Office 2016 For Seniors For Dummies (2016)

Part I

Getting Started with Office 2016

Chapter 1

The Two-Dollar Tour

Get ready to . . .

Start an Office Application

Start a New Document

Explore the Office Ribbon and Tabs

Understand the File Menu (Backstage View)

Create a Document

Type Text

Insert a Picture

Move Around in a Document

Select Content

Zoom In and Out

Change the View

Step right up for a tour of Microsoft Office, the most popular suite of applications in the world!

Here are some of the things you can do with Office:

· Write letters, reports, and newsletters.

· Track bank account balances and investments.

· Create presentations to support speeches and meetings.

· Send and receive email.

The Office suite consists of several very powerful applications (programs), each with its own features and interface, but the applications also have a lot in common with one another. Learning about one application gives you a head start in learning the others.

Chapter 2

Exploring the Common Features of Office 2016

Get ready to . . .

Edit Text

Move and Copy Content

Choose Fonts and Font Sizes

Apply Text Formatting

Use the Mini Toolbar

Work with Themes

Check Your Spelling and Grammar

Text handling is quite standardized in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The same commands that you use to edit and format text in one program work almost exactly the same way in another. So, after you master them in one application, you’ll be off and running in the others.

Some of these standardized features include

· The Clipboard, which lets you copy and move content seamlessly between applications

· Text formatting, which you use to format text with the same set of Font tools, no matter which application you’re in

· Themes, which help you apply consistent formatting to documents created in different programs

· The spell checker, which you use to correct your spelling and grammar in all applications, and even maintain common custom dictionaries between them

This chapter looks at each of these tools plus a few other handy standardized tools.

Edit Text

In Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, you just click where you want the text to go, and begin typing. (Chapter 1 covers the basics.)

The insertion point is the flashing vertical marker (cursor) that shows where the text you type will appear. You can move the insertion point with the arrow keys, or you can click where you want to place it.

When the mouse pointer is over an area where you can place text, it turns into an I-shaped pointer called an I-beam. The shape of the I-beam makes it easy for you to precisely position it, even between two tiny characters of text. Figure 2-1 shows the insertion point and the I-beam mouse pointer.

Figure 2-1

To insert new text, position the insertion point where you want to insert it, and then type the new text.

To remove text, you can use any of these methods:

· Backspace it. Position the insertion point and then press the Backspace key to delete text to the left of the insertion point.

· Delete it. Select the text and then press the Delete key, or position the insertion point and then press the Delete key to delete text to the right of the insertion point.

· Type over it. Select the text and then type new text to replace it. Whatever was selected is deleted.

In Word, you can’t move the insertion point past the end of the document, so if you want to begin a document with the insertion point in the center of the document, for example, you would normally have to press Enter to create extra blank paragraphs until the insertion point arrives where you want it. Here’s a way around that, however: Double-click the document at the location where you want the insertion point. Even if that location is beyond the end of the document, the insertion point moves there (and the end of the document moves down past the new location).

Move and Copy Content

For large-scale editing (such as whole paragraphs and pages of text), you can easily move or copy text and graphics within the same application (even between different data files) or from one application to another.

For example, suppose you want to create some slides for a presentation you’re giving at a club meeting. You could write the outline in Word, and then copy the text over to PowerPoint to dress up with graphics and animation.

Here are two ways of moving and copying:

· Drag and drop: Use the mouse to drag selected text or graphics from one location to another.

To drag and drop between applications, both application windows must be visible onscreen at once. You may need to move and resize windows to make that happen. To move a window, drag its title bar. To resize a window, drag the bottom-right corner of the window. If it won’t resize, it’s probably maximized; click the Restore button to un-maximize it and make it resizable.

· The Clipboard: Cut or copy the content to the Clipboard (a temporary holding area in Windows), and then paste it into a different location. I tell you more about how to use the Clipboard later in this section.

