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Overview
This bestselling guide to Microsoft Word is the first and last word on Word 2013
It's a whole new Word, so jump right into this book and learn how to make the most of it. Bestselling For Dummies author Dan Gookin puts his usual fun and friendly candor back to work to show you how to navigate the new features of Word 2013. Completely in tune with the needs of the beginning user, Gookin explains how to use Word 2013 quickly and efficiently so that you can spend more time working on
your projects and less time trying to figure it all out.
- Walks you through the capabilities of Word 2013 without weighing you down with unnecessary technical jargon
- Deciphers the user interface and shows you how to take advantage of the file formats
- Covers editing documents, working with text, using grammar and spelling tools, formatting, adding images and other design elements, and more
Get the word on the latest Word with Word 2013 For Dummies!
If you are using Microsoft Word 2013, this Cheat Sheet will help you use it more efficiently with a list of handy keyboard shortcuts, special-character shortcuts, and some tips and tricks.Getting to know the Word 2013 screenBehold Word 2013’s screen. You see the promise of a new document and a bewildering number of buttons and gizmos.
About The Author
Dan Gookin wrote the original For Dummies book, DOS For Dummies, in 1991 and launched a phenomenon. Since then, his list of bestsellers continues to grow. There are more than 12 million copies of his books in print, translated into 32 languages. Dan welcomes visitors at his website, www.wambooli.com.
Articles From The Book
3 results
Word
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Word's been around for about 35 years now. Even back in the old days, few people ever used these key combinations. Yet they all still exist in Word 2013, ever ready and able to carry out your will.
Some of them are handy to know, single-key commands that can get things done quickly in Word. Some of them are handy to know only when you’ve accidentally pressed them and wonder, “What the heck?
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Word 2013 doesn’t let you alter the basic groups it places on the Ribbon, but you can add your own custom groups to existing tabs and create your own tabs. This activity is recommended only for experienced Word users, or for those just desperate to customize the way Word looks. Here’s how that operation works:Click the File tab.
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Many Word 2013 users can use symbols that don’t appear on their keyboards. If you prefer a shortcut for a symbol you frequently use, you can assign a keyboard shortcut key for symbols such as the right arrow. Here's how:On the Insert tab, click the Symbol button.Word displays a pop-up with a number of frequently used symbols.
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The most common thing to mail merge in Word 2013 is the standard, annoying form letter. However annoying it is, knowing how to create one will come in handy. Here’s how you start that journey:Start a new, blank document.You can do it from the ribbon or just press Ctrl+N. Either way, you get the same screen.
On the Mailings tab, from the Start Mail Merge group, choose Start Mail Merge→Letters.
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Behold Word 2013's screen. You see the promise of a new document and a bewildering number of buttons and gizmos. Here are the important points to remember:
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It's possible to add a graphical image to a mailing label in Word 2013. You can do it to a sheet of labels that are identical or when you’re merging names from an address list.
When you’re creating a sheet of identical labels, simply type and format the label that you want in the table's first cell, such as your own name and address to be used for return address labels.
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What can you do to get comments into your text? The best way: You use the comment feature in Word 2013. To shove a comment into your document, follow these steps:
Select the chunk of text on which you want to comment.
Be specific. Although you may be tempted to select the entire document, only the first few words of a longer chunk are necessary.
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Word 2013 allows you the option of a cover page to make your document more presentable. The sneakiest and quickest way to slap down a cover page is to use Word’s Cover Page command. Here's how it works:Click the Insert tab.The Pages group will appear.
In the Pages group, click the Cover Page button.If you don’t see the Pages group or Cover Page button, click the Pages button and then click the Cover Page icon.
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When finer papers are held up to the light, they show a watermark — an image embedded into the paper. Word 2013 lets you fake a watermark by inserting faint text or graphics behind every page in your document. Here's how to get that impressive look using Word 2013:
Click the Design tab.
In the Page Background group, click the Watermark button.
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Word 2013 can not only automatically number your pages, but it also lets you place the page number just about anywhere on the page and in a variety of fun and interesting formats. Start your page numbering odyssey thus:Click the Insert tab.This will give you options for your page.
In the Header & Footer area, click the Page Number command button.
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You probably have people who want to know the current date and time, or maybe you simply want to insert the date or time, or both, into your Word 2013 document. With few exceptions, time travelers are the only ones who bother asking for the current year. But you may need it in your document for record-keeping purposes.
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The Font group in Word 2013 lists some of the most common character formats. They’re applied in addition to the font. In fact, they enhance the font. Use them as you see fit:
To make text bold, press Ctrl+B or click the Bold command button.
Use bold to make text stand out on a page — for titles and captions or when you're uncontrollably angry.
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There's a fuzzy button in the Home tab’s Font group in Word 2013. It looks like a big A, and it’s one of those menu button items that dot the Ribbon like ticks on the back of an Alabama hound dog. Regardless, what it does is let you apply some interesting and nonstandard effects to your document’s text.
To apply the text effects, simply choose one from the Text Effects menu.
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Style shortcut keys make formatting in Word 2013 even better because pressing Alt+Shift+T to apply the TextBody style is often faster than messing with the Style Gallery or the various task panes.
To give your style a shortcut key, follow these steps:Create a Modified Style.Your goal is to display the Modify Style dialog box for your soon-to-be shortcut-key-blessed style.
