Microsoft Word 2007-2013 Part-4

Setting Tab Stop Positions

A Tab Stop in word processing terms is the jump your cursor makes from one position to another when you press the tab key on your keyboard. Your tab key looks like this:

Press the tab key on your keyboard and watch what happens. You'll see the cursor jump from left to right in your document. Press the backspace key on your keyboard to get back to where you were. Or just click with your left mouse button.

You can control how far the cursor jumps when you press the tab key on the keyboard. But why would you want to?
You typically set tab stop positions for things like indenting the first line of a paragraph, or if you wanted text to start three or four centimetres along the line. We're going to set three tab stops for our line of text with the months of the year.
With your Crime Statistics document open, do the following:

• Move your cursor to the start of the January, February, March line of text in your document
• Locate the Paragraph panel in the Home ribbon at the top of Word
• Click the small arrow in the bottom right of the Paragraph panel:
  

When you click the arrow you should see a dialogue box appear. This one:

Click the Tabs button in the bottom left. Another dialogue box will appear, and will look like this:

The area to concentrate on is Tab stop position, right at the top. When you want to set a tab stop, you type in a number in the text box below the words "Tab stop position". Then you press the "Set" button.

We are going to set tab stop positions at 3, 5 and 7 centimetres from the left hand side. (If your Word measurements are set to inches the figures to use are 1.18, 1.97, and 2.75.)

• Enter a 3 in the Tab stop position text box
• Click the "Set" button
• Enter a 5 in the Tab stop position text box
• Click the "Set" button
• Enter a 7 in the Tab stop position text box
• Click the "Set" button

When you are finished, your Tab dialogue box should look like this:

Click the OK button when you have finished. With your cursor still flashing before the J of January, your top ruler bar will look like this:

Notice the three L-shaped lines on your ruler bar. These are your three tab stop positions.

If you can't see the ruler bar, click the View ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word. Locate the Show/Hide panel and select the ruler item:

To move your text along, position your cursor before the J of January. Press the tab key on your keyboard. The entire line will shift to right, and January will now be lined up with your first tab stop at position 3. Position your cursor before the letter "F" of February, and then press your tab key again. February will be lined up with your second tab stop at position 5.

Position your cursor before the letter "M" of March, and then press your tab key again. March will be lined up with your third tab stop at position 7. Your document will now look like this:

You can see that the three months are lined up with the three tab stops in the ruler bar at the top.

Now move your cursor down one line and watch what happens to the ruler bar at the top. The tab stops have vanished!
The tab stops have vanished because we only set them for one line - the months of the year line. To set tab stops for the numbers, highlight the same area of text as in the image below:

When your text is highlighted, bring up the Tabs dialogue box again. Set three tabs at the following tab stop positions: 3.5, 5.5, 7.5 centimetres. (In inches, 1.37, 2.16, 2.95.)

When you're finished, every line in the highlighted area will have tab stops at those three positions. You now need to shift the numbers across so that one number is underneath one month. So position your cursor before the first number and press your tab key. Position your cursor before the second number and press your tab key. Position your cursor before the third number and press your tab key. Do that for every line of numbers. When you're done, it should look like this one:

I'm sure you'll agree that Constable Tucker's statistics are looking a lot tidier. We can do something else, though, and that is add some bullets to the list of crimes. After all, what crime list would be complete without bullets!

Creating Bulleted Lists

Bulleted lists have been used throughout this book. To create one of your own, do the following.

• Highlight the last three lines in your Crime Statistics document
• On the Home ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word, locate the Paragraph panel
• On the Paragraph panel, locate the three bullet options:
  

The first of the three is for bullets that are not numbers or letter. The default for the first option is to have round bullets. If this is all you want then simply click the first option, after you have highlighted your text. You can, however, have other symbols for your bulleted list. Click the arrow next to the first bullet option to see the following:

You can select any of the bullets in the Bullet Library. Move your mouse over each one and you'll see a preview on your page. Click with the left mouse button to choose a particular bullet.

You have a wider range of choices if you click the link at the bottom that says "Define New Bullet". When you click the link, you'll see the following dialogue box appear:

Click the Symbol button at the top to see this screen:

Select the symbol you want and then click OK. You'll then be returned to the Define New Bullet dialogue box. If you like the Preview, click OK on this dialogue box, as well. You can however, select a picture, or a font as your bullet. Click the buttons at the top to see how these work.

The second bullet option on the Paragraph panel is for numbers and letters. The default is for consecutive numbers starting from 1. Again, click the arrow to see more options:

So if you wanted lowercase letters instead of numbers, select this option from the list. You can also set your own style by clicking the "Define New Number Format" link at the bottom. This opens a dialogue box similar to the one you've just seen.

The third bullet option on the Paragraph panel is for lists that are more complex - bullets within bullets. A list like this, for example:

To get the list above, we first typed the text "Heading One". After highlighting this text, we clicked the third bullet option on the Paragraph panel to see this:

Clicking the first option got us the number 1 as a bullet. We then typed the next two items. However, this gets you a numbered list, 1 to 3. To change the list into the one above, highlight an item on your list. Then click the link at the bottom that says "Change List Level". You'll then see the following:

Select the List Level you want. Do the same for any other items on your list.

But once you have set a bullet style for your list, it should look something like ours:

We went for a square bullet, but feel free to use something else. Notice, also, that we've made the made bold the text "The crimes committed are:". We've also added a line break after this.

Working with Fonts

A font is a style and design of text. Examine this letter:

Now examine this one:

As you can see, the two styles are completely different. Notice how straight and blocky the second one is compared to the first. The first one has little pointy bits on its edges. The pointy bit is called a serif. Fonts are basically split into two types - those that have the pointy edges, and those that don't. The pointy fonts are called serif fonts, and the ones without pointy bits are called sans serif fonts.