To use the copy-by-dragging method, select the content to be dragged, and then hold down the left mouse button while you drag it to the new location. Then release the mouse button to drop it there.

· Dragging and dropping within a document: If you’re dragging and dropping content within a document but the source and the destination locations are too far apart to see at the same time, you might want to open another window that contains the same file, and then scroll them to two different spots. To do this in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, choose View ⇒ Windows ⇒ New Window. Because you need to be able to see both the starting and ending points at the same time, you might have to arrange and resize some windows onscreen.

If you open a new window with View ⇒ Window ⇒ New Window, the second window will have the same name but will have a number appended to it, such as Budget.xlsx:2. The second window is an alternate view of the first; any changes made in one are reflected in the other.

· Dragging and dropping between documents: Open both documents at the same time. You must be able to see both the starting and ending points at the same time, so you might have to arrange and resize some windows onscreen.

You aren’t limited to copying content between documents in the same application. That is, you can copy from Word to Word, Word to PowerPoint, and so on. Figure 2-2 shows an example where I copied content from a Word document to an Excel spreadsheet.

Figure 2-2

To make a copy of the selected text or graphic using drag-and-drop, hold down Ctrl while you drag. You’ll notice as you drag that the mouse pointer shows a tiny plus sign, indicating that you’re making a copy.

If setting up the display so that both the source and the destination appear onscreen at once is awkward, you’re better off using the Clipboard method of moving content. This method places the source material in a hidden temporary storage area in Windows, and then pastes it from there into the destination location. Because the Clipboard is nearly universal, you can use it to move or copy data from (almost) any application to any other application, even non-Microsoft programs. For example, you could copy text from Word and paste it into a graphics program such as Photoshop, and it would appear there as a graphic. Or you could copy spreadsheet cells from Excel and paste them into a website-building application such as Dreamweaver, and the cells would appear there as a web table.

The three Clipboard operations are Cut, Copy, and Paste.

· To move something: Use Cut and then Paste.

· To copy something: Use Copy and then Paste.

Moving or copying via the Clipboard method is always a two-step process.

Table 2-1 summarizes the ways of issuing the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands. The Home tab’s Clipboard group on the Ribbon provides buttons for the commands (see Figure 2-3), but you can also use keyboard or mouse methods if you find them easier.

Table 2-1 Ways to Cut, Copy, and Paste

Figure 2-3

If you use the Ribbon buttons frequently for Cut, Copy, and Paste, consider adding them to the Quick Access toolbar so you can get to them without having to switch to the Home tab. Read how to do this in Chapter 1.

Choose Fonts and Font Sizes

Across all the Office programs, you can choose different fonts and font sizes for your work.

· A font is a standard way of making each letter. (It’s also called a typeface.) Common fonts include Times New Roman, Courier New, and Arial.

· The font size controls the height of the letters. The letters in this paragraph are size 12.5, which usually is a good size for documents in Microsoft Office.

The font size is based on the distance from the top of the tallest letter to the bottom of the lowest letter, measured in points. One point (pt) is of an inch.

The default font and size in Word is Calibri 11-point. If that isn’t what you want, you can choose a different font or size.

To choose a font or resize it, follow these steps:

1. Select the text to affect.

2. Open a drop-down list on the Home tab (in the Font group). You can select Font or Font Size.

3. Make your selection. See Figure 2-4.

If you don’t select any text to affect before you choose a font or size, the new setting applies to the spot where the insertion point is at the moment. Any new text you type there will have that new setting.

Different computers have different size monitors, so screen size isn’t a reliable indicator of how large the text will be when it’s printed. Also, adjusting the Zoom feature in the applications can affect how large the text looks onscreen. (Read about the Zoom tool in Chapter 1.)

To modify the default font and size for all new documents in the future, open the Font dialog box by pressing (Ctrl+D), choose a different font and size, and then click the Set as Default button. In the confirmation box that appears, click Yes.

