Eric Butow - MCA Microsoft Office Specialist (Office 365 and Office 2019) Complete Study Guide

FIGURE 1.14Page Background section

1 Open a new document.

2 Change the margins of a page to the prebuilt Narrow setting.

3 Apply one of the existing themes to your document.

4 Add a header and footer to your document, and add your preferred built‐in header and footer style.

5 Add a dark blue background page color from the Page Color drop‐down list. After you add it, press Ctrl+Z to return to the default white background.

You should save your document regularly as you work on it in case your computer loses power or experiences a serious technical problem. You may want to save your document in a different file format, such as when you want to share the document but you want to save a copy in Adobe's PDF format . (PDF stands for Portable Document Format.) That way, someone can just leave comments within the PDF document using Adobe's free Adobe Reader program.

In this section, I'll show you not only how to save documents in different formats, but also how to change basic document properties if you're sending a Word document to other people and they need to see basic information like who wrote it and any comments about the file.

In case you plan to print your document to review and/or share with others, I'll tell you how to modify your print settings, such as how to tell Word what pages you want to print. Next, I'll show you Word's sharing tools so that you can send your document to one or more people as an email attachment, in PDF format, as a web page, in a blog, or even as a fax document.

Finally, I'll provide an exercise so that you can practice using these tools yourself.

Word can save in any one of 16 file formats, including its native DOCX format. Start by clicking the File menu option and then click Save As in the menu on the left side of the File screen.

The Save As screen shows you a list of files that you opened recently, and above that list you can change the file folder, name, and format. When you click the Word Document (*.docx) box, as shown in Figure 1.15, the list of types appears in the drop‐down menu. Once you select one, click Save to the right of the box.

FIGURE 1.15Save As screen

After you save a file, what you see next depends on the format that you selected. For example, if you save to a plain text ( .txt) file, you'll see the File Conversion dialog box so that you can tweak the conversion settings. If you save to a Word 97–2003 document, then Word immediately converts the file and shows that older version file in the document window with the words “Compatibility Mode” in the title bar. If you want to continue editing the original file that you created in Word in Office 365 or Word 2019, you need to close the currently open document (your older‐version file) and open the original file.

There are standard properties and there are those that you can change to help you search for a document in Word and tell people more about the document if they need it.

Start by clicking the File menu option. Now click Info in the menu on the left side of the File screen.

The Info screen contains the Properties area that lists everything you need to know about the document. At the bottom of the list, click Show All Properties. Now you can see all of the properties (see Figure 1.16) and make changes in the following fields:

Title (if you don't have one)

Tags to help search for documents in Word

Comments about the document

Status of the document

Categories into which the document falls

Subject of the document

Hyperlink base, which is the folder path you want to use for all of the hyperlinks that you create in this document

Company, which is the company that created the document (if any)

Manager, if there's a manager of your department to whom you report and who is responsible for the document's contents

FIGURE 1.16Document properties list

If you don't want to see as many properties the next time you open the Info screen, click Show Fewer Properties at the bottom of the list.

Word easily detects the default printer that you're using in Windows and lets you change the printer settings so that your document appears on paper the way you want.

Start by clicking the File menu option, and then click Print in the menu on the left side of the File screen. Now you see the Print screen, and the print preview area appears on the right side so that you have a good idea of what the document will look like on the printed page.

Between the menu area on the left and the print preview area, the settings menu you see depends on the printer you have.

In my case, as shown in Figure 1.17, I can change the printer to another one that I have installed in Windows. I can also change different settings for the selected printer, including how many pages to print, the page orientation, and if I should print on one or both sides of the paper.

FIGURE 1.17Print screen

If you're sharing a document with other people and they expect to receive it in electronic form, such as an email attachment, Word gives you five different ways to send a file online directly within Word.

Start by clicking the File menu option. Now click Share in the menu on the left side of the File screen.

Within the Share screen, as shown in Figure 1.18, the Share With People option is selected in the Share menu. This option allows you to share your document to a OneDrive location by clicking the Save To Cloud button.

FIGURE 1.18Share screen

Here are the other four formats that Word supports to share your documents online:

Email You can send your Word file as an email file attachment in native Word format or as a link to the file in a shared folder on a network. What's more, you can save the file in PDF or XPS format and attach it to an email message. You can even send the file to an online fax service.If you're scratching your head and wondering what a “fax” is, the word “fax” is short for facsimile. You fax a document by using a device (either a computer or a stand‐alone device called a fax machine) to scan the document and then transmit it electronically through telephone lines to your recipient's computer or fax machine. This technology is even older than you think—the first fax machine, called the Electric Printing Telegraph, was invented by Alexander Bain in 1843.