paste” step multiple times, or you’ll add multiples copies of the same text into the document.

Cutting and Pasting to Move Text within a Document

Moving text within a document is similar to copying, but unless you want two copies of the text in the document, this time you will “cut” the text instead of copying it. Again, there are three steps:

Step 1: Select the Text to Move

1. For our exercise, move the first paragraph of text from the blog post from the top to the bottom of the Word document. You will need to select that first paragraph to do so.
2. Use either the mouse or keyboard as you did in Step 1 for copying to select the text of the first paragraph.

Step 2: Cut the Selected Text into the Clipboard

1. Click the Cut button (it’s the little scissors icon just right of the Paste button);

OR,right click the selected text, then in the box that appears, click Cut;

OR, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and press X to cut.

1. Unlike copying, when text is cut, it actually disappears from the document. That’s OK, it means that you’ve successfully copied it into the clipboard, and can now paste it elsewhere.

Step 3: Paste the Text into a New Location in the Document

1. Click the document at the spot where the text will be moved to place the cursor there. In this case, your cursor should go on a new line at the end of the document, so put the cursor at the end of the document and hit “Enter” to start a new line.
2. Choose one of the methodsin Step 3C above to paste the text back into the new location.

Copying and Pasting within a Document

If you want the same piece of text multiple times in a document, useCopy instead of Cut. Steps 1 and 3 are the same as above to highlight and paste the text. What differs is step 2:

1. Click the Copy button (it’s the icon with two overlapping documents, just below the cut icon on the Ribbon);

OR, right click the selected text, then in the box that appears, click Copy;

OR, hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and press the C key.

That’s all it takes to cut, copy, and paste, but it’s an important skill, so take a minute to practice a few more times, bringing other text from the internet into your document or moving other text within the document.

OBJECTIVE 2: Understand how to format multiple aspects of text at once with Styles or the Format Painter.

There are two methods for changing multiple aspects of text—for instance, font, font size, and color—in one step to preset styles or to the style of existing text in the document.

Method One: Styles

“Styles” are located on the right side of the Home ribbon in Word. In addition to the style buttons you can see, the small arrow buttons to the right of these allow access to other styles.

A style setting includes a font, its size, the font color, additions like bold or italics, the alignment of the text, and the spacing to be used with it. You can highlight a block of text, then click one of these style buttons and all of these elements will be changed at once.

To edit a style, right click its button, then from the options that appear, click Modify… In the box that pops up, make the desired changes to the style, then click OK. Different sets of styles, color schemes, and default fonts can also be set. To choose one of these, click the Change Styles button, then adjust the Style Set, Colors, or Fonts.

Method Two: Format Painter

If apply formatting in one part of a document to other spots in the document quickly, use the Format Painter tool. It’s on the Home Tab with the Clipboard tools and looks like a small paintbrush.

To use the Format Painter, put the cursor in the section that has the formatting that you want to replicate. Click the Format Painter button once. Then select the section where you wish to replicate the formatting, and it will change.

To replicate formatting in multiple places in your document, again place the cursor in the section with the format to copy. Double click the Format Painter button instead of just clicking. Then, one at a time, select all of the sections that you want to change to that formatting style. Finish by clicking the Format Painter button once more to turn it off.

OBJECTIVE 3: Adjust line spacing and space before or after paragraphs.

The button to adjust line spacing is on the Home Tab, almost in the middle of the screen. It has blue up and down arrows, four lines, and a drop down arrow.

Select a section of the document or place the cursor in the paragraph where you would like to adjust spacing, and then click theline spacing button. In the drop-down box that appears, current line spacing for the paragraph or section has a yellow checkmark next to it. Single spacing is 1.0, double spacing 2.0 and so on.

To change the line spacing, click the desired number. The options to add or remove extra spacing before or after paragraphs (adjusting the amount of white space in the document) are at the bottom of the list. Further options for controlling line spacing are available if you select Line Spacing Options… from the drop-down list.

To change the line spacing for the entire document at once, use Ctrl+A to select all, then click the line spacing button and make the desired adjustments.

OBJECTIVE 4: Adjust indentation on a single line, on a paragraph, or on the entire document.

An indentation on a single line is not truly an indentation, but just a tab stop. To indent a single line, place the cursor at the front of the line and press the Tab key on the keyboard. It will indent ½ inch each time you press Tab.

There are three places to adjust indentation on paragraphs or pages in Word. Directly above theline spacing button on the Home Tab, there are buttons to Decrease Indent or Increase Indent. Place the cursor in a paragraph and click Increase Indent to add a half-inch indentation on the entire paragraph for each click. Click Decrease Indent to reduce indentation by the same half inch.

To change multiple paragraphs, select all of the text you wish to be more or less indented before clicking the buttons. If the section has bullets or numbers, the change of indentation may also change the bullet or number style. Each bulleted or numbered line is treated as a paragraph, so to change multiple bulleted or numbered lines, select them all first.