The Font drop-down list contains a Theme Fonts section at the top. The fonts listed here are the fonts applied by the current theme. If you choose those fonts, rather than specific fonts from the lower part of the list, the fonts will update automatically when you change themes. (That’s a plus if you aren’t sure what look you want for the document.) I explain more about themes later in this chapter.

Word, Excel, and PowerPoint all have Grow Font and Shrink Font buttons on the Home tab (Font group) immediately to the right of the Font Size drop-down list (Figure 2-5). As you might expect, the Grow Font button increases the font size each time you click it, and the Shrink Font button decreases the font size.

Figure 2-4

Figure 2-5

Apply Text Formatting

You can modify the appearance and pick the color of text.

The default setting for text color is Automatic, which automatically changes the text color so that it contrasts well with the background. On a light background, text is black; on a dark background, text is white.

Select text, and then use the Font Color button to change its color. When you click the arrow to the right of the Font Color button on the Home tab (see Figure 2-6), a palette of color choices appears. You can choose any of the following:

Figure 2-6

· Automatic: This resets the text color to the default.

· Theme Colors: You can choose one of the color placeholders defined by the current theme. If you later change the theme applied to the document, this color might change.

· Standard Colors: You can choose a standard fixed color that will not change even if you apply a different theme later.

· More Colors: You can choose a different fixed color than the ones in the Standard Colors section.

· Recent Colors: This section appears only if you select a color with More Colors in this document. It provides shortcuts for reselecting a color that has already been used.

Besides text color, you can also apply text attributes, such as bold (like this) and italic (like this).

Some text attributes can be clicked on and off from buttons on the Home tab (in the Font group). Figure 2-7 points out the attributes for Word. The text attributes in Excel and PowerPoint are similar.

Figure 2-7

Use the Mini Toolbar

The mini toolbar appears whenever you right-click text in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. In Word and PowerPoint, it also appears when you select text.

The mini toolbar provides a quick-access version of the Font group on the Home tab, plus a few extra buttons from other groups, as you can see in Figure 2-8. Hover your mouse over each button to find out what it does.

Figure 2-8

If you find it annoying that the mini toolbar appears for selected text (some people do), choose File ⇒ Options and then deselect the Show Mini Toolbar on Selection check box.

Work with Themes

A theme is a set of three types of placeholders:

· Fonts

· Colors

· Graphic effects

Themes are useful when you want to standardize the formatting across multiple documents, or between applications. For example, you might want your résumé and the cover letter that you send with it to be consistent in formatting. Applying the same theme to both would ensure that they use the same fonts and colors.

Or, bigger picture, you can use a theme to apply consistent formatting across lots of documents, and even between applications. For example, you could have a Word document that uses the same theme as your PowerPoint presentation on the same subject, so it looks like they match.

When I use the word “theme” in a general sense in this book, you can assume that I mean a combination of those three types of placeholders: fonts, colors, and effects. However, you can also apply more specific themes that just cover one of those: font themes, color themes, and effect themes. This is great because it lets you combine the parts of different themes to create your own special look. For example, you might use the fonts from one theme and the colors from another.

Instead of choosing a specific font, color, or graphic effect for an item in one of the Office applications, you can instead choose to apply one of the theme placeholders. This formats the item with whatever definition the current theme specifies. Then, if you change to a different theme later, the item changes its appearance. This is a great help in allowing you to quickly change the look of an entire document, spreadsheet, or presentation without having to worry about consistency.

To apply a theme in Word, follow these steps:

1. Choose Design ⇒ Document Formatting ⇒ Themes.

2. Choose a theme from the menu that appears. See Figure 2-9.

Figure 2-9

To apply a theme in Excel, follow these steps:

1. Choose Page Layout ⇒ Themes ⇒ Themes.

2. Choose a theme from the menu that appears.

To apply a theme in PowerPoint, you have two methods:

· On the Design tab, click one of the samples in the Themes group. You can then optionally choose a different color variant from the Variants group. See Figure 2-10.

