Office 2016 For Seniors For Dummies (2016)
Part II
Word
For a guide on creating your own greeting cards in Word, visit www.dummies.com/extras/office2016forseniors.
Chapter 5
Dressing Up Your Documents
Get ready to . . .
Apply Styles and Style Sets
Insert Photos
Size and Format a Picture
Position a Picture
Add a Page Border
Apply a Background Color to a Page
Create Tables
Format a Table
Word makes it easy to create attractive documents with consistent formatting, colorful graphics, and neatly ordered tables. In this chapter, I show you how to take advantage of some of Word 2016’s user-friendly features for improving a document’s appearance and readability.
In this chapter, I start with the Styles feature, which can save you a lot of time if you like to try different text formatting before deciding on a final look. With styles, you can easily switch between looks without having to worry about maintaining consistency.
Then I show you how to insert photos from your own files and from a web search.
I also explain how to make a page more colorful and attractive by adding a border around the edge of the page, and by coloring its background.
Finally, I walk you through the basics of creating tables that hold multiple columns of information in an orderly way.
Apply Styles and Style Sets
Using a style — a named set of formatting specifications — makes it easy to apply consistent formatting throughout a document. For example, you might apply the style named Heading 1 to all headings in the document and the style named Normal to all the regular body text. Here are the advantages of this approach:
· Ease: Applying a style is easier than manually applying formatting. And changing the formatting is a snap. If you want the headings to look different, for example, you can modify the Heading 1 style to change them all at once.
· Consistency: You don’t have to worry about all the headings being formatted consistently; because they’re all using the same style, they’re automatically all the same.
Of the several types of styles in Word, the most common type (by far) is a paragraph style. A paragraph style can contain formatting specifications, such as font, font size and color, indentation, alignment, and line spacing.
Unless you specify otherwise, each paragraph is assigned a style called Normal. In Word 2016, this default uses a Calibri 11 point (pt) font and left-aligns your text. (Calibri is a font that comes with Office 2016.)
Points (pt) measure how large the text is. Read more about this in Chapter 4.
In the Styles group on the Home tab (see Figure 5-1), you can find samples of several different styles. This is the Styles gallery. Not all available styles appear in the Styles gallery; each individual style’s definition specifies whether or not it appears there.
Figure 5-1
To assign a different style to a paragraph, follow these steps:
1. Click your mouse anywhere in the paragraph you want to change.
If you want to apply the style to multiple paragraphs, select them first. See Chapter 1 for how to select text.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. Click the More arrow (the down arrow with the horizontal line above it) to the right of the Styles gallery, opening the full list of the Styles gallery styles. (See Figure 5-2.)
A few of the Styles gallery styles are visible without clicking More. If the one you want to apply appears (as in Figure 5-1), you can skip Step 3.
4. Click the style you want.
Figure 5-2
Other styles are available besides the ones in the Styles gallery. To see them, click the dialog box launcher in the Styles group to open a Styles pane that contains a larger list. See Figure 5-3. You can select any style by clicking the style in the Styles pane.
Figure 5-3
Select the Show Preview check box in the Styles pane if you want to show each style’s name with the formatting the style contains.
If the Styles pane floats (that is, it’s not anchored to the right side of the screen), you can anchor it there by dragging it to the far right until it snaps into place. You can make it float again by dragging it by its title (Styles) back out toward the center of the Word window.
The definitions of the styles are determined by the style set in use. Different style sets can quickly change the look of an entire document by redefining each built-in style (fonts, sizes, colors, line spacing, and so on).
To change to a different style set, follow these steps:
1. On the Design tab, point to one of the style sets in the Style Sets gallery in the Document Formatting group. See Figure 5-4. The new style set is previewed in your document’s existing text.
2. Click the style set you want.
If you don’t like any of the choices displayed, click the More button for the gallery to open the full gallery of choices, as shown in Figure 5-5. Notice that you can reset to the default style set from this gallery menu, or save the current settings as a new style set.
