Word Essentials

When most people begin working with Microsoft Word, they open a new document and just start typing. Although that strategy has the advantage of producing immediate results, it doesn’t allow you to take advantage of the power of Word. In fact, many of the most useful features of Word aren’t immediately obvious, a failing we try to remedy in this chapter. Give us a few minutes of your attention and we’ll explain why Word has so many different views, how to navigate effectively through even the longest documents, what you should know about printing, and how to enter and edit text using some of Word’s most effective (and occasionally well-hidden) techniques.

Starting with Word 2007, the Ribbon, enhanced status bar, and zoom slider control all work harder so you can work less. We show you how to customize the Word interface so you can be more effective, and in the Extra Credit section at the end of this chapter we introduce a useful tool that can protect you from accidentally publishing personal or private information in a Word file.