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The AutoCorrect feature in Word 2013 can build common fractions for you. Actually, it doesn't build them as much as it pulls them from a set of existing fraction "characters." Sadly, Word has only a few of these fraction characters. When you need your own, specific fraction, such as 3/64, you can create it this way:
Press Ctrl+Shift+= (the equal sign).
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One type of right-tab stop list you can create in Word 2013 is the 2-column right stop list. This type is commonly found in dramatic programs but works just as well for a variety of purposes. Here's how to concoct such a thing:Start out with a blank line of text.Position the insertion pointer at the blank line.
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A handy feature in Word 2013 is the ability to build an index. An index is a reference list like a table of contents, but with more detail and at the opposite end of the document. Also, the index is organized by topic or keyword, as opposed to the organizational description a table of contents offers.
Creating an index in Word is a two-step process.
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The fastest, easiest way to cancel a print job in Word 2013 is to rush up to the printer and touch the Cancel button. Sometimes, the button has a red X icon on it. Touch that button, and the printer will stop — maybe not at once, but the button cancels the document from printing.
A more awkward way to cancel a print job is to use Windows.
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Nothing makes a Word 2013 document title nice and crisp like having it sit squat in the center of a page. The title is centered left to right, which you can do by selecting Center alignment for the title’s paragraph. But how about centering the title top to bottom?
If you’re thinking about whacking the Enter key 17 times in a row to center a title top to bottom, stop!
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The most basic attribute of text in Word 2013 is its typeface, or font. The font sets up the way your text looks — its overall text style. Although deciding on a proper font may be agonizing (and, indeed, many graphic artists are paid well to choose just the right font), the task of selecting a font in Word is quite easy.
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Word 2013 has an internal library stocked with zillions of words, all spelled correctly. Every time you type a word, it’s checked against that dictionary. When the word isn’t found, it’s marked as suspect in your document. The mark is a red zigzag underline.
My advice: Keep typing. Don’t let the “red zigzag of a failed elementary education” perturb you.
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You have the original copy of your Word 2013 document — the stuff you wrote. You also have the copy that Barbara, the vixen from the legal department, has worked on for a week or so. Both documents have different names, of course. Your job is to compare them to see exactly what’s been changed from the original.
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All document-proofing options and settings are kept in one place, buried deep in Word 2013. Before you can make changes, you have to get to the proofing options. Here's how to get there:
Click the File tab.
Choose Options from the File tab’s menu.
In the Word Options window, choose Proofing from the left side.
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Word 2013 actually gives you a paintbrush — one that steals text and paragraph formatting, by borrowing it from one place in your document and splashing it down in another. It’s the Format Painter, and here’s how it’s used:Place the insertion pointer in the middle of the text that has the formatting you want to copy.
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After a block of text is marked in Word 2013, you can copy it into another part of your document to duplicate the text. The original block remains untouched by this operation. Follow these steps to copy a block of text from one place to another:Mark the block.There is more than one way to do this. Mark the text however you feel comfortable.
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To create borders around your text in Word 2013, you can use either the Borders command button from the ribbon or you can summon the Borders and Shadings dialogue box.
How to use the Borders command button
Word 2013 places its basic text decoration doodlings on the Borders command button menu. It’s found in the Home tab's Paragraph group.
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Word 2013 lets you spew out custom email messages by using the E-Mail option for mail merge. This option works only when you configure the Microsoft Outlook program on your computer. After that’s done, you start the main document for your e-mail merge by obeying these steps:Press Ctrl+N to create a fresh document.
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As you type your document, Word 2013 adds new, blank pages for you to write on. These pages are appended to the end of the document, the extra pages keep appearing so that no text is lost and nothing falls off the edge. That's all normal and good.
For those times when you need to stick a blank page in the middle of a document, or when you want to start your text at the top of a new page, Word provides two interesting commands.
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Outlines in Word 2013 have several levels. Beneath topics are subtopics, and those subtopics can have their own subtopics. For example, your main topic may be Things I Regret, and the subtopics would be what those things actually are.
To create a subtopic, simply type at the main topic level, but don't press Enter when you're done.
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In Word 2013, tables have an advantage over organizing information with rows and columns, courtesy of the Tab key. That’s because a table is considered its own document element, one that Word manipulates as a unit.
In a table, you can easily add, remove, or reorganize the rows and columns. You can format a table all at once, using predefined formatting options.
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Word 2013 gives you the option of creating a basic tabbed list. A common use for the left tab stop is to create a simple two-column list. The following steps describe how to set up this type of list:
On a new line, press Tab.
Use the tab key on the keyboard.
Type the item for the first column.
This item should be short — two or three words, max.
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To create a stack of mail merge envelopes in Word 2013, which is far more classy and professional than using peel-and-stick mailing labels, and a timesaver, abide by the following steps:Start a new document. On the Mailings tab, choose Start Mail Merge→Envelopes.The Envelope Options dialog box appears. You can set the envelope size and font options, if necessary.
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The Master Document feature in Word 2013 allows you to collect and coordinate individual documents — called subdocuments — and cobble them all into one, large document. When you have a master document, you can assign continuous page numbers to your work, apply headers and footers throughout the entire project, and take advantage of Word’s Table of Contents, Index, and other list-generating features.
