must be on and ready to work. So turn on your PC, laptop, or tablet if it’s not already on and toasty. Log into Windows.
✔ Do not attempt to make toast in your computer.
✔
Propriety demands that I show the traditional, boring way to start Word. Let me be quick:
1. Press the Windows key on the keyboard.
The Windows key is adorned with the Windows logo icon, which I won’t illustrate here because it’s changed over the years. The key is nestled between the Ctrl and Alt keys to the left of the spacebar. A duplicate is found on the right side of the spacebar. Use either key.
2. Look for Microsoft Word on the Start menu.
The item might be titled Word or Word 2016 or something similar.
If you don’t find Word right away in Windows 10, click the All Apps button to hunt it down. In Windows 7, click the All Programs button.
Sometimes Word is found on a Microsoft Office or Office 2016 submenu.
3. Click the Word icon or button to start the program.
Watch in amazement as the program unfurls on the screen.
The best way to start Word, and the way I do it every day, is to click the Word icon on the taskbar. Word starts simply and quickly.
The issue, of course, is how to get the Word icon on the taskbar. Follow these steps:
1. Find the Word icon on the Start button’s All Programs menu.
See the preceding section, Steps 1 and 2.
2. Right-click the Word icon.
3. Choose the command Pin to Taskbar.
The Word icon is pinned (permanently added) to the taskbar.
Starting Word in Windows 8 (for the few who still use Windows 8)
One of the reasons Windows 8 was so aggressively unpopular was that it eschewed the traditional Start button menu for a tile-based Start screen. If you’re still burdened with Windows 8, or you run Windows 10 in Tablet mode, start Word by pressing the Windows key on the keyboard and then clicking the Word 2016 tile on the Start screen.
You can stick the Word icon to the taskbar, as described in this chapter: Click the Word tile on the Start screen and then choose the command Pin to Taskbar. (The Pin to Taskbar command is at the bottom of the screen.)
You use the Word program to create documents, which are stored on your computer in much the same way as people pile junk into boxes and store them in their garages. To start Word, open a document. Follow these steps:
1. Locate the document icon.
2. Double-click the icon.
This step is a standard Word operation: Double-click an icon to open a program. In this case, opening a Word document starts Word.
The document is opened and presented on the screen, ready for whatever.
✔ You use Word to create documents. They’re saved to storage on your computer or in the cloud. Details are offered in Chapter 8.
✔ The document name is assigned when it’s originally saved. Use the name to determine the document’s contents – providing that it was properly named when first saved.
✔ Document icons are managed by Windows. If you need to find a lost document, rename it, or organize your documents into a folder, you use Windows, not Word.
Behold the Word Program
Like all programs in Windows, Word offers its visage in a program window. It’s the place where you get your word-processing work done.
After starting Word, the first thing you may see is something called the Word Start screen, as shown in Figure 1-1. It’s friendlier than that ominous empty page that’s intimidated writers since the dawn of paper. (The blank page comes later.)
Figure 1-1: The Word Start screen.
You can use the Start screen to open a previously opened document, start a new document based on a template, or start with a blank document.
Previously opened documents are listed on the left side of the window, as illustrated in Figure 1-1. Word’s templates are found under the heading Featured. Templates you’ve created appear under the Personal link. Click a template thumbnail to create a new document based on that template.
To start on a blank document, click the Blank Document template. Then you see the ominous empty page, which I wrote about earlier.
Once you’ve made your choice, Word is ready for you to start writing. Word is also equally content if you just stare at the screen and await inspiration.
✔ The Word Start screen doesn't appear if you start Word by opening a document. See the earlier section, “Opening a document to start Word.”
✔ You can also disable the Start screen so that Word starts with a blank document. See Chapter 33.
✔
Writing is scary enough when you first see the blank page. With a computer, that level of terror just isn’t good enough. Therefore, Word festoons its program window with all kinds of controls. I recommend that you refer to Figure 1-2 to get an idea of some basic terms. Ignore them at your peril.
Figure 1-2: Word's visage.
The details of how all the gizmos and whatnot in the Word window work are covered throughout this book. They give you more control over your document, although the basic task of typing text is pretty straightforward. See