Figure 5-4
Figure 5-5
You can also manually modify any style’s definition. Suppose that you want the body text in a document to be a little larger. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Open the Styles pane by clicking the dialog box launcher for the Styles group (on the Home tab; refer to Figure 5-3).
2. In the Styles pane, point to the style you want to modify so that a down arrow appears to its right.
3. Click the down arrow to open a menu.
4. Click Modify.
5. In the Modify Style dialog box that appears, make any formatting changes as desired. This dialog box contains a variety of text and paragraph formatting settings. See Figure 5-6.
6. Click OK.
Figure 5-6
Insert Photos
You can insert pictures into a document from your own picture stash on your local PC, or from online sources such as a Bing image search or your OneDrive.
To insert a locally stored picture, follow these steps:
1. Position the insertion point where you want the picture to appear.
2. Choose Insert ⇒ Picture. The Insert Picture dialog box opens.
3. Navigate to the folder containing the picture and click the desired picture.
4. Click Insert. The picture appears in the document.
To insert a picture stored on your OneDrive, the process is slightly different:
1. Position the insertion point where you want the picture to appear.
2. From the Insert tab, click Online Pictures. An Insert Pictures dialog box appears. See Figure 5-7.
3. Click the Browse button next to OneDrive. A list of the folders and files on your OneDrive appear.
4. Click the picture you want.
5. Click Insert.
Figure 5-7
But what if you don’t have the photo you want? Office applications include a means of performing a Bing image search from within the applications themselves, so you can find an image without having to exit out to a web browser. Bing is Microsoft’s web search engine.
Follow these steps to find and insert an image with Bing:
1. Position the insertion point where you want the picture to appear.
2. From the Insert tab, click Online Pictures. An Insert Pictures dialog box appears (refer to Figure 5-7).
3. In the search box next to Bing Image Search, type one or more keywords that define what you are looking for, and then press Enter. An assortment of images appear. Figure 5-8 shows an example.
4. Scroll through the images, select the one you want, and click Insert.
Figure 5-8
As the note overlaid on the search results shows in Figure 5-8, the images that Bing finds within Office are licensed under Creative Commons. This means they are royalty-free images that are okay to use for non-commercial projects. However, don’t count on an image being free to use just because it shows up in the Bing search results. If you are creating a publication that will be widely distributed, or sold, you should research the images selected to make sure the owners have not placed any restrictions on their use. When you select an image in the dialog box, a hyperlink appears in the bottom-left corner of the dialog box; you can follow it to the original image source, and from there you can glean information about its usage restrictions, if any.
Microsoft no longer provides clip art for Office users. However, if you are specifically looking for clip art (that is, vector-based line drawings), try including the word clipart as a key term when searching.
Size and Format a Picture
After you insert a picture, it is selected. (You can tell because selection handles appear around it, like the ones you saw in Figure 1-14, back in Chapter 1.) When you click away from the picture, it becomes unselected; click it again to re-select it. When a picture is selected, you can work with it in a variety of ways, including moving, resizing, and formatting.
As you learned in Chapter 1, you can resize a picture by dragging one of its selection handles in or out from the picture. Drag a corner selection handle to maintain the picture’s aspect ratio (its height-to-width ratio) to avoid distorting it.
When a picture is selected, a Format tab appears on the Ribbon (upper right). This tab contains a variety of buttons for working with the picture, such as adding a matte or a border. Tinker with the options there. If you don’t like what you’ve done, press Ctrl+Z to undo the last action. Or just delete the figure (select it and then press Delete) and start over.
Position a Picture
You can move a picture by dragging it where you want it. (Position the mouse pointer over any portion of the picture except over a selection handle.) Sounds simple, right? There’s small snag, though: by default, Word treats pictures as inline images. In other words, it sees a picture as a very large single character of text. As the text floats, the picture floats, too. In this mode, the options are limited as to where you can place the picture because it has to remain associated with a paragraph.
