Microsoft Word Tutorial
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This Microsoft word tutorial is part of our learning time management skills series.  After reading this tutorial you should be able to write a simple word document and format it correctly.

Microsoft word allows you to create a document that you can then distribute to friends and family, and work colleagues.  The documents can contain both text and graphics.  Word makes it easy for you to combine the two things side by side.

To enable you to follow along with the tutorial, I’ve created a simple word document which you can download from this Microsoft Word Tutorial link.  This document is the final version of the document that we create together during this tutorial.

Starting The Tutorial

To start the tutorial, create a Microsoft Word document by opening up Microsoft Word.  You should now have an empty word document in front of you.  The document we’re going to prepare today will be for a fictitious company which sells toys.

For each toy that the company sells they create a proposal document.  This document contains a heading, which is the name of the toy, and a number of sub paragraphs which explain the costs and the risks associated with it.

Highlight Text

Our toy is going to be called Buzzle.  So the first thing that we want to do, is to add Buzzle as a title.  We simply type the world Buzzle into the document.  Next we highlight the word Buzzle.  You can highlight a word in two ways.

The first method is to double click on the word which makes it become highlighted.

An alternative way to highlight a word is to place your mouse cursor at the start of the word, and then hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse cursor across the word.

Apply Formatting

Now you have the word highlighted you can apply formatting to it.  It is possible to format the word in several ways.  We are going to use styles.  These are available by using the menus in the top left hand corner of the screen.  This is shown in the image below.

To enable you to see the word Buzzle I have moved it into the centre of the screen.  To move it to the centre of the screen I simply highlighted Buzzle and clicked the centre button.  I’ve added an arrow pointing to the centre button on the above image.

To apply formatting you simply click on the style formatting button indicated and then click the appropriate style.  Click "Heading 1" and check that the word Buzzle has changed.

Task Pane

You can change the look and feel of each of the heading types by using the task pane.  You can view the "Task pane" by clicking view and then selecting "task pane".  This will bring up a window pane on the right hand side of the Word document.

The task pane allows you to adjust many features of Microsoft word documents.  If you click on the arrow beside “new document” you will see various options.  Select the "styles and formatting" option.

To adjust the properties of "Heading 1" you simply move the cursor over "Heading 1" and an arrow will appear which you then click on.  Next click on the modify option, a new box titled Modify style will appear.

To help make this Microsoft word tutorial easy to follow I’ve highlighted these options in the image shown above.

The modified style box gives you the option to adjust the size of the font, the font type face, and many other aspects of the style.  Try playing about with the various options and seeing how they affect the text on the screen.

When you are happy with the look of the word Buzzle simply press the return key and we can move to the next part of the Microsoft word tutorial.

Now your ready to add text explaining what Buzzle is.  Notice that the style has returned to a normal style.  Microsoft word is assuming that you only want the "Heading 1" style applied to the word Buzzle.

Try typing some text into the document.  Next try changing the format of the text.

Pause and Play

It's now worth pausing.  To get the most from this Microsoft word tutorial you should take some time to play about with the things you’ve learned so far.

If at any time, when copying text from this Microsoft word tutorial, you make a mistake simply hit the backspace key on your keyboard to delete the letter or word.  You can also jump between words using your mouse cursor.  Simply highlight the position you wish to move to and click the left mouse button.

I’ve typed:

“Buzzle is a new toy that runs across your desktop buzzing.  It looks like a bee and makes a similar noise.”

More Formatting Options

I have decided that I want to put extra highlighting on the word Buzzle.  I want to change the word to look bold.  I do this by highlighting the word, double clicking, and then clicking the bold icon button.  I could also have chosen the italic button or the underline button or any combination of them.

I am also able to change the colour of the word by clicking on the colour palette button.  In addition to changing individual words you can highlight many words together and change the formatting of all of them at one time.

To help you understand the full benefits of styles I’ve added a second paragraph title.  This time the title is "cost".  I’m going to format the word "cost" with a "Heading 2" format.

I’ve also added a second heading, titled "risks".  Now if you change the formatting for "Heading 2" you will find that the formatting for both “costs” and “risks” changes.

This is the power of using style formatting.  It is the most important lesson from this Microsoft word tutorial.

You can continue using these techniques and quite quickly produce a great looking document.

Before printing the document its worth considering adding a header and a footer.  The header is text at the top of every page and the footer is text that appears at the bottom of every page.

To view the header and the footer click "view" from the menu bar and then select the header and footer option.  This will bring up a special selection bar.  Using this bar you can add items like a page number or a date.  Alternatively you can pick auto text from the selection box or type in your own text.

I hope you enjoyed this Microsoft word tutorial please feel free to contact me with your thoughts at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .