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About this lesson

Learn how to enter text and save your first document.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Your First Document.docx
63.2 KB Your First Document - Solution.docx
54 KB

Quick reference

Your First Document

Enter text for your first document and save to your computer.

When to use

The objective here is to type words into a document in order to prepare for formatting in the next lesson. Saving a document to your computer allows you to access your work when you need it.

Instructions

  1. Type the current date and press enter when the tooltip appears.
  2. Press enter 3 more times to place the insertion point at the start of the Greeting line.
  3. Type a Greeting line
  4. Press enter 2 times
  5. Type the code: =rand(3,3)  and press ENTER on the keyboard
  6. Press enter 1 more time at the bottom of the text.
  7. Type a Closing line, “Sincerely,”
  8. Press enter 3 times after the closing line
  9. Type a signature line
     
  10.  Note: If a red line appears under a word, it represents a misspelling.
    1. Right click the word with the red underline
    2. Read the list and left click to choose the word offered that is the correct spelling
      OR Add to Dictionary if it is a word you will use often, like your name, that is not in the dictionary.

To Save a document:

Click the Save or Save As button  on the Quick Access bar

OR

Click FILE  SAVE

Choose the location on your computer that you would like to save the document, e.g. Desktop or Documents folder.

The first time you save a document you can choose Save or Save As.

The next time you save the same document, you can choose Save to save your changes under its current name, or Save As to rename it and save it as a different file.

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  • 00:04 Hello, and welcome to your first document.
  • 00:07 You are going to create and save a document in this lesson.
  • 00:10 So, when you first open up Microsoft Word and
  • 00:13 click on blank document you have a nice blank piece of paper on your screen.
  • 00:18 And right over here we have a flashing insertion point.
  • 00:20 Now that always tells you where you're about to type, so
  • 00:23 you always wanna make sure you can see that and know where that is.
  • 00:27 We're gonna start this letter by typing in the date.
  • 00:29 It happens to be June when I'm creating this video, so I'll type in the word June,
  • 00:33 and I'll hit my Spacebar.
  • 00:35 And look right above it.
  • 00:36 It has today's date, and then in parentheses, Press Enter to Insert.
  • 00:41 Well I'm going to go ahead and hit Enter on my keyboard, and
  • 00:43 it throws in the entire date which is wonderful, less typing for me.
  • 00:49 I'll hit Enter a couple of times.
  • 00:50 Now what if I wanted to write, My friend June?
  • 00:56 And I hit Spacebar, it offers me the date again.
  • 00:58 All I have to do is ignore it.
  • 01:01 If I continue typing then I will,
  • 01:05 that tool tip will go away, and nothing is affected.
  • 01:09 I'm going to get rid of that.
  • 01:10 I just wanted to show you that if it's offering you a date and
  • 01:14 you don't want it just keep typing.
  • 01:17 Now we'll enter our greeting line also called a salutation, and
  • 01:21 then we're going to put in some text.
  • 01:24 Now I'm gonna show you a little trick in Microsoft Word
  • 01:27 cuz I just wanna put in some random text on my screen.
  • 01:31 So there's a code, oops, called random, rand(3,3).
  • 01:37 So equals rand, three paragraphs with three sentences.
  • 01:40 That's all that means.
  • 01:41 It's a little known code, but it sure is handy
  • 01:44 when you just need some quick typing done that doesn't really affect anything.
  • 01:48 At least we have the text of our letter here, and
  • 01:51 now we'll put in our complementary closing.
  • 01:54 And I'm typing sincerely, but I spelled it wrong.
  • 01:57 And I spelled it wrong on purpose because I want to show you how to fix a typo.
  • 02:02 All you have to do when you see these red underlines, it means spelling error.
  • 02:06 So, if you click right over the top of the word,
  • 02:09 hit your right mouse button, you'll get a drop down list with some options.
  • 02:14 Now it's telling me how to spell the word correctly, and I will choose that.
  • 02:18 But let's just pretend this is your last name, and
  • 02:21 it's always putting a red squiggle underline on your last name.
  • 02:25 Even though it's spelled right, it's not recognized in the dictionary.
  • 02:28 Well here's an option right here that says add to dictionary, and
  • 02:32 then from then on it will never see your last name as a spelling error again.
  • 02:36 So that's a very handy tip.
  • 02:38 And I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 02:39 click the correct spelling that I wanna put in there.
  • 02:41 Awesome. Now I'm gonna hit Enter a couple times,
  • 02:44 and I'm gonna type sign off on this as Your customer.
  • 02:48 All right, now that I'm done typing this letter and
  • 02:51 it looks fine, I'm going to go ahead and save it as.
  • 02:54 Up on my quick access toolbar I have a save button, and I have a save as button.
  • 02:59 Now the first time I save, it's going to ask me to name it regardless of which
  • 03:03 button I press, but the second time after I've saved it and named it,
  • 03:09 I can just hit save or notice the tool tip says Ctrl+S.
  • 03:13 And it won't ask me to name it again cuz I've already named it.
  • 03:16 I'm just saving over the top of the one I already named.
  • 03:19 So since this is the first time, let's go ahead and click save.
  • 03:22 And I'm gonna go ahead and choose a place in my computer to save this.
  • 03:27 And I'm going to go ahead and choose desktop.
  • 03:30 I'm gonna save it to my desktop.
  • 03:33 So, notice in the file name it puts June 30th.
  • 03:36 If you don't type a name over it, it will take the first line
  • 03:40 that it sees in the document and use that as the file name.
  • 03:44 So that's okay.
  • 03:45 I'll go ahead and leave it named June 30th.
  • 03:47 That's fine for me, and I'll go ahead and hit the save button.
  • 03:50 Now one thing you're gonna see change is,
  • 03:53 way up on top of the document this said document one a moment ago.
  • 03:58 Now it has a title of your document on the title bar of the Microsoft Word program.
  • 04:02 That is your confirmation that, yes, what you just did worked.
  • 04:06 It is now saved June 30th.
  • 04:08 Now if there's anything in here I want to get rid of, say like this first paragraph,
  • 04:13 all I have to do is save again or Ctrl+S.
  • 04:17 Nothing's going to happen, but it did absolutely save.
  • 04:23 Okay?
  • 04:24 So, that's how you keep updating your saves on a certain file.
  • 04:28 All right, welcome to Microsoft Word.
  • 04:30 See you in the next video.

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