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Unless you already have recipient lists built and saved in Word 2013, you need to make one from scratch. This process involves setting up the list, removing unneeded fields that Word annoyingly preselects for you, adding the fields you truly need, and finally, filling in the list. It’s quite involved, so follow along closely.
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Word 2013 gives you the option of creating a style from scratch if you need something that is not offered in the default styles. If you’re up to it, heed these steps to conjure a style from nothingness:In the Styles task pane, click the New Style button.If you don’t see the Styles task pane, press Ctrl+Shift+Alt+S.
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One helpful example of how computers can save you time is to let Word 2013 create a table of contents (TOC) from your document. No, there’s no need to manually type a TOC. As long as you use the built-in heading styles, Word can slap down a custom TOC in your document as easily as following these steps:Create a separate page for the TOC and click the mouse to place the insertion pointer on the new, blank page.
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Rome wasn’t built in a day, but building your own document template in Word 2013 can take even less time. That’s because you can easily create a template based on a document you’ve already slaved over. So when the formatting and styles and all that junk have already been created, making a template is a snap — and it doesn’t require a large army or navy or any ambitious politicians.
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Tabs in Word 2013 can also be used to form an item list where the paragraph text remains in the rightmost column. It combines both paragraph- and tab-formatting skills. Follow these steps to create a list:
On a new line, type the item for the first column.
The shorter, the better.
Press Tab.
This will tab over to the next column.
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Word 2013 gives you a quick way to print an envelope with every letter you create. You may have done this before and created a completely separate document for the envelope. When you follow these steps, the envelope will be embedded at the beginning of the document, so when you print the letter, you print the envelope too.
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Occasionally in Word 2013, the spell checker bumps into a word it doesn't recognize and incorrectly flags it as misspelled, such as your last name or perhaps your city. Word dutifully casts doubt on the word, by underlining it with the notorious red zigzag. Yes, this case is one of those where the computer is wrong.
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The header or footer you set is the same for every page in your Word 2013 document. Or is it? For example, you can use different headers for its odd and even pages. Or maybe you have a document where you don’t want the header on the first page.
Odd and even headers and footers
To spice up your document with a different header and footer on the odd (left) and even (right) pages, obey these steps:
Create a header or footer.
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A feature introduced in Word 2002 and available in Word 2013 is click-and-type. In a blank document, you can use it to click the mouse anywhere on the page and type information at that spot. Bam!
It’s difficult to see any value in click-and-type, especially when it's easier just to learn basic formatting. But click-and-type may bother you when you see any of its specialized mouse pointers displayed; thus:
That's click-and-type in action, with the mouse pointer trying to indicate the paragraph format to be applied when you click the mouse.
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Normally Word 2013 uses the cartoon bubble as your clue that a comment exists in the text. When you point the mouse at text, it becomes highlighted, showing where the comment is. But when you’re really curious about what was commented on and who said what, you can reveal all the comments at once. Follow these steps:
Click the Review tab.
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One of the date fields you can use in Word 2013 is PrintDate. This field reflects the current date (and time, if you like) that a document is printed. This may be a good idea for business documents, or any other purpose where you need the date recorded on the document. Here’s how it’s done:Summon the Field dialog box by selecting Field from the Quick Parts drop-down in the Text group of the Insert tab.
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The advanced, creepy features lie on the tab in Word 2013 that's normally hidden from view: the Developer tab. Most users won’t need to use the options that are displayed on the Developers tab and it can be annoying if you don’t need it. However, you can find it if you do need it. To display the Developer tab, obey these steps:Click the File tab to display the File screen.
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Here a line. There a line. Everywhere a line-line. Among its many features, Word 2013 gives you options to play with lines, borders and boxes. There are various ways to apply lines, borders, and boxes to your text.
How to put a line above a heading
A common use of lines in Word is to apply a line to a heading in your document.
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Prepare your images before you slap them down in Word 2013. That’s because Word lets you work with and edit graphics, even though it’s not a graphics program. Still, Word offers some touch-up features for dealing with a document’s illustrations.
Use Word’s Undo command, Ctrl+Z, to undo any image editing boo-boos.
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If you’re like most, you sometimes have One Of Those Days and forget to add a record or field to your recipient list in Word 2013. When that happens, you need to edit the recipient list. Such torture involves these steps:On the Mailing tab, in the Start Mail Merge group, click the Edit Recipient List button.The button isn’t available unless you’re working on a main document and it has been associated with a recipient list.
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Unless you tell 2013 Word otherwise, it displays all topics in your outline, from top to bottom — everything. You may need to expand and contract your topics to see a grand overview of only the main topics or only Level 2 topics. Displaying all topics is fine for the details, but you may need a different view.
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You can search for certain items in a Word 2013 document that you just cannot type at the keyboard. This doesn’t mean nasty things — this isn't a censorship issue. Instead, this refers to items such as tabs, enter keys (paragraphs), page breaks, graphics, and other, similar non-typeable things.
Find special characters
To hunt down untypeable characters in your document, click the Special button in the Advanced Find dialog box.
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Finding text is the domain of the Editing group in Word 2013, found on the far right end of the Home tab on Word's Ribbon interface. The Editing command button group may appear in its full glory, or, when Word’s window is too narrow, simply as an Editing button. When it's a button, you must click the button first to see the palette of commands.
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You can use the Replace command in Word 2013 to replace text and apply formatting or to replace one type of formatting with another. Suppose that you want to replace all instances of underlined text with italic. By replacing underline with italic, you're searching for one text format and replacing it with another; you're not even searching for text.
