1. Word Processing: Uses, Advantages, and How To Do It!
TCOS Standards 22 & 23
Note: How-to examples in this presentation use MS Word; other word processors will generally have similar menus and options.
Created by: Jeff Hartz, Thompson High School

2. Uses and Advantages of Word Processing
Compared to Typing or Hand-Writing, Word Processing has lots of advantages:
You can revise and change your document as often as you like.
It is easy to change document formatting options like margins, fonts, and colors.
You can save files to disks or to a network to transport or distribute them.

3. Word Processor Operations
Your word processor has a list of menus and buttons at the top of its document window. The menus, like file, edit, and view give you lists of options when you click on them. Generally, the buttons are shortcuts to specific items that appear on the menus.

4. Opening & Creating Documents
To start a new document, click file-new or click the blank sheet of paper button.
To open a document you’ve previously saved, click file-open then use the window that appears to browse to the location of your document. The opening folder button will also work.

5. Saving Documents
To save a document, click file-save or click the disk button. The first time you click save, a window will open to allow you to choose a filename and a place to save to. If you click save again, your document will automatically save to the same place. Use save-as if you need to save a second copy of your document to a different location – it will bring up the save window again.

6. Printing Documents
To print your document, choose file-print or use the printer button. If there are printing options you want to change, use file-print to bring up the print window. The printer button will bypass this print window.
If you want to see what your document will look like when printed, click file-print preview.

7. The Print Window
When you choose file-print, the print window will appear. Here you can choose to print some pages or all of your document, choose a different printer, or control printer properties.

8. Formatting Your Document
To make general formatting changes to your entire document, chose file-page setup. This will allow you to make changes to margins and change your paper orientation (landscape or portrait).

9. The Page Setup Window
If you want to change your document’s orientation or use a different paper size, click the paper size tab.
The page setup window allows you to easily change margins here.

10. Formatting Elements of Your Document
Clicking the format menu gives you a number of options for formatting elements of your document. You can change font type and size, indent or change the line spacing in paragraphs, insert bulleted lists, or divide your page into columns. Again, several of the toolbar buttons allow you to perform the same functions.

11. Headers and Footers
To insert a header or footer, click view-header and footer. This will bring up a header and footer toolbar as well as a box where you can type your header or footer text.

12. Cutting & Pasting Text
To take advantage of the ability word processors give you to easily move and edit text, you must first highlight (click and drag your cursor over) text to select it.

13. Cutting & Pasting Text
Once you have selected text, use the edit menu to cut (remove and copy), copy (copy, but also leave in original), or paste (insert copied or cut item into a new location) the text. You can simply hit the delete key on your keyboard to remove selected text. You can also drag selected text to a new location in your document.
Many people use the keyboard shortcuts to copy, cut, and paste. The edit menu shows you what keystrokes to use!

14. Spellcheck & Thesaurus
To use the spellchecker, click tools-spelling and grammar. You can check your whole document or first select (highlight) a section and check just that section.
To use the thesaurus, first select (highlight) the word you want to look up, then click tools – language – thesaurus. A thesaurus window will open with synonyms and antonyms for your word.

15. Find and Replace
Use the find and replace functions to find and possibly replace words throughout your document. For example, if you are typing a paper to Mr. Smith and learn that his name is actually Mr. Smyth, you might have multiple changes in spelling to make. Find and replace keeps you from having to read through and find each “Smith.” Click edit-find or edit-replace to use this function.

16. Find and Replace
The find and replace window looks like this. For our problem on the last slide, we’d enter “Smith” in the find what box, then enter “Smyth” in the replace with box. Clicking replace all would make the change in every place Smith occurred, or we could click replace and go through the changes one-by-one.

17. More To Learn!
If you can use the word processing functions in this presentation, you are well on your way to mastering word processing. Word processors can do lots more, for you, though. Don’t be afraid to use the program’s help function to find answers to the “How do I do this?” questions that you encounter as you work.