Chapter 3. ORGANISING PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES USING MICROSOFT OFFICE

3.1.1. The concept of a word processor and its principal functions

Definition

A word processor a piece of application software designed to create text documents.

A typical representative of this group is the MS Word application¹. The main functions of word processors are:

• editing text strings;

• ability to use various fonts;

• copying and moving parts of the text from one place to another, or from one document to another;

• context search and replacing parts of the text;

• setting custom line spacing;

• automatic word wrap to a new line;

• automatic page numbering;

• processing and numbering of footnotes;

• paragraph aligning;

• drawing tables and creating diagrams;

• spellchecking and synonym search;

• creating tables of contents and indexes;

• printing the required number of copies of prepared text;

• inserting images or tables;

• inserting audio files;

• creating hyperlinks;

• previewing the document before printing it;

• working with several documents at the same time;

¹ The textbook focuses on Microsoft Office 2010 as the principal version. Since the users of this software package work use both Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Office 2010 versions, which are slightly different, in each case the differences will be pointed out. If not specifically mentioned how to perform certain actions in Microsoft Office 2007, they are considered identical for both versions of the software.

• creating and using templates;

• create bulleted, numbered, and multi-level lists;

• inserting comments.

Launching MS Word

To start MS Word, select All Programs from the Windows Start menu and then select Microsoft Word 2010 (or Microsoft Word 2007). In case MS Word is not present in the All Programs menu, click Microsoft Office, then click on Microsoft Word 2010 command in its submenu.