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Application: Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word is a highly featured word processing application – and some would argue too highly featured. It is easy to get lost in the range of options available and at times its operations will even seem quite opaque to the end user - even an experienced user. This summary begins with outlining the basic operations, some of the key features and common problems that arise. It is written primarily from the standpoint Word 2002 (also known as Word v10.0), but notes throughout differences between this version of Word and previous versions to Word 97.

The basic group of commands are displayed as drop-down menus underneath the status bar – File, Edit, View, Insert, Format, Tools, Table, Window and Help. To open a new Word document, according to whatever version of Word is being used, go to File – New. To open an existing document go to File – Open. Word can open a reasonably wide range of documents, including all previous versions of MS Word, Rich Text Format, Lotus 1-2-3 files, MS Excel Spreadsheets, MS-DOS text, MS Address Books, MS Word for Macintosh, Windows Write, Word Perfect versions 5 and 6 and MS Works files and Webpages. Word however assumes that you’re working with Word files and to open files of a different format one must select what type of file one is trying to extract from the Open Window. If you are unsure what file type you’re trying to open it often can be best just to select ‘All files’.

The same applies when saving files. When one saves a file (File –> Save), Word will assume that you want to save the file in the version of Word that you’re using. This is not always the case, as you may want to send the file to people who aren’t using Word or for that matter, the version of Word that you are using. The decision of what file type you save as requires some thinking. If it is going to be distributed around the Ministry for example using the local area network, one must save the file according the oldest version of Word that is being used, in this case Word97. One should also look at their document and determine whether the formatting of the text is essential to the content. If it is not, then it is best to save the document as a text file. This is particularly important if sending the document via webmail. Plain text is much more bandwidth efficient than MS Word files.

When composing a Word document the choice of Toolbars used can be of great assistance (View –> Toolbars). In most cases Standard and Formatting are the only two required, and use of the former itself is questionable. All the Standard toolbar provides is a range of icons that replace the keystrokes for simple file features (such as new document, open, save, print, print preview, cut, copy and paste etc). It is usually better to use the drop-down menus or the shortcut keystrokes in these instances. These are both quicker to use and are better practise. In contrast, the Formatting toolbar provides a range of accessible text and paragraph formatting tools, such as font type, style and size, paragraph alignment, line spacing, numbering and bullets and paragraph indentation. Other toolbars, such as Drawing, Pictures and Tables and Borders are of marginal utility and should only be turned on if the document being composed uses these a great deal.

The choice of file default options (Tools –> Options) that are applied when Word is opened also requires consideration as these are often no end of frustration. Enabling autosave (every 10 or 15 minutes) is essential, particularly given the sudden power outages that the Ministry encounters. Other options are a matter of taste. Some people prefer to have the automatic spellchecker on with replacements as one types – others find this “feature” annoying, along with the usual assumption that the user is composing a document in that peculiar dialect with interesting spelling known as "U.S. English". Disabling the drag and drop text editing feature is a good idea too, especially if one is using a sensitive mouse. Another option that’s worth including is expanding the recent files list the maximum (in Word 2002 this is 9). Finally, when working with computers that are part of the Ministry’s local area network it is highly recommended that the default file location is set to the user’s folder on the server. Not only does this provide much greater file security than what is provided on a user’s desktop system (especially if you’re using Windows98, which effectively has no security at all).

Another set of options that are a source of frustration and that should be set are the default format options (Format –> Autoformat). It is strongly recommended that everything in of the Autoformat option is disabled, or at a minimum the Autoformat replacements - that is, the replacement of straight quotes with so-called "smart" quotes, the conversion of ordinals to superscript, the conversion of hyphens to dashes, the insertion of special characters, the replacement of assumed typing errors and the conversion of website and network addresses to hyperlinks. Note also that the Autoformat assumes that days of the week as capitalized - which is neither true for Tetun or Portuguese. In summary, not only are some of the Autoformat characters suggested incompatible with accepted international standards in the computer world, disabling the automatic inclusion of these features allows you to include them when you want to - rather than the decision being made for you.