· On the Design tab, click the down arrow in the Themes group and select a theme from the menu that appears.

Figure 2-10

Each theme on the menu has a name, but you can’t get a very good overall sense of a theme without seeing it in action. Fortunately, there’s a quick way to do this. Just hover the mouse pointer over a theme, and the document behind the open menu shows a preview of how the theme will affect it.

Make sure you have some text in the document, in an area that isn’t obscured when the menu is open.

If you apply a theme (or preview one) and it doesn’t seem to have any effect, you probably have specific fonts and/or colors selected that are overriding the theme choices. Earlier in the chapter, where I show you how to choose a font, I mention the Theme Fonts section at the top of the Font menu. If you choose anything other than what was in the Theme Fonts section, any theme changes you make will not affect that text.

So, say you applied various fonts to a document, but now you decide that you’d rather let a theme handle the font choice. Here are some possible ways to fix that:

1. Reselect the text.

2. On the Home tab, reopen the Font drop-down list and choose the Body font from the Theme Fonts section. Do this for all the body text.

3. Repeat this process by choosing the Heading font for any headings.

Alternatively, you can reselect the text and press Ctrl+spacebar. This strips any manually applied formatting from the text. As long as you haven’t applied any styles to the paragraph that specify a certain font, this allows the theme’s font choices to be in effect.

You can also apply color themes, font themes, and effect themes. Accessing them is somewhat different in each of the three applications:

· Word: On the Design tab, use the Colors, Fonts, and Effects buttons.

· Excel: On the Page Layout tab, use the Colors, Fonts, and Effects buttons.

· PowerPoint: On the Design tab, click the More button in the Variants group to open a submenu, and then click Colors, Fonts, or Effects from that submenu.

Figure 2-11

You can do a lot more with themes than the little taste I give you here in this chapter. Explore the options at the bottom of the Themes menu (refer to Figure 2-9) on your own, or check out the Help system in each application.

Check Your Spelling and Grammar

All the Office apps share a common spell-check feature that tells you what words don’t appear in its dictionary. You can decide what to do with each one.

While you work in an application, your words are compared against the dictionary, and anything that doesn’t appear in the dictionary is marked with a red wavy underline. See Figure 2-12.

Figure 2-12

Right-click any red-underlined word to see a menu of choices. From this menu, you can

· Click one of the suggestions, and Word immediately changes the red-underlined word to the suggested word.

· Click Ignore All to mark all instances of the word as okay in this document only.

· Click Add to Dictionary to add this word so that it’s never marked as misspelled again on your computer, in any document.

Add to Dictionary is useful when you frequently write a word that the dictionary doesn’t recognize, like an unusual last name or the name of a company whose name is intentionally misspelled, like Kool Kottage. Adding the word to the dictionary helps you get it right and cuts down on the annoyance of approving it every time it pops up.

If you’d rather not check your spelling by paging through your work, looking for the red underlines, and then right-clicking each one as you find it, I have a better way. Go for the full Spell Check feature instead. It asks you to choose from a similar set of options as I just listed, but it automatically moves you from one potential error to the next so you don’t have to hunt for the underlines.

To start a spell check, choose either

· Review ⇒ Proofing ⇒ Spelling (in Excel or PowerPoint)

or

· Review ⇒ Proofing ⇒ Spelling and Grammar (in Word).

The Spell Check task pane in Word, shown in Figure 2-13, contains a few more options than the right-click menu, such as Ignore (which ignores single instances of a word) and Change All (which changes at once all the instances of a misspelled word in the current document).

Figure 2-13

Word also has a grammar component. Grammar errors appear with a blue wavy underline, and you can spot-check them just like with spelling. You can also work with them from the Grammar task panel, as shown in Figure 2-14. The Ignore Rule button suppresses further checking for the grammar rule that was broken in the notification that appears; the Explain button pops up an explanation of the grammar rule being applied.

Figure 2-14