As an alternative, you can change a picture’s text wrap setting so that the image can be positioned anywhere on the page. Each of the various text wrap settings has a different way of interacting with any document text that may potentially overlap with the picture. Here are the choices:
· In Line with Text: The picture is a part of the paragraph; the text doesn’t wrap around it. This is the default setting.
· Square: Text wraps around the picture’s rectangular outer frame.
· Tight: For some images, this is the same as Square. If the image is vector-based line art with no solid background (as with some types of clip art, for example), the text may wrap tightly around the image itself, rather than around its rectangular outer frame.
· Behind Text: The text appears as an overlay on top of the picture.
· In Front of Text: The image appears over the top of the text, partially obscuring it.
· Top and Bottom: The picture interrupts the text, which flows above or below it. The picture is on a line all by itself.
· Through: Mostly the same as Tight.
In Figure 5-9, the text wrapping is set to Square.
Figure 5-9
Add a Page Border
A page border can make a page look more festive and colorful; this feature is great for family newsletters, invitations, and holiday greetings. Page borders can be plain or fancy lines, or can consist of tiny pictures repeated in a pattern (Border Art).
To choose a page border, follow these steps:
1. Choose Design ⇒ Page Background ⇒ Page Borders. The Borders and Shading dialog box opens with the Page Border tab displayed. See Figure 5-10.
2. Choose one of the presets at the left side to describe the type of border you want:
· Box: The border is the same on all sides.
· Shadow: The border is thicker at the left and bottom.
· 3-D: A 3-D effect is applied to the border. (The effect is not always obvious, depending on other choices you make.)
· Custom: You can specify different settings for each side of the border individually.
3. Choose a line style from the Style list.
4. Choose a line color from the Color list.
5. Choose a width from the Width list.
6. Check the sample in the Preview area to make sure it’s how you want it. Make any changes needed.
7. Click OK to apply the border.
Figure 5-10
You can also create a border by using artwork. This is where it gets really fun! For example, for a Christmas letter, you could have a border made of holly leaves or trees; for a birthday party, you could have a border made of slices of cake.
1. Choose Design ⇒ Page Background ⇒ Page Borders. The Borders and Shading dialog box opens with the Page Border tab displayed.
2. Open the Art drop-down list and select the picture you want to use.
3. In the Width box, enter the size (in points; pt) you want for the border’s width. An average size border might be 30pt, for example.
4. Click OK. Figure 5-11 shows an art-based border.
Figure 5-11
Apply a Background Color to a Page
Besides page borders, another way to dress up a page is to give it a colored background. Be aware, though, that if you print a page with a colored background, one of two things will happen:
· Word will print it without the background, and any special formatting that relies on the background might not look right. For example, if you have a black background and set the text color to yellow, you might end up with a barely readable document with yellow text on a white page.
· Word will print it with the background, meaning that you’ll use a lot of ink in your printer.
Background colors are most useful in documents that will be distributed online — such as via e-mail — rather than printed.
Background colors do not print by default. If you want to make them print, do this: Choose File ⇒ Options. Then click the Display tab and mark the Print background colors and images check box.
To set a background color (and “set” can mean to add or remove), follow these steps:
1. Choose Design ⇒ Page Backgound ⇒ Page Color. A color palette appears.
2. Make your choice:
· Click the color you want to use for the page background.
· Choose No Color to remove any existing background.
Like with many parts of Office, the color palette contains theme colors and fixed colors. As you can read in Chapter 2, theme colors are the color placeholders defined by the document’s theme; they change if you choose a different theme. Comparatively, fixed colors (also called standard colors) don’t change. See Figure 5-12.
Figure 5-12
You can also choose Fill Effects from the color palette. This opens the Fill Effects dialog box, where you can set up any of four types of fill effects:
· Gradient: A gradual blending between one color and another, like with a vibrant sunset
· Texture: A repeating graphic that looks like a certain type of surface, such as wood, concrete, or paper
· Pattern: A pattern of lines and/or dots in one color, with a contrasting background color
· Picture: An image (that you pick from the images stored on your hard drive) that fills the entire background
The details of using each of these fill effects is beyond the scope of this book, but you can experiment with them on your own. And don’t forget, you can use the Help system in Word (press F1, click the question mark button, or type your question in the Tell me what you want to do box) to get more information about any feature.