The first of the letter Es is the very popular serif font "Times New Roman". The second letter e is the most popular sans serif font "Arial".

With Microsoft Word 2007 and later, the font you get if you don't make any changes is called Calibri. Calibri is a sans serif font that looks very similar to Arial.
It's common practice to use a sans serif font for headings and a serif font for text. We'll follow that tradition. We'll use Arial for the heading of our report, and use Times New Roman for the body text. To change the font heading to Arial, do the following:

• Select the heading at the top of your report, the one that says "Constable Tucker's Crime Statistics"
• Locate the Font panel on the Home ribbon at the top of Microsoft Word
• Now look for the Font and Font sizes area:

The font above is set to Calibri, and the size is 11. The big A and the little A just to the right of font size are quick ways to either increase or decrease the size of selected text.

Click the down-pointing arrow to the right of the font box to reveal a list of the all the font on your system:

Hold your left mouse button down on the vertical scroll bar to the right of the fonts. Move your mouse down to scroll through all of your fonts (you may not have the same ones we have).

If you hover your mouse over a font name your text will change, giving you a preview of what it looks like. Click a font once to select it.
We want Arial so select it from the list.
Use the font size box just to the right of the font name box and change the size to 16. Remove any underline you added for the title. Centre your heading, as well. Your report will then look like this:

Font colours

You can set a different colour for your font. To do that, highlight the text you want to change. Then locate the red underlined letter A on the Font panel of the Home ribbon:

Click the arrow next to the letter A to see some colours appear:

Select a colour from the list by clicking one with your left mouse button, or click the "More Colours" link at the bottom. (Word 2013 users will also have a Gradient option to explore.)

To the left of the font colours option there is a yellow underline with the letters "ab" on top. What this does is to change the background colour behind your text. Have a play around with this to see what it looks like.
When you finished experimenting, click the Undo arrow to get back to how it was before. The Undo arrow is at the top of Microsoft Word, just to the right of the Save icon:

Word 2007

Word 2010/13

You can also use the keyboard shortcut combination of CTRL and Z to undo things. Just hold down the CTRL key. Keep it held down and press the Z key.

Setting up Page Margins

If you look at the ruler bar on the left of your screen, you'll see blue (or grey) areas at the top and bottom of the left ruler, and a white area in the middle. The blue areas are your top and bottom margins. You can't move your cursor above the top margins, or below the bottom one. Quite often, you'll want to change the amount of space used for the margins.

If you can't see a ruler on the left hand side, either select it from the Show/Hide panel on the View ribbon at the top of Word. Or click the ruler icon near the top right:

We'll adjust the Top margin for our report. The ruler bar on the left of the screen currently looks like this:

As you can see, there's a blue area to the left, and underneath a white area (this is grey and white in Word 2010). If you trace your finger from the bottom of the blue area across and to "Constable Tucker's Crime" you'll find they match up exactly. This is the top of our page. You can't move your cursor above the white area and into the blue area. But you can change the size of the blue area, and therefore your top margin.

There are a couple of ways you can change your margins in Microsoft Word. We'll start with the tricky way!

• Move your mouse pointer half way between the blue area and the white area
• Your mouse pointer will change to the shape of a double arrow:

• Next, hold down your left mouse button
• Your screen should now look like this:
  

Notice the thin dashed line running across the page. This is your current top margin

• With your left mouse still held down drag your mouse downwards
• The thin dashed line will move with your mouse
• Let go of your mouse button when you see about 2.5 at the top of the blue area

Notice how your top margin jumps down when you let go of your mouse button. You'll have a bigger gap at the top, and therefore more space.

OK, that was the tricky way to adjust a top margin. Let's look at another way to change your page margins in Microsoft Word.

Changing Margins via the Page Layout tab

Another way to change your page margins is via the Page Setup dialogue box. Try the following:

• Click Page Layout at the top of Microsoft Word
• From the Page Layout tab, locate the Page Setup panel:
  

There is already a Margins option. Click this to see some pre-set margins. You can select one of these, if they are what you need. But click the Custom Margins option at the bottom to see the following dialogue box:

Another way to display the same dialogue box is to click the small arrow in the bottom right of the Page Setup panel:

But as you can see from the Page Setup dialogue box, you can set the Top, Bottom, Left, and Right margins from here. Try the following:

• Click inside the Top text box, the one highlighted and with 2.25 cm in it
• Use your backspace key to get rid of the 2.25 cm
• Type in the number 5 (1.97 in inches)
• Click the OK button
• This will give you a top margin of 5 centimetres

Change all the margins of your report so that they are the following

Left 3 cm (1.18 inches)
Right 4 cm (1.57 inches)
Top 5 cm (1.97 inches)
Bottom 3 cm

And that's all there is to it! In the next section, we'll look at some Cut, Copy and Paste techniques. Before we leave this section, one extra piece about Tabs.
Remember how you set out the address for Review number one? You used right alignment. So your address looked like this:

Mr Irate
12 High Street
Evercrease
EV1 EV1

If you wanted the left side of the address in a straight line, you could use tabs.

• Highlight all the lines of the address
• Click the left align icon to set the address back to the left hand side
• Bring up the Tabs dialogue box, like you did previously (Home > Paragraphs panel)
• Enter a tab stop position of about 10 cm (3.93 inches) and click the Set button
• Then click OK
• Position your cursor at the start of each line
• Press the tab key on your keyboard

The result is this style of address:

In the next part, you'll learn different techniques for cut, copy and paste.