Laboratory 2

Word Processing

By the end of this laboratory session you should be familiar with: •

The Spell Checking and Correction features of Word.

•

Creating and applying styles.

•

Using page and section breaks.

•

Headers, footers and page numbering.

•

Tables of contents.

Laboratory Topics

Page

(Click on a topic to jump to the appropriate page) 1.

Introduction

3

2.

Begin Tutorial

3

3.

Fonts

3

4.

Layout

4

5.

Styles

4

6.

Headers and Footers

5

7.

Page and Section Breaks

5

8.

Find and replace

6

9.

Spell Checking and Correction

6

10.

Table of Contents

7

11.

EndNote

7

12.

Other Features

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13.

Lab 2 Assignment

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1. Introduction Microsoft Word has many advanced features that allow the package to be used for the creation of anything from a single page memo to a 500 page book. This laboratory session will introduce a few of the features which will be useful to you in writing engineering reports for your studies and professional activities. You are encouraged to explore beyond what is covered in this lab by browsing the menus, by using on-line help, or by reading books covering the use of Microsoft Word. We have not included illustrations of how the menus, toolbars and dialogs will appear in these notes. Firstly, they would have to be very numerous to show all the features being covered and, secondly, you already have some familiarity with this application. NB. If you are unsure about which toolbar button, list box or other control is being referred to simply “browse” the mouse over the tools and wait for the caption to appear identifying that control. NB. The method these notes use to identify a menu, and then the item you should choose from that menu, is by placing a colon : between each part of the menu sequence. Eg File:Open… means go to the File menu (at the top left of the Word application) and choose Open… from the menu list.

2. Begin Tutorial Launch Word and then use File:Open… to find and open the file Lab2ex from CECIL. This file consists of some text from a NASA Web site. Immediately use the File:Save As… to save a version of this into your own directory. The document has 4 paragraphs but otherwise no other formatting. You will now use some of the features of Word to format this document.

3. Fonts Select the first paragraph and change the font to Garamond 12 by choosing the Font list and the Font Size list in the Font area of the Home menu tab near the top of the application window. Now try selecting each of the other paragraphs and change their font and size to anything of your choice. Other buttons in the Font area allow selected text to be bolded, italicised, or underlined respectively. Click immediately after the first word “Aerodynamics” and press the Enter key. This will leave “Aerodynamics” on a line of its own which we will treat as a heading. Select this word and change it to 16pt, bold, underlined. Page 3

4. Layout Display the Ruler by selecting the View menu tab and in the Show area clicking on Ruler. Tabs can be added to the ruler by left-clicking wherever the tab is to be inserted. An L shaped symbol will appear on the ruler. This signifies a Left Tab. Double-right-clicking on a tab brings up a Tab Dialog. This tab setup can also be found under the Format menu. This allows the tab to be changed to center, right, decimal or bar. Notice that the tabs only apply to the paragraph which you are in when you set them. If you are entering text at the end of a document and set tabs they will stay in effect from that point until you change them. Select the whole of the first paragraph. Find the Right Indent marker on the ruler and drag it to the 14cm position. Similarly, move the Left Indent marker to 1cm and the First Line Indent to 2cm. Alignment can be changed with the buttons in the Home:Paragraph toolbar. Try left, center, right and justify and observe the effects. Notice that all these settings affect only the paragraph currently selected. If the whole document is to be changed you would press Ctrl A and then apply the tabs, indents and alignments to the entire document.

5. Styles Assuming that you have settled on the appearance of the word “Aerodynamics” as being suitable for the first word of each paragraph, then this particular style can be given a name and applied elsewhere. Select the word “Aerodynamics”. Use the right-mouse menu to select Styles:Save Selection as a New Quick Style. Type the name ParaHeading and press Enter. You will now apply this same style to the headings of each paragraph. Click after “Propulsion” from paragraph 2 and press Enter. Now select this word and click on the Home menu tab. In the Styles area your named style ParaHeading should appear as a style button. Click this button to apply the style to whatever text is currently selected. Do the same to “Structures and Materials” and the “Stability and Control” at the beginning of paragraphs 3 and 4.

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6. Headers and Footers From the Insert menu choose Header, and then the type Alphabet. Type a title “Aircraft Terminology” into the Header field. Click Close Header and Footer from the toolbar near the top of the application. From the Insert menu choose Footer and choose the Conservative type (you may need to scroll down the available types to find this). Browse the toolbar and see that you can adjust the position of the page numbering and also insert such items as date and time. Stop editing the Header and Footer by double-clicking within the body of the text, or by clicking Close Header and Footer from the toolbar near the top of the application.

7. Page and Section Breaks Click at the end of the third paragraph. From the menus choose Page Layout:Page Setup:Breaks:Page. This has inserted a “hard” or fixed page break (as opposed to a “soft” page break which appears automatically to break the text up as it fills each page.) A section break can be inserted rather than a page break. Don’t do this now, but it can be used for the assignment task. The main use of sections is when significantly different formats are to be applied to each section. This may include the use of multiple columns for a portion of your document. Each section can have its own header and footer layouts. Page numbering can restart with a new section eg preliminary pages in a book may have “Roman numerals” as page numbers and then the first chapter begins at page 1.