Create Tables
A table is a grid of rows and columns, somewhat like a spreadsheet in Excel. Tables are useful for displaying information in multicolumn layouts, such as address lists. Figure 5-13 shows a table in a document.
Figure 5-13
You can create two kinds of column-based layouts in Word. One kind is a multicolumn table, which I describe here. The other kind is the newspaper style, where text flows all the way from the top of the page to the bottom in one column, and then loops up to the next column. I don’t cover that feature in this book, but you can play with it on your own by choosing Page Layout ⇒ Columns.
Here’s one way to insert a table:
1. Position the insertion point where you want the table to appear.
2. Choose Insert ⇒ Tables ⇒ Table. A menu opens that includes a grid of squares.
3. Drag your mouse across the grid until you highlight how many rows and columns you want. For example, in Figure 5-14, I’m selecting three columns and four rows.
4. Release the mouse button. The table appears in the document.
Figure 5-14
If you have trouble selecting the right number of squares on the grid, choose Insert ⇒ Tables ⇒ Table ⇒ Insert Table. In the dialog box that appears, you can type the number of rows and columns you want.
To enter text into the table, just click inside the desired cell and start typing. You can move the insertion point from one cell to the next by pressing the Tab key, or move to the previous cell by pressing Shift+Tab.
When a table is active (that is, when the insertion point is anywhere within it), these two extra tabs appear on the Ribbon, under the heading Table Tools:
· Design: Contains commands and buttons for formatting the table.
· Layout: Contains commands and buttons for changing the structure of the table.
To change the number of rows or columns in the table, use the Layout tab, shown in Figure 5-15.
Figure 5-15
· To delete a row or column: Select it (drag across its cells) and then choose Table Tools Layout ⇒ Rows & Columns ⇒ Delete.
· To insert a row or column: Click in a row or column that is adjacent to where you want the insertion, and then click one of the buttons on the Table Tools Layout tab that describes the insertion you want: Insert Above, Insert Below, Insert Left, or Insert Right.
If you have trouble dragging to select a row or column to work with, try using the Select button on the Table Tools Layout tab. Clicking it opens a menu of things you can select: Cell, Row, Column, or Table.
The height of each cell changes automatically depending on the cell contents. You don’t have to change the size unless you want extra vertical blank space in the cell. You can specify a cell height in the Cell Size group on the Table Tools Layout tab. (Refer to Figure 5-15.)
More commonly, you’ll need to change a column’s width instead of a row’s height. Here’s how:
· Position the mouse pointer over one of the table’s vertical gridlines. The mouse pointer turns into an I-beam with arrows on each side. Then drag to adjust the width.
· Click in a cell and then enter a number (in inches) in the Cell Width box on the Table Tools Layout tab.
· Click AutoFit on the Table Tools Layout tab to open a menu of AutoFit options. From there, click AutoFit Contents to automatically adjust the column width to fit the widest entry in that column.
Format a Table
You can manually format a table and its content in much the same way you format any other text: Use the formatting commands on the Home tab, for example. But the Table Tools Design tab also has special formatting controls that apply specifically to tables.
For example, you can apply table styles to a table to automatically apply border and shading colors and styles, to automatically autofit the content, and to automatically apply different font formatting for the heading rows.
To apply a table style, follow these steps:
1. Click anywhere in the table.
You don’t have to select the whole table.
2. On the Table Tools Design tab, hover the mouse pointer over one of the styles in the Table Styles gallery (shown in Figure 5-16). The style is previewed in the table.
3. Click the desired table style. For additional choices, click the More button to open the full gallery of styles, as shown in Figure 5-17.
Figure 5-16
Figure 5-17
The check boxes in the Table Style Options group enable you to specify how the table style will be applied. For example, you can choose whether the header row is formatted differently than the rest of the table. If you choose Banded Rows, every other row will have a different color background, for easier reading.