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A main document and a handy recipient list in Word 2013are two separate things. To make them work together, and make the mail merge happen, you must mix the two. This process involves inserting fields from the recipient list into the main document. Here’s how it works:Select some ALL CAPS text from a field placeholder in the main document.
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Word 2013 gives you lots of options for formatting your text. Word allows for very basic functions all the way up to advanced functions. You can change the format of your text in two ways:
Choose a text-formatting command first, and then type the text. All the text you type is formatted as chosen.
Type the text first, and then select the text as a block and apply the formatting.
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Page formatting in Word 2013 starts with the size of the page, which is normally the size of the paper you’re printing on. Page and paper are similar concepts, but in Word you can do more with a page than just print on it.
How to set page size
When Word starts out, it assumes that your document is destined to be printed on a sheet of paper and that the paper will be the standard size for your region, such as 8–1/2-by-11 inches in the United States and the A4 size just about everywhere else.
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Among the many formatting options that Word 2013 offers are ways to format entire paragraphs, instead of just single words or sentences. You can format a paragraph in several ways:
With the insertion pointer in a paragraph, use a formatting command to format that paragraph. This trick works because all paragraph-formatting commands affect the paragraph in which the insertion pointer is blinking.
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The easiest way to make up a new style in Word 2013 is to use all your formatting skills and power to format a single paragraph just the way you like. Then create the style based on that formatted paragraph. Here’s how:Type and format a paragraph of text.Choose the paragraph formatting and also any text formatting, such as size and font.
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Word 2013comes with a digital highlighter pen that lets you mark up and colorize the text in your document without damaging your computer monitor. To highlight your text, abide by these steps:Click the Home tab.You will see several font options.
Click the Text Highlight button in the Font group.The mouse pointer changes to a — but the point is that Word is now in Highlighting mode.
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Word 2013 allows you to indent every line of a paragraph, by moving the paragraph's left margin over to the right a notch, just like Mr. Bunny: Hop, hop, hop. This technique is popular for typing block quotes or nested paragraphs.
To indent a paragraph one tab stop from the left, click the Increase Indent command button in the Home tab's Paragraph group or press Ctrl+M.
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Word 2013 allows you to set certain formats, like indenting the first line of a paragraph. To have Word automatically indent the first line of every paragraph you type, heed these steps:Conjure up the Paragraph dialog box (by clicking the Paragraph Settings down arrow at the lower right of the Paragraph group on the Home tab).
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You can place graphics into your Word 2013 document in three different ways. Each of these ways to place an image features various options, which help you create the look you want. The options are found by clicking the image to select it and then clicking the Layout Options button, as shown in the margin.
Inline: The graphic works like a large, single character sitting in the middle of your text.
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Some graphics in Word 2013 are used as text decorations, other graphics are extensions of your text. To best reference such an image, you should add a caption. The caption’s text can identify the image with boring text (“Figure 1”), or it can explain what’s in the image (“John touches the plant that he swore to us was not poison sumac”).
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Clip art is a collection of images in Word 2013, both line art and pictures, that you’re free to use in your documents. Inserting a clip art image works much like inserting a graphics image, except that the clip art is organized. You can search for an image by name or category. Here's how it goes:On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click the Online Pictures button.
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The most common type of graphical goober you stick into a Word 2013 document is a picture. Assuming that the image exists and you know where to find it on your computer, you can follow these steps to plop the image into your document:Click the mouse wherever you want to place the image in your document, or at an approximate spot.
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Word 2013 comes with a library of common shapes ready to insert into your document. Graphics professionals call the shapes line art. You can call forth line art into your document by following these steps:
Choose a predefined shape from the Shapes button menu, found in the Illustrations group on the Insert tab.
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A text box is a graphical element in Word 2013 that contains — hold your breath— text. The text can be used as a decorative element (as a pull quote) to highlight a passage of text on the page, or it can be simply an information box or an aside, such as those that litter the pages of USA Today.
The primary purpose of the text box is to prevent your document from becoming what graphic designers refer to as the dreaded Great Wall of Text.
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In Word 2013, styles dwell on the Home tab, in the aptly named Styles group. What you see is the Style Gallery, which can be expanded into a full menu of style choices.
The dialog box launcher, in the lower-right corner of the Styles group, is used to quickly display a task pane full of styles. To dismiss the Styles task pane, click the X (Close) button in its upper-right corner.
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When you really, really don’t want anyone messing with your Word 2013 document, you can apply some protection. The key is to lock your document. Several levels of protection are available, but you start the journey by following these steps:On the File screen, choose Info and click the Protect Document button.Of the several choices, these options are recommended:
Mark As Final: The document is flagged as final, which means that editing is disabled.
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Whenever you have more than two items to describe in your Word 2013 document, consider creating a list. To draw attention to such a list, to call it out from the rest of your text, you can try hanging indents, make the first few words bold, or take advantage of the Word bullets and line numbering features.
How to make a bulleted list
In typesetting, a bullet is merely a graphical element, such as a ball or a dot, used to highlight items in a list.
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Lots of people who are curious about macros in Word 2013. A macro is a teensy program you can write in Word that automates things, such as repetitive keystrokes or tasks. It’s actually quite handy — but not simple to create.
