Locked lesson.
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:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Your First Document.docx58.7 KB Your First Document - Solution.docx
53.9 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
- Type the current date and press enter when the tooltip appears.
- Press enter 3 more times to place the insertion point at the start of the Greeting line.
- Type a Greeting line
- Press enter 2 times
- Type the code: =rand(3,3) and press ENTER on the keyboard
- Press enter 1 more time at the bottom of the text.
- Type a Closing line, “Sincerely,”
- Press enter 3 times after the closing line
- Type a signature line
- Note: If a red line appears under a word, it represents a misspelling.
- Right click the word with the red underline
- 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.
Login to download- 00:04 In this lesson, we're gonna go ahead and create a first document.
- 00:08 In order to have as much screen room as possible for
- 00:10 the video, I'm gonna go ahead and collapse my ribbons.
- 00:13 So that's a double-click on my Home ribbon.
- 00:15 Click, click.
- 00:16 And there we go, more screen room, awesome.
- 00:19 When we first start a letter, it usually begins with the current date, and
- 00:23 it happens to be May when I'm typing this.
- 00:25 So I'll go ahead and start by typing the month.
- 00:27 But as soon as I hit this space bar, please observe what happens.
- 00:30 This is called an Autocomplete, and it's basically offering me the correct date.
- 00:37 And in parentheses it says press ENTER to insert.
- 00:39 So I'll go ahead and hit ENTER, and it fills in the rest.
- 00:42 Now I like that, cuz it does typing for me.
- 00:45 I'll hit Enter one more time, in fact, I'm gonna enter it three more times.
- 00:50 And now we're gonna start with the salutation line.
- 00:52 Now the salutation is also called the greeting.
- 00:55 So we're just gonna type Dear Sirs, and I'll hit Enter again, and
- 00:59 it drops my insertion point again.
- 01:01 Now if I were to type a sentence like, may I have your permission,
- 01:06 okay, when I hit may and a spacebar, look what happens?
- 01:11 The autocomplete comes up again.
- 01:14 Well, I don't wanna use that.
- 01:16 So instead of hitting Enter, which will put the date in there,
- 01:19 I'm just going to continue typing and completely ignore it.
- 01:23 So if an autocomplete is offered to you and you don't want it, just keep typing.
- 01:27 I think I'm gonna backspace, basically erase all that.
- 01:30 I just wanna put in three paragraphs of information,
- 01:34 just basic data that I don't want to have to type it all.
- 01:37 So let me teach you a little trick.
- 01:38 When you just need basic random text there is a formula,
- 01:45 really, it's a formula, =rand(3,3).
- 01:51 Now when I hit Enter, magically,
- 01:53 there are three paragraphs with three sentences, okay.
- 01:57 It's just a great way to throw in some text.
- 02:00 And now at the very bottom of our letter, we'll have what is called a complementary
- 02:04 closing, and generally you're going to type Sincerely.
- 02:07 Well, maybe you accidentally spell it wrong, okay?
- 02:12 Like I just did, I spelled it wrong, and when I hit Enter, as you can see,
- 02:16 it put a red underline, red squiggle underline.
- 02:20 The red underline generally means misspelling and a typo.
- 02:25 The quickest way to fix that is to simply, over the top of the word hit your right
- 02:30 mouse button, and off to the left you can see it gives me the correct spelling now,
- 02:34 and I choose that one.
- 02:35 When I click it, it will replace the misspelled word with the correct one.
- 02:39 But I wanna draw your attention to one more spot.
- 02:42 This is the Add to Dictionary.
- 02:44 So let's just say you have an unusual last name, and
- 02:47 it always gives you a red squiggle line under your last name.
- 02:51 Well, one last time, hit your right mouse button and simply Add to Dictionary
- 02:56 your last name, and it will never mark it as misspelled again, kind of nice.
- 03:00 In this case, I am gonna go ahead and just click on Sincerely, and
- 03:03 you will see that it automatically switches it out to the correct spelling.
- 03:08 And now I'll just hit Enter a couple times, and type Your Customer.
- 03:14 And now it's time to save our document.
- 03:17 So I can go ahead and click the Save button,
- 03:20 which happens to be on my Quick Access toolbar.
- 03:23 Notice that when I float my mouse there, it gives me an option to press Control+S,
- 03:28 which is a keyboard combination, or I could double-click my Home ribbon,
- 03:31 and I'm not even seeing a Save button up there at all.
- 03:35 So I am gonna have to hit the Save on my Quick Access bar.
- 03:39 So I'll go ahead and click on that.
- 03:41 And now it asks you, where would you like to save it.
- 03:43 First of all, right over here it says Enter File Name, and
- 03:46 I'm just going to type a customer inquiry.
- 03:50 I'll just call it that, and
- 03:52 I can hit Save, or I can choose a different place to save it.
- 03:56 It allows me to save into My Documents, or I could browse to a different place.
- 04:00 It's up to you where you save it, it doesn't matter as long.
- 04:03 As you can find it afterwards, that's the only thing that matters.
- 04:06 So I'm gonna go ahead and leave it at My Documents.
- 04:08 I'm gonna call it Customer Inquiry,
- 04:09 I'm gonna go ahead and click on Save and there we have it.
- 04:12 Now, the only thing that changed after you save it, is right up here.
- 04:16 The title now says Customer Inquiry, that is your confirmation that yes,
- 04:20 it did save, and it's all done.
- 04:22 And so now when I come back to open this later I just find that file and I edit.
- 04:29 All right, thank you so much.
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