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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
58.5 KB Your First Document - Solution.docx
58.2 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.

OR

Click File Save As.

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 Let's go ahead and start your first letter.
  • 00:07 In this case, I have collapsed my ribbons.
  • 00:09 The reason I did that is 'cause I'd like you see more of the paper
  • 00:12 than all the tools at the top.
  • 00:14 So, that was simply a double-click on one of the ribbon tabs.
  • 00:18 Every letter generally starts with the date.
  • 00:20 It happens to be November when I'm typing this, so
  • 00:22 as I type the fourth letter of November, notice the tool tip that pops out above.
  • 00:27 It's trying to save me time and typing, I might not know how to spell it, so
  • 00:30 what I'll have to do is to hit Enter as it says in the tool tip,
  • 00:33 press Enter to insert, there we go.
  • 00:35 But I want the rest of the day, as soon as I hit my spacebar, look what happens,
  • 00:39 it's offering me the rest of the date.
  • 00:41 It's assuming I want to put in today's date and I do, so I'm gonna accept that,
  • 00:45 and be happy about it, and hit Enter again.
  • 00:48 Well, I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 00:50 hit Enter a couple of times to put some space between the date and
  • 00:53 the salutation or the greeting, and I'll go ahead and enter a very proper one.
  • 00:58 Hit Enter to move my insertion point down to the next line.
  • 01:01 And I'd like to say November is a good time of year.
  • 01:04 Well, as I typing Nove for November, I'll hit Enter to accept it,
  • 01:09 but now, I'm gonna hit spacebar, and it wants me to put the date in there again.
  • 01:14 You can ignore those and just keep typing.
  • 01:18 Yes, I want to help you with the tool tips, but if you want to ignore it and
  • 01:21 just keep typing, that is fine as well.
  • 01:23 All right, I do need some placeholder text in here, so
  • 01:26 I'm gonna use an old school cheat called a random formula.
  • 01:30 And I'm just gonna put in three paragraphs of three sentences.
  • 01:34 So =rand(3,3), as soon as I hit Enter,
  • 01:39 this is simply what we call placeholder text.
  • 01:42 So you don't have to type a bunch of text to practice, there we go.
  • 01:45 All right, so I've got a nice little letter with three paragraphs, and
  • 01:49 now it's time to end the letter with our complimentary closing, and
  • 01:54 that is generally the word sincerely.
  • 01:56 So, I'm gonna go ahead and type it wrong.
  • 01:59 Okay, I just made a typo.
  • 02:01 And I'm going to press comma and spacebar, and look what happened.
  • 02:04 A red, squiggle underline, lit up under sincerely.
  • 02:08 Well, I made a typo.
  • 02:10 Well, it caught that for me, so
  • 02:11 the quickest way to fix it is simply to right-click on top of it.
  • 02:15 So I'm moving my I-beam, or my mouse, over the top of the word sincerely,
  • 02:19 pressing my right-click button on my mouse.
  • 02:22 And notice a dropdown list, it's giving me options.
  • 02:24 First of all, spelling.
  • 02:25 See this little abc over here with the red squiggle?
  • 02:28 That's exactly what the match is.
  • 02:29 So we know that's where I want to stay.
  • 02:31 We have Sincerely, sincerely, we can add it to the dictionary or ignore it.
  • 02:35 Maybe I have an unusual last name.
  • 02:37 My last name is always getting these red squiggle underlines.
  • 02:41 Well, add your last name to the dictionary, and
  • 02:43 it'll stop thinking it's a misspelling, or ignore all of them.
  • 02:46 Either way, I can choose the capital one or the lowercase.
  • 02:50 It doesn't matter, but please notice on the right-hand side, we have an arrow.
  • 02:54 Let me click the arrow.
  • 02:55 We can have the computer read the word to us,
  • 02:58 maybe we don't know how to pronounce it.
  • 03:00 So you could hit Read Aloud, we could change all of them,
  • 03:02 maybe there's a bunch of misspellings.
  • 03:04 I spelled it wrong multiple times, we can add it to the autocorrect, so it never
  • 03:09 tells us again, it just fixes it from here on out and never tells us it's wrong.
  • 03:12 Or we could look at all of the autocorrect options.
  • 03:14 Right now, I am going to go ahead and click this, Sincerely to choose it.
  • 03:18 There we go.
  • 03:19 I'll hit Enter a couple of times and type Your Customer.
  • 03:23 Sincerely, Your Customer.
  • 03:24 Now our letter is complete.
  • 03:26 The last thing we have to do with a brand new document, is we have to save it.
  • 03:29 So right up here at the top, on our Quick Access Toolbar,
  • 03:33 we have the symbol of Save, and when we float our mouse there, it says Ctrl+S.
  • 03:37 So I have an option, I can click the button or press Ctrl+S on my keyboard.
  • 03:41 I'll go ahead and just click that button, and
  • 03:44 I'm going to choose where I want to save it, and I'll say This PC.
  • 03:49 It's going to save in the Documents file and I'm going to call it, let's see,
  • 03:53 Customer Inquiry, there we go, and I'll go head and hit Save.
  • 03:57 The one thing you would notice when you come back to the document is a title bar
  • 04:01 analysis Customer Inquiry.
  • 04:03 So success, your letter is written, you have saved it, just print it,
  • 04:06 put it in an envelope and put a stamp on it, and you are done.

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