You start making a macro by recording it. Here are some steps:On the View tab, choose Macros→Record Macro and give the macro a name in the Record Macro dialog box.
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A right tab in Word 2013 seems useless until you've seen one in action. You use it to right-justify text at a tab stop, allowing a single line of text to contain both right- and left-justified text. You've probably seen such a thing but never thought you could create it easily.
To create a centered, 2-column list with a right tab stop and a left tab stop, obey these steps:
Start out on a blank line, the line you want to format.
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You can block text. But what can you do with those marked blocks of text? Why, plenty of things can be done to manipulate the text! You can apply a format to all text in the block, move a block, search through a block, proof a block, print a block, and even delete a block.
How to move a block
To move a block of text, you select the text and then cut and paste.
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The Cover Page command in Word 2013 is quick, but you may not like any of the design options. In this case, you can create your own cover page, spiffing it up with formatting commands, graphics, artwork, and other goodies.
Here are the general steps to take:Before writing the cover page, position the toothpick cursor at the tippy-top of the document.
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Traditional Word users may be really disappointed that pressing the Ctrl+F key in Word 2013 summons the Navigation pane. They want Ctrl+F to bring forth the traditional Find dialog box, the one that’s now called the Advanced Find dialog box. To make that happen, follow these steps:Click the File tab and choose Options from the list of commands on the left side of the screen.
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Word 2013 offers you many ways to mark text as a block in your document. You can do this from any device, tablet, laptop, and so on, and with virtually every accessory.
Use the keyboard to select text
The secret to using the keyboard to select text is the Shift key. By holding down the Shift key, you can use the standard keyboard commands that move the insertion pointer to select blocks of text.
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There are many merging options available in Word 2013. One of these options is to merge to e-mail when necessary. To send out multiple e-mail messages, abide by these steps:Choose Finish & Merge→Send Email Messages.The Merge to Email dialog box appears.
Choose the e-mail address field from the To drop-down list.
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Word 2013 offers many options for merging documents. But, the most common destination for merged documents is the printer. Make sure you have checked your document to ensure there are no mistakes or errors before merging with the printer. Once you have done this and you need to merge to the printer, here’s how it works:Choose Finish & Merge→Print Documents.
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Most of the time, you’ll find that your Word 2013 table requires some adjustments, some formatting, or tines and tweaks to get things just right. That’s all possible, using the Table Tools tabs after the table has been created.
How to manipulate a table with the mouse
Here are some tips:
Positioning the mouse on a vertical line in the table's grid changes the mouse pointer to the thing shown in the margin.
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Just as fashion styles change, you may need to change styles in your Word 2013 document. Nothing is wrong with that. In fact, by changing a style, you demonstrate the power of Word: Changing a style once causes all text formatted with that style to be updated. It beats the pants off making that change manually.
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It’s possible in Word 2013 to open one document inside of another. Doing so isn’t as rare as you’d think. For example, you may have your biography, résumé, or curriculum vitae in a file on disk and want to add that information to the end of a letter begging for a job. If so, follow these steps:Position the insertion pointer where you want the other document’s text to appear.
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Word 2013 can magically open and display a host of weird, non-Word documents. This may seem like it wouldn’t work, but it does. So, give it a shot. Here’s how it works:Press the Ctrl+O key combination to summon the Open screen.The Open Screen will appear.
Choose Computer.Or you can choose SkyDrive to hunt down files shared on the Internet.
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When things grow complicated with your document’s graphics in Word 2013, you enter the realm of image organization. Multiple images often require positioning, aligning, arranging, and grouping into a unit. It’s not a complex thing, but rather a timesaver that you can employ.
All commands are found on the Format toolbar, in the Arrange group.
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You can opt to have Word 2013 make a once-over scan for spelling and grammatical errors. This process can take place when you’re done writing, just before printing or publishing your document. It’s kind of like ironing out the wrinkles in a freshly laundered shirt. Here’s how it works:
Click the Review tab on the Ribbon.
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The Style Gallery in Word 2013 appears on the Home tab and is entirely customizable. If you’re going to the trouble of creating your own template with your own styles, why not modify the template so that you can put your styles in the Style Gallery?
Start by purging styles you don’t want in the Gallery:Click the down-pointing arrow to reveal the entire Style Gallery.
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Before you print a document from Word 2013, you will need to make sure that your printer is read for you. Follow these steps to ensure that the printer is ready to print:
Make sure that your printer is plugged in and properly connected to your computer.
Refer to the printer instructions for problems with this.
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Lots of interesting things can be put into your Word 2013 document that you don’t want published. You need to prepare it before you share it. These items include comments, revision marks, hidden text, and other items useful to you or your collaborators, which would mess up a document you share with others. The solution is to use Word’s Check for Issues tool, like this:Ensure that your document is finished, finalized, and saved.
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Before you print a Word 2013 document, preview the look of the final document. Yeah, even though your document is supposed to look the same on the screen as it does on paper, you may still see surprises: missing page numbers, blank pages, screwy headers, and other jaw-dropping blunders, for example.Preview your document on the Print screen.
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You should use the Preview Results command in Word 2013to ensure that your final, merged document looks good and doesn’t require changes before it’s officially merged. Here’s how to work things:
On the Mailings tab, in the Preview Results group, click the Preview Results command button.
The fields in the main document vanish!
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You were probably surprised. You went to print your Word 2013 document and there on the page was your formatted text — and the silly comments. That’s probably not what you wanted.
