A lot of this you should be able to do on your own, because you learned most of it last year. A lot of the tools are very similar to ones that you’ve used in Excel and PowerPoint as well. Some of this is brand new, so you may need to follow some directions to complete the assignment. Feel free to go through the whole document and see how much you can do before you start looking at the directions, just make sure that you do every part before handing this in (including the last part, which is the most important and most challenging)

download this file

Your finished file will be a Word document (.docx) but will look something like this: wordskills_SAMPLE

Start by saving your file into your OneDrive folder

You’ll know that it’s saved properly when AutoSave is on

TEXT FORMATTING

In order to make a change to specific text, you need to highlight it. Go line by line (or if you want to get fancy and do one block with all of the attributes at once, go for it)

OR Ctrl + B

OR Ctrl + U

Note: you can do different styles of underlining with the little triangle/hidden menu

OR Ctrl + I

In the end, the first section might look something kind of like this:

 

TEXT ALIGNMENT/JUSTIFICATION:

Note: You DO NOT have to HIGHLIGHT the text to change the justification of a paragraph, just make sure that your cursor is inside of that paragraph when you change how it is aligned

Your properly aligned text might look like this:

 

BORDERS & SHADING:

Again, you DO NOT have to HIGHLIGHT the text in order to add borders & shading.

You can add simple borders with this button: 

OR

At the bottom of that box, you can open more options to further customize your borders & shading (recommended!)

Pay attention to the three tabs across the top. You’ll need to use them all. Also make sure that for the first part, you Apply to: Paragraph

For SHADING, DO NOT USE THE STUPID HIGHLIGHTER! IT IS STUPID!

You can add simple shading with the paint bucket:

 

TEXT BOXES:

 Switch to the Insert tab/menu at the top of your screen

A Simple Text Box is fine (although feel free to play around and choose something a bit fancier if you like)

Delete the text that is in the box. It’ll be highlighted already:

You can click on the edge/border of the box and drag it to move it around on your page:

Highlight the paragraph you want to put in the box

Use the scissors OR right click OR Ctrl + X to CUT

Click inside the text box to place your cursor:

And PASTE (Ctrl + V or right click or the clipboard button)

To change the look of the text box, click on the border around it to select it

Once again you can use a simple border or open Borders and Shading

You have many more options if you open the Borders and Shading box

The shading could also be simple or fancier

The text box now looks a lot more interesting

 

PAGE BORDER & SHAPES

For this one, you need to open that Borders and Shading box and choose the Page Border tab at the top

For this one, you can choose a simple border just like you did for the paragraph and text box…

OR…

You can add some goofy art to the border around your page. You can change the size and colour of the “art”

WARNING: Those “art” borders look really cheesy. I would NEVER really recommend using almost every option available there because it looks really terrible, but just to try it out, have some fun here.

Whatever you choose, you can apply it to the Whole Document or just a section of your document

Now I have small blue musical notes around my page

We used shapes last year to make your trading card, so hopefully you remember those, but just in case:

Switch to the Insert tab/menu

Click on Shapes to choose a shape

Choose whatever you want

And then click and drag on your page to draw the shape

To change the look of the shape (you always should!) click on it to select it

At the top of the screen a new tab/menu will pop up

You want to change the Shape Fill and the Shape Outline

Mine now look like this:

 

PAGE BREAK

A Page Break is just a command that tells the document that everything to follow should be on a separate page. You might be tempted to just want to hit enter a few times to move everything down, but when changes occur to your document overall or above, that space becomes incorrect. The Page Break makes sure that no matter what, a new page will start at that point always.

Put your cursor wherever you want the break to occur

On the Insert menu/tab, choose Page Break

to be continued in Step 2