This said, many of the formatting features are very useful and assist a great deal in producing an advanced-looking document. One feature that is particularly useful as being both intuitive and quick to use are the toolbars (View -> Toolbars). Of the long range of Toolbars presented, the most useful is the Formatting toolbar, which allows setting the style, size, colour and type of fonts, line spacing, numbers and bullets, indentation of selected text or paragraphs. Of the others, they are really only useful if the document concentrates on the specialist tasks that they are designed for. Even the Standard toolbar which includes a range of icons for opening files, saving, printing, copying and forth is not recommended - it is much more efficient to learn the quickkeys from the drop down menu (e.g., alt-f and s or cntrl+s) rather than clicking on the icon resembling a floppy disk. Likewise, when selecting text for formatting it is usually quicker to use the shift key with the cursor, pageup, pagedown, home and end rather than using the mouse.

Other formatting features that can be implemented to improve the professional appearance of a document include page numbers (Insert -> Page Numbers), page headers and footers (View -> Header and Footer), which can be established for all pages, can differentiate between the first and subequent pages, can be created for odd and even pages and even for different parts of a document. Insertion of references (Insert - References), such as footnotes, endnotes, cross-references, index and tables is also a relatively easy task, with multiple ranges created by starting a new section (Insert - Break). In some cases, the insertion of pictures (Insert -> Picture) is necessary, however caution is expressed. The addition of a graphics file may cause your document size to increase by an extraordinary amount, especially if the resolution of the graphic is high. In some circumstances (e.g., you want to copy the file to a floppy disk) you may have to delete the graphics altogether or change their resolution in an image editing file. Note that the size and other characteristics of the graphic can be changed by clicking on the right-mouse button when the graphic is selected. However, changing the size of the graphic relative to the document will make no change to the actual size of the file.

Other formatting options available in Word bring the Application almost to the level of a desktop publishing system. Apart from the insertion and manipulation of graphics, Word also allows multiple columns (Format -> Columns), the insertion of text boxes (Insert -> Text Box), an array of paragraph and text formatting (Format -> Paragraph, Format -> Font, Format -> Text Direction, Format -> Borders and Shading). Whilst some of these options are childishly enticing, such as shimmering and flashing text animations, one must always be aware that the person who you send these to may not have the same capacity to read them as you have had in producing them. These features, combined with use of section breaks (Insert - Break) can produce newspaper, or at the very least newsletter documents.

The inclusion of tables in a document, which is often necessary especially with the sort of work that the Ministry conducts, also often confuses users. In general, the easiest way to make a table is to first type out the data with each cell separated by a comma. Mentally this system is the best as using tabs for example, distracts the user into concerns of formatting. After typing out the data, then convert the text to table (Table -> Convert -> Text to Table) and the table will be created. Editing the table with the mouse can be frustrating as it requires a significant degree of precision. Fortunately the menu provides selection options (Table -> Insert, Delete, Select) for rows, columns and cells.

One other task which requires a little bit of explanation that is fairly common in an office environment is the production of mailing lists or form letters (Tools -> Letters and Mailings). In order to produce a mailing list you need two documents. The first is the list of people that you are going to send the material to sort in the manner that Word can use (using comma separation, just like a table, works fine). This is called the datasource. Second is the document that you want to merge the information with. By adding the appropriate fields from the mailmerge from the datasource to the main document, a third document - which combines the merge fields from the datasource with the main document - can be created, or (not recommended) sent directly to the printer. The new mail merge wizard for Windows 2002 actually seems to make the process more complex and less intuitive.

Three minor, yet important application utilities in Word must also be commented on and should be used prior to printing. The first is editing through using find and replace (Edit -> Replace), which has a good range of options up to and including special characters, such as line breaks, tab markers and the like which is often invaluable when converting lists between different file formats. The second is the thesaurus, whose use is obvious enough and the third is the spelling and grammar checker. Here one also finds the option for setting the language used in either the entire document or just a selection.

Finally, there are some options that one should be aware of during the printing process. Firstly, one must view their document in print preview (File -> Print Preview). This will show you what the document will look like when it is sent with the printer with the current options you have selected. It is good practise to do this with every document you have prior to printing. It will save you a lot of time and paper.

If you find that there are changes that you want to make to your document from the print preview (such as margins), you may find that these changes can be implemented through the page setup (File -> Page Setup), which includes the margins, orientation, paper size and source. Once all of this is completed printing (File -> Print) can commence.