To control whether a document’s comments appear when printed, follow these steps:Visit the Print screen.The keyboard shortcut is Ctrl+P.
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Printing a Word 2013 document is easy to do. It just takes a quick moment to get everything ready for your print job. Just follow these easy steps to make your digital writing a reality:Save your document.Click the little Save button on the Quick Access Toolbar for a quickie save.
Click the File tab.The file tab’s window will appear.
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Word 2013 gives you many options for what you want your printed document to look like. After you mark a block of text onscreen, you can beg the Print command to print only that block. This allows you to print an isolated section of text if ever the need arises. It’s one of the many advanced options that Word 2013 offers.
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One thing Word 2013 does easily and reliably is print labels. You can print an entire sheet of identical labels to make for easy labeling and less writing. Just follow these steps:Click the Mailings tab.You should see a Create group option.
Click the Labels button (in the Create group).The Envelopes and Labels dialog box appears, with the Labels tab ready for action.
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There may come a time when you don’t want to waste paper for that single page that you need to print. Luckily, Word 2013 gives you the option of printing a single page. Follow these steps to print only one page of your document:Move the insertion pointer so that it’s sitting somewhere on the page you want to print.
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Word 2013 can take a list of names and addresses and print them all, or a selected few, on a sheet of labels. This trick is more of a mail-merge feature than a true label-making ability. Follow these steps:Start a new document in Word and click the Mailings tab.All action in the remaining steps involves command buttons on the Mailings tab.
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For single foreign words, having Word 2013 flag them as misspelled is tolerable. Even if you don’t speak any other languages, you may occasionally desire to spice up your text with foreign words and phrases. For longer expanses of text, you can avoid the spelling errors by changing the text’s language.
For example, if you write: Tengo una caja roja de las lápices, Word goes ape with the red squiggly underlines.
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Computers crash. Users forget to save in a pinch. Or perhaps another type of disaster has befallen your unsaved Word 2013 document. When the planets are properly aligned and the word processing gods are smiling, it’s possible to recover those lost documents, the ones that Word calls drafts. Here’s how:Click the File tab to view the File screen.
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Word 2013 offers so many formatting commands that it's possible for your text to look more like a pile of formatting remnants than anything that’s readable in any human language. Word understands this problem, so it created the Clear Formatting command to let you peel away all formats from your text, just like you peel the skin from a banana:
To blow away formatting from a block of selected text or the text the insertion pointer is on or future text you type, use the Clear Formatting command button in the Font group.
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The ability to erase text in Word 2013 is just as valuable and necessary as the ability to create text. Deleting text is part of writing text, part of thinking and rethinking, and part of self-editing. Writing. Deleting. Rewriting. Redeleting.
Credit the guy who put the eraser on the end of the pencil: It’s a given that human beings make mistakes.
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When you choose the Add to Dictionary command in Word 2013, the given word is placed into the custom dictionary. Recognizing that people may change their minds, Word allows you to edit its custom dictionary, to remove words you may have added accidentally.
To remove unwanted words from the custom dictionary, follow these steps:Click the Word Options button on the File tab’s menu.
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When you want to find something and replace it with something else in Word 2013, you use the Find and Replace command. Suppose that you may want to change all instances of ungulates in your document to ruminants. Here’s how that’s done:On the Home tab, click the Replace command button, found nestled in the Editing group on the far right side of the Ribbon.
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Don’t think that you have to wait until you finish a document in Word 2013 to save it. In fact, you should save almost immediately — as soon as you have a few sentences or paragraphs. Save! Save! Save!
To save a document for the first time, follow these steps:Click the File tab and choose the Save As command.The Save As screen appears.
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Not everyone can read Word 2013 documents. You may need to save in a sharable format. In fact, users of ancient versions of Word might not be able to read the Word documents you create in Word 2013. To ensure that the files are compatible, you can publish your documents in a more compatible or universal file format.
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When you’re selecting more than a single word in Word 2013, the mouse tends to grab text a full word at a time. If you want Word to select text by characters rather than by words, follow these steps:Choose the Options command from the File tab’s menu.The Word Options window will appear.
Choose Advanced from the list on the left side of the Word Options window.
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Here’s the best way to select a chunk of text of any size, especially when that chunk of text is larger than what you can see on the screen at one time:
Click the mouse to set the insertion pointer wherever you want the block to start — the anchor point.
Insert the cursor at the front of the desired text.
Scroll through your document.
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E-mailing your Word 2013 document is a snap! But it’s a little different depending on which email program you are using. If you’re using Microsoft Outlook, it works one way. Other programs work a little differently. First, let’s look at how to send a Word 2012 document in an Outlook email and then we’ll tackle how other programs work.
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You can do only one task in Word 2013 in the Tabs dialog box that you cannot do with the ruler: Set a leader tab stop. What exactly is a leader tab stop? A leader tab stop produces a row of dots where the tab character appears. This trick is the only way to get a tab character to appear in your document, and it’s quite useful.
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Word 2013 lets you add “air” to the space before or after or in the middle of your paragraphs. In the middle of the paragraph, you have line spacing. Before and after the paragraph comes paragraph spacing.
How to set the line spacing
Changing the line spacing inserts extra space between all lines of text in a paragraph.
