1. Start typing your new document

Tutorial

This tutorial will take you through the basic steps in creating a new document and entering the first text in the sample document.

Step 1: Start by opening Microsoft Word

If you want to work through the steps on this page, it might be useful to print out this page. Alternatively, arrange the windows on your screen so that you can see this page and Word at the same time.

Open up Word. How you do that may depend on your machine. Click the big blue W logo on the Office Shortcut bar in the top right hand corner of the screen. If you can't see a blue W logo there, try clicking the Start button. If you don't see a blue W Word logo there, choose Programs. Click the blue W Word logo to start Word.

Step 2: Create a new document

In Word, on the main menu choose File > New.

If you have Word 2002 or Word 2003, you'll see a pane on the right of the screen. Click Blank Document. In earlier versions of Word you won't see the task pane. Instead, you see a dialog box. Click on Blank Document, then click OK.

Professional users wouldn't use Blank Document. In Word 2003, they would click "On my computer" and choose an appropriate template. In Word 2002, they would click "General Templates" and choose an appropriate template. In older versions of Word, they would choose an appropriate template from the dialog box. But for now, let's just click Blank Document.

You can now see your new, empty document on the screen.

You will notice three important things about your new document:

• there may be a rectangle drawn in a dotted line on the page
• there's a flashing cursor at the top of the page
• the top highlighted bar says "Document1" or something similar.

Step 3: Type within the dotted lines

If you don't see a rectangle drawn with dotted lines, do this. On the main menu, choose Tools > Options. Click the View tab. Now, tick the box that says "Text boundaries" then click OK. And, choose View > Print Layout or View > Page Layout (the terminology changed in recent versions of Word).

You can see dotted lines that show you the text boundaries. When you type, you'll type within these boundaries. They are showing you the margins of your page.

Step 4: Type where you see the cursor or Insertion Point

At the top left of the text boundary area, you see a flashing cursor. It's called the Insertion Point, because if you type, your typing gets inserted at the Insertion Point. (Just to make the point, move your mouse around. You'll see that the Insertion Point didn't move.)

We're going to create the sample document in Word, to demonstrate the basic concepts. So, type the first line of text so that it looks something like the following (you'll have to imagine that the cursor is flashing).

If you make a typing mistake, use the Backspace key to reverse what you've done, and try again. (You'll learn about niftier ways to edit mistakes later.)

Step 5: Save your document

In the far top left corner of the window, the highlighted bar next to the Word logo says Document1 (or some such). This is because you haven't yet saved your document and given it a more useful name.

Even though you haven't typed much yet, it's a good idea to save your document now, and save it again every few minutes, so you don't lose your work.

So on the main menu, choose File > Save. The Save As box will open, where you can give your document a name. So type a name in the "File Name" box, and click Save.

You can now see your own file name in the top highlighted bar next to the Word logo.

It may not say a lot, but you have created and saved a new document in Word.