For more detailed control of indent spacing or to indent the right side of a paragraph as well as the left, there are two options. The first is near the middle of the Page Layout Tab on the Ribbon.Put the cursor in the desired paragraph, or select multiple paragraphs, then click the up or down arrows next to the Left: or Right:Indent boxes to adjust the indent for the selected paragraphs by a tenth of an inch with each click.

Finally, there are also sliding markers on the horizontal ruler which can be dragged to change the indent on either the line where the cursor is currently placed or on multiple lines if those lines are selected. Drag the appropriate marker (as labeled in the image below) to the desired location on the ruler to make the adjustment.

OBJECTIVE 5: Place border lines around part or all of a document.

The tool to place borders around a paragraph in Word is on the Home Tab to the right of the line spacing button and left of the styles buttons.To use it, select text to put a border around, then click the down arrow right of the button. A list of options will drop. Many border effects can be created, but in most cases, choose Outside Borders, which places a box around selected text, or All Borders, which creates gridlines around text in the selected area.

After placing the border, click the down arrow on the button to the left of the border button, which shows a little pouring bucket. From the color grid that drops down, select a color to put a colored background inside of the border (but know that this fill color can obscure the text if the text color and the fill color don’t contrast enough).

Select the same block of text again, and click No Borderin the drop down list to turn the border lines back off.For more elaborate border and shading options, click the down arrow on the border button, then choose the last option in the list Borders and Shading…

To create borders around the entire page instead of just paragraphs, and colored filled backgrounds within those borders, go to the Page Layout Tab. Page Background options are near the middle of the Ribbon.

Click Page Borders and in the resulting dialog box choose the style of line, the line’s color, and its width. Or chooseborder art, which places a ring of pictures around the page. Make the desired adjustments, and then click OK.

The Page Color button makes the background of the page a particular color, but again, remember that if this doesn’t contrast with the text color enough, the text may be obscured or even invisible. If you’re going to print the document, colored backgrounds will use a lot of ink.

Finally, you can also put a pale Watermark across the page background with that button, such as “Confidential” or “Do Not Copy.”

OBJECTIVE 6: Adjust the margins, page orientation, or page size.

Buttons for this objective are on the Page Layout Tab of the Ribbon in the Page Setup section.

Default margins in Word are one inch on all four sides. To change these, click the Margins button and in the box that drops down, choose one of the predefined margin sets, or to define your own margins, go to the bottom of the list and click Custom Margins… Set the desired margins in the box that pops up, and then click OK. Most printers cannot print closer than half an inch (.5” in Word settings) from the edge of the page, so this should be the minimum margin setting.

To change the margins in only a portion of the document, select the section to change, click Margins, then Custom Margins…, set the changes in the resulting box, and then change the setting in the Apply to… box from Whole Document to Selected Text. Finish by clicking OK.

The default page Orientation is Portrait (as in these handouts). To design for a page turned on its side, click Orientation and switch to Landscape.

Default page size is 8.5” by 11”. To switch paper sizes, click the Size button, then click one of the common paper or envelope sizes listed or choose More Sizes… and make adjustments in the window that appears to find a less common size or to define your own size. Any of these changes to page size will create corresponding changes in the page on the screen and the length of the rulers around the edge of the document.

OBJECTIVE 7: Insert page breaks at a desired location.

Word automatically ends one page and drops down to the next when the typed text passes the bottom margin of the page. Instead, a page break can be set at any point in the document by positioning the cursor at that point, then holding down the Ctrl key and pressing Enter. This can also be done on the Insert Tab with the button near the far left labeled Page Break. Next to this is a button to insert a formatted Cover Pageat the beginning of the document.

On the Page Layout Tab in the Page Setup section, to the right of buttons for changing Orientation and Size, there is also a button for Breaks. This gives access to further options with setting page breaks, such as skipping a page, setting a manual column break, or designating a section break without changing pages. Beneath the Breaks button are buttons to put Line Numbers on every line of the document or to allow Hyphenation of words at the end of lines.

OBJECTIVE 8: Format part of a document in columns.

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Part or all of a document can be formatted into columns, as in the print in this section. This option is also found on the Page Layout Tab of the Ribbon in the Page Setupsection, just beneath or to the right of the button for Size. You can either type the text first and then format it into columns or set the number of columns at the top of the section before typing content.

Click Columns and then click the desired number of columns. By default, Word creates columns of equal width with equal spacing between them. To change this, click Columns,select More Columns, adjust width and spacing in the resulting window and click OK. By default, columns are equal length: in a two-column section, half the lines would be in the first column, and the next half in the second. To create unequal columns, put the cursor where you want the column to break, and then click Breaks and under Page Breaks choose Column.

While you can create any number of columns on a page, at some point some phrases or words in those columns will be wider than the columns themselves, which results in awkward wrapping of text that is hard to read. If this happens, reduce the number of columns to make the document look good again.