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Sometimes, the tabs in Word 2013 can be frustrating. When you need for your tab stops to be precise and the ruler is proving unruly, follow these steps to set tabs in the Tab dialog box:Summon the Tabs dialog box by clicking the Paragraph Settings button in the Paragraph group of the Page Layout tab and then clicking the Tabs button.
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Splitting a document in Word 2013 isn’t a part of creating a master document, but it might be, if you mistakenly start out with a humongous document. To split any document into smaller documents, you basically have to cut and paste; no specific Word command splits a document.
Here’s how to split a document:Select half the document — the portion you want to split into a new document.
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We know that the first page of a document is page 1, but Word 2013 doesn't care. It lets you start numbering your document at whichever page number you want. You may need to start with a page number other than 1. If you want to start numbering your document at page 42, you can do so, if you follow these instructions:Click the Insert tab.
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You can stop the multicolumn format and terminate columns in one of several ways in Word 2013. For a newspaper column, the newspaper can go under. For a Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian column, your civilization can collapse. For a column of text, however, Word offers a number of tricks, none of which involves bankruptcy or revolution.
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Comparing documents in Word 2013 after they're edited is the defensive way to locate and review changed text. A more friendly way to do things is simply to direct your editor to activate Word’s revision-tracking feature. That way, changes are noted on the screen as they're made.
Turn on Track Changes by clicking the Review tab and then clicking the Track Changes button.
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The AutoRecover feature in Word 2013 will save your butt someday. What it does is periodically save your document, even when you neglect to. That way, in the event of a computer crash, Word recovers your document from a safety copy that it has secretly made for you. That's a blessing.
Ensure that AutoRecover is activated.
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Outlines in Word 2013 are composed of topics and subtopics. Topics are your main ideas, with subtopics describing the details. You should start your outline by adding the main topics. To do so, just type them out.
You see several topics typed out, each on a line by itself. Each topic, as well as any subtopics, sports a gray circle.
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Choosing the Ignore All command in Word 2013 means that all instances of a given misspelled word or typo are considered correctly spelled in your document. This statement holds true even when you save that document and open it again later. So, if you make a mistake and would rather have the ignored word regarded once more, do this:Choose the Options command from the File tab’s menu.
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Microsoft Word has been around for a long, long time with its newest update in 2013. In 2007, Word changed the file format used for its documents, moving from the older DOC file format to the present DOCX format. Because a lot of people still use older versions of Word, not to mention the abundance of older DOC files out there, it becomes necessary to convert those older documents.
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In Word 2013, what you really want for finding text is the traditional Find dialog box, the one that lived in the neighborhood before the Navigation pane rolled into town.
To unleash the Advanced Find command, obey these steps:Click the Home tab on the Ribbon, if necessary.You need to access the Editing group, which is found on the Home tab.
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Some typos and spelling errors in Word 2013 are never graced by the AutoCorrect red zigzag. That's because Word quickly fixes hundreds of common typos and spelling errors on the fly. The AutoCorrect feature does it, and you have to be quick to see it.
Understand AutoCorrect
There’s nothing to using AutoCorrect; it happens automatically.
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Part of the AutoCorrect function in Word 2013 is a feature named AutoFormat. Whereas AutoCorrect is used to fix primarily typos and common spelling boo-boos, AutoFormat is used to fix formatting fumbles.
AutoFormat controls some minor text formatting as you type. The settings are visible in the AutoFormat dialog box.
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The phrase “carved in stone” refers to text that doesn’t change. But, with fields, what you write in Word 2013 isn’t carved in stone. To liven things up a bit, Word has a way to let you add dynamic (changing) elements to your document. Unlike the text you normally compose, dynamic text changes to reflect a number of factors.
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The difference between a footnote and an endnote in Word 2013 is that one appears on the same page as the reference and the other appears at the end of the document. Content-wise, a footnote contains bonus information, a clarification, or an aside, and an endnote is a reference or citation. That’s just a guess.
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Adding a header or footer to a document brings a smidgen of professionalism to your Word 2013 written creations and helps keep things organized. There’s a difference between a header and a heading, and between a footer and a footnote. Knowing that difference greatly helps you understand the whole header-footer concept.
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Assuming that you use Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail program or contact manager and Word 2013, and assuming that it contains information you want to use in a mail merge, you can follow these steps to create a recipient list:Open your Mail-Merge template. On the Mailings tab, in the Start Mail Merge group, choose Select Recipients→Choose from Outlook Contacts.
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Page formatting commands in Word 2013 usually affect every page in a document: The settings for margins, page orientation, paper size, and other types of formatting apply themselves not to a single page but rather to every dang doodle page, from 1 to N, where N is the mathematical concept best explained as "I don't know how huge this number could be.
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Word 2013 lets you type all 26 letters of the alphabet. With other special characters — plus, numbers 1 through 9 and 0, a smattering of symbols, and punctuation thingies, that’s a lot to type.
Some authors spend their entire lives weaving those characters into a tapestry of text heretofore unseen in literary history.
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A template is a timesaver. It’s a way to create Word 2013 documents that use the same styles and formatting without your having to re-create all that work and effort. Basically, the template saves time.
To use a template, you choose one when you start up a new document. You select a specific template instead of using the blank, new document option.
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Themes apply decorative styles to your Word 2013 document, such as fonts and colors, which gives your written efforts a professionally formatted feel with minimal fuss or talent. It's like having a graphics designer assist you but without having to suffer through her lamentable complaints about how her boyfriend pays no attention to her.