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8. Find and replace Global changes can be made by searching for a specific string of text and replacing it with another string. Use the Home:Editing:Replace menu to change every occurrence of the word “airplane” to “aeroplane”. (Use Replace All). Check that the change has been made as you expected. (It should have reported 27 changes.) Would it be safe to have simply changed all instances of “air” to “aero”? The Find and Replace has a More button which allows you to be more specific about what strings to replace. Don’t try these now, but care should be taken when doing global replacements! Close the Find and Replace dialog.

9. Spell Checking and Correction A certain amount of checking and correction occurs as you type. Have a look at Review:Proofing:Spelling & Grammar:Options:Autocorrect Options. You will see some common misspellings or formats can be set to automatically correct as you type. For example the first character of a new sentence will be capitalised which saves you manually holding down the shift key each time you begin a sentence. Similarly the single character “i” on its own will be capitalised to become the word “I”. Sometimes you may wish to disable these features! Potentially incorrect words, or grammar, will be underlined. For example “efficently” and “environmently” are spelt incorrectly in the Propulsion paragraph (looks like NASA didn’t use a Spell Checker!). Right-click on “efficently” and choose from the selected spelling. Click the mouse at the top of the document. Run the spell checker by selecting the ABC tool on the Review:Proofing toolbar. Run through the grammar and spelling prompts and either ignore or correct each error reported. If the U.S. dictionary has been set it will flag aeroplane as incorrect. At the first instance of this you can click Ignore All and it won’t report that error again. You can add words which the main dictionary flags as incorrect or non-existent to your own Custom Dictionary. During future checks these words will be accepted as correct. You can examine the Language and Dictionary settings via the Review:Language:Set Proofing Language and the Review: Proofing:Spelling & Grammar:Options:Proofing menus.

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10.

Table of Contents

Click at the start of the example document. Select References:Table of Contents:Insert Table of Contents. Notice that a number of Table formats are available. Leave the defaults set but now click on the Options button. Here you will see the table will be based on some of the standard heading styles (Heading1, Heading2, Heading3). In each of the TOC level fields clear the number that is there at present. Scroll right down this list clearing all entries. Now, next to ParaHeading type the level number 1. Click OK to close the Options dialog and then OK to apply the Table of Contents insertion. One of the merits of using Styles is now apparent, as the entries in the Table of Contents are based on text having specific named styles – in our case the ParaHeading style. Check that the heading and page numbers are correct. It is usual to place a section break at the end of the Table of Contents so that page numbering will start on the next page. The Table of Contents may in fact have “Roman” numbering as mentioned earlier. Other forms of Tables and Indexes are available which you can explore on your own at another time.

11.

EndNote

An especially useful tool is Endnote. EndNote is a specialised database program for storing and managing bibliographic references. It allows you to import references from Library catalogues or other electronic databases into EndNote libraries using filters. You may also connect directly to some remote databases and search them using EndNote, saving the retrieved references directly to your EndNote library. References in EndNote libraries can be sorted and searched, and incorporated automatically into papers for publication. EndNote is already installed on the majority of University computers. Current University of Auckland students can install the latest version of EndNote on personal computers by visiting the library website at http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/endnote/endnote.htm Endnote will be covered in more detail later in this course.

12.

Other Features

Many other features also exist which can’t be covered in this session. These include inserting spreadsheet cells, formulae, mailmerge, footnotes, indexes, word count, Visual Basic macros, templates, customised menus and toolbars, multiple columns, case change, drop caps, summaries, bullets, numbering, and outlining. As you use Word to produce reports and essays, you may wish to explore some of these by browsing the menus and using the on-line help. This completes the tutorial section of the laboratory. Please turn to the assignment, complete the task and have your tutor check it.

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13.

Lab 2 Assignment

Task 4 The task is to produce a short document describing the School of Engineering. Each of the five departments should appear on a different page with a suitable heading which can be used to create a table of contents. Under each heading should be a few lines describing the characteristics of the particular engineering disciplines taught by that department. This may be from your own understanding or you may wish to browse the department Web pages to find this information. Use appropriate fonts, alignment etc. Ensure your document is spell checked and corrected. Insert a table of contents which will automatically pick up on the department name and display the corresponding page number. Set up the header so that a document title appears in the top centre of each page. Set up a footer so that page numbers appear on every page, except the table of contents page. Adding Figures: Often our reports will contain figures. These may be charts pasted from Excel, or they may be photographs or other illustrations. These should have captions which are numbered and include a brief description. Reference can then be made to the figure from within the written report. Copy the RainFall chart which you produced in Task 2 and paste it into the section of your document describing Civil and Environmental Engineering. Obtain an illustration from one other department website and add to the appropriate section of your document. This may be done by finding an image and using “right-mouse copy” and then pasting into your text. Alternatively you can grab a screen shot and crop to leave just the portion you need. Insert sequentially numbered captions below each of your two illustrations. Below your Table of Contents insert a Table of Figures and ensure that it displays the figure numbers, descriptions and the page numbers where the figures reside. Detailed instructions on this process may be found in the file “Adding Images To Word Documents” on CECIL.

Have your tutor check Task 4 – which will contribute to credit for Week 2. If you are unable to complete this task before the end of your lab session, then you may have until midday (12:00pm) next Tuesday (Week 3) to email your document to your lab tutor. Make sure you have made a note of your tutor’s email address before you leave the lab and also ensure that your email message clearly identifies who you are when you submit your attached Word file.

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