Office 2016 For Dummies (2016)

Part I

Getting Started with Office 2016

Chapter 4

Getting Help from Office 2016

In This Chapter

Opening and browsing the Help window

Searching the Help window

Changing the appearance of the Help window

Microsoft always tries to make each new version of Microsoft Office easier to use than the previous version. Yet it’s likely that you’ll still have questions about using the features buried in one of the many Office programs.

To answer any questions, Office 2016 provides a Help system, which lets you browse through different help topics until you (hopefully) find the answer you need. There are two ways to use the Help system:

· Press F1 to open a Help window.

· Click in the “Tell me what you want to do” text box and type a brief description of what type of help you want.

To view the latest help information about Office 2016, make sure that your computer is connected to the Internet.

Searching in the Help Window

To search for help, you can type in one or more keywords. Such keywords can identify a specific topic, such as Printing or Editing charts.

If you misspell a topic, the Help system may not understand what you want to find, so check your spelling.

To search the Help window by typing in a keyword or two, follow these steps:

1. Press F1 to display the Help window, as shown in Figure 4-1.

2. Click in the Search Help list box and type one or more keywords, such as Formatting or Aligning text.

Type as few words as possible. So rather than type “I want to find help on printing,” just type “Printing.” Not only will this make it easier for you to search for help, but it will also keep Office 2016 from looking up extra words that have nothing to do with your topic such as “I want to find help on … .”

3. Click the Search icon (it looks like a magnifying glass) or press Enter.

The Help window displays a list of topics, as shown in Figure 4-2.

4. Click a Help topic.

The Help window displays step-by-step instructions for your chosen topic, as shown in Figure 4-3.

5. Click the Close box in the upper-right corner of the Help window to make it go away.

Figure 4-1: The Help window.

Figure 4-2: Key words let you view a list of related topics right away.

Figure 4-3: Clicking a Help topic displays instructions you can follow.

Making the Help Window Easier to Read

One problem with the Help window is that it may appear too small to read comfortably. To get around this problem, you have two choices:

· Resize the Help window.

· Expand the size of the text inside the Help window.

Resizing and Pinning the Help Window

You can resize the Help window just as you would any other window, by clicking one of the icons as shown in Figure 4-4:

Figure 4-4: The Minimize and Pin icons on the Help window.

· Minimize: Shrinks the Help window to an icon on the Windows taskbar. The Minimize icon appears in the upper-right corner of the Help window.

· Pin: Keeps the Help window on the screen so you can read the instructions while still using an Office 2016 program. The Pin icon appears in the bottom right corner of the Help window.

To make the Help window disappear if you click away from it, just click the Pin icon a second time to toggle the Help window’s behavior.

You can also resize a window by moving the mouse pointer over one edge or bottom corner, holding down the left mouse button, and dragging (moving) the mouse.

Enlarging the text in the Help window

In addition to (or as an alternative to) resizing the Help window, you can enlarge or shrink the text inside the Help window: Make the window larger so you can read it easier or smaller so you can cram more text into the limited confines of the Help window.

To change the size of the text inside the Help window, follow these steps:

1. Press F1 to open the Help window.

2. Click the Increase Font Size icon as shown in Figure 4-5.

The Help window text changes in size. Each time you click the Increase Font Size icon, it toggles between enlarging or shrinking the text.

Figure 4-5: The Increase Font Size icon on the Help window.

Printing the text in the Help window

Sometimes you may find the step-by-step instructions in the Help window so useful that you may want to reference them again. Rather than open the Help window each time, you can print the step-by-step instructions so you’ll always have them at your fingertips when you need them.

To print the text displayed in the Help window, follow these steps:

1. Press F1 to open the Help window.

2. Make sure that your printer is connected to your computer and turned on.

3. Click the Print icon.

The Print dialog box appears.

4. Choose any options in the Print dialog box (such as choosing a printer to use), then click OK to print the current contents of the Help window.

Finding the Right Commands to Use

The Help window can show you what steps to take, but you still need to find the right commands to use. For a faster way to find the commands you need, Office 2016 displays a "Tell me what you want to do…" text box in the middle top of the window, as shown in Figure 4-6.

Figure 4-6: The "Tell me what you want to do…" text box.

To use this "Tell me what you want to do…" text box, follow these steps:

1. Click in the "Tell me what you want to do…" text box.

2. Type an action you want to do such as Print, Save, or Hyperlink.

A menu appears that lists different commands, as shown in Figure 4-7.

3. Click a menu command.

Office 2016 immediately runs your chosen command.

Figure 4-7: Typing in the "Tell me what you want to do…" text box displays a menu of commands to select.

By typing in the "Tell me what you want to do…" text box, you can quickly jump to the command you need without wasting time trying to find it buried in the Office 2016 user interface.