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The center tab is a unique critter with a special purpose: Text placed at a center tab in Word 2013 is centered on a line. Unlike centering a paragraph, only text placed at the center tab stop is centered. This feature is ideal for centering text in a header or footer, which is about the only time you need the center tab stop.
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The decimal tab in Word 2013 is used to line up columns of numbers. Although you can use a right tab to do this job, the decimal tab is a better choice. Rather than right-align text, as the right tab does, the decimal tab aligns numbers by their decimal portion — the period in the number.
Here's how to work with such a beast:
Start a blank line of text.
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The key to pulling off lots of tricks in Word 2013 is to know how to move the insertion pointer to the exact spot you want. The beauty of the word processor is that you can edit any part of your document; you don't always have to work at "the end."
Moving the insertion pointer is important! Scientific studies have shown that merely looking at the computer screen does no good.
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Open is the standard computer command in Word 2013 used to fetch a document that already exists on the computer’s storage system. You use Open to hunt down documents that were previously saved and open them like you’re unwrapping a present. The document is then displayed in Word's window as though it has always been there.
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When you want more control over page formatting in Word 2013, you need the Page Setup Dialog Box and you must flee from the fuzzy beneficence of the Ribbon interface.
To summon the Page Setup dialog box, click the Dialog Box Launcher in the lower-right corner of the Page Setup group on the Page Layout tab. Or you can use the keyboard shortcut: Alt+P, S, P.
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Though Word 2012 isn’t quite as flexible with toolbars, it still allows you to control a few specific parts of the Quick Access Bar. Back in the old days, you could really mess with the way the Word window looked. You could add or remove toolbars, modify toolbars, create your own toolbars, and generally use the word toolbars over and over again until it lost its meaning.
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Paragraph formatting in Word 2013 can be confusing. Two places on the Ribbon are for paragraph formatting, or if you opt instead to use the Paragraph dialog box, your mind may go into shock from the abundance of options. A more graphical, and therefore more fun, way to manipulate a paragraph’s indentation and margins is to use the ruler.
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The Undo command undoes anything you do in Word 2013, which includes formatting text, moving blocks, typing and deleting text, formatting — the whole enchilada. You have two handy ways to unleash the Undo command:
Press Ctrl+Z.
Click the Undo command button on the Quick Access Toolbar.
You can use the Ctrl+Z key combination, but an advantage of the Undo command button is that it sports a drop-down menu that helps you review the past several things you've done, or that can be undone.
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You need not limit your word processor usage to toiling with a single document. You can open multiple documents in Word 2013, you can work on the lot, you can even split a document in a window or open a single document in two or more windows. It’s not impossible. It’s not insane.
How to open several documents at once
It’s not a question of whether Word can work on more than one document at a time.
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As you madly compose your text in Word 2013, fingers energetically jabbing the buttons on the keyboard, you may notice a few things happening on the screen. You might see spots. You might see lines and boxes. You may even see lightning! All are side effects of typing in Word. They’re completely normal.
The status bar
The reason it's the status bar is that it can show you the status of your document, updating information as you type.
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The Tab key is always used to help build tables or to organize information in a tabular way. Pressing the Tab key in Word 2013 inserts a tab character into your document. The tab character works like a wide space character, where its size is determined by a predefined location marked across a page. That location is called the tab stop.
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You can use information from the Outlook program, also a part of Microsoft Office, to work as a recipient list for a mail merge in Word. This trick works best, however, when you’re in a computer environment that features Microsoft Exchange Server. Otherwise, making Outlook and Word cooperate with each other can be a frustrating endeavor.
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At the paragraph level, AutoFormat in Word 2013 helps you quickly handle some otherwise irksome formatting issues. Some folks like this feature, some despise it. That’s the way it goes with most things technological.
Numbered lists
Anytime you start a paragraph with a number, Word assumes (through AutoFormat) that you need all your paragraphs numbered.
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Microsoft Word 2013's Ribbon presents tabs that you can click to reveal groups of helpful icons. These icons represent command buttons, input boxes, and menus.
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Some key combinations insert characters into your Word 2013 document. If you find these characters useful in your day-to-day typing duties, consider using their keyboard shortcuts:
Symbol Name
Symbol
Keys to Press
Euro
€
Ctrl+Alt+E
Trademark
™
Ctrl+Alt+T
Copyright
©
Ctrl+Alt+C
Registered
®
Ctrl+Alt+R
En-dash
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If you are using Microsoft Word 2013, this Cheat Sheet will help you use it more efficiently with a list of handy keyboard shortcuts, special-character shortcuts, and some tips and tricks.Getting to know the Word 2013 screenBehold Word 2013’s screen. You see the promise of a new document and a bewildering number of buttons and gizmos.
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Whether you use a phone's virtual keyboard or the real thing on your computer, word processing remains a keyboard-bound activity. The following tables show how to access Microsoft Word 2013's commands and functions.
Cursor-Movement
Pressing This Key
Moves the Insertion Pointer . . .
↑
Up one line of text
↓
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In Word 2013, text pours into a table on a cell-by-cell basis. You can type a word, sentence, or even a paragraph. All that text stays in the cell, though the cell changes size to accommodate larger quantities of text.
You can format a table’s cell just like any paragraph in Word, even adding margins and tabs.