Working with Documents

Anything you create with Word is called a document. A document is nothing more than a computer file that can be copied, moved, and deleted or edited, from within Word.

Creating a New Document

Any new Word document you create is based on what Word calls a template. A template combines selected styles and document settings and, in some cases, prewritten text or calculated fields to create the building blocks for a specific type of document. You can use templates to give yourself a head start on specific types of documents.

To create a new Word document based on a specific template, follow these steps:

1. Pull down Word's File menu and select New; this displays the New Document pane, shown in Figure 13.2.
   
   

   Figure 13.2. Use the New Document pane to open new and existing Word documents.

   

   
   

2. To select a recently used template, go to the Recently Used Templates section of the New Document pane and click a template name.
   
   

   

   If your version of Word is installed as part of Works Suite, you can view additional Works-related templates by selecting File, New Works Template.

   
   

3. To select another template, go to the Templates section of the New Document pane and click On My Computer.
   
   

4. This opens the Templates dialog box, shown in Figure 13.3; select one of the prepared templates listed there.
   
   

   Figure 13.3. Select a tab to select templates of a specific type.

   

   
   

5. Click OK.
   
   

If you don't know which template to use for your new document, just click the Blank Document link in the New section of the New Document pane. This opens a new document using Word's Normal template. This is a very basic template, with just a few text styles defined.

Opening an Existing Document

To open a previously created document, follow these steps:

1. Select File, Open to display the Open dialog box.
   
   

2. Navigate to and select the file you want to open.
   
   

3. Click Open.
   
   

Saving the Document

Every document you make that you want to keep must be saved to a file.

The first time you save a file, you have to specify a filename and location. Do this by following these steps:

1. Pull down the File menu and select Save As to display the Save As dialog box.
   
   

2. Navigate to the folder where you want to save the file.
   
   

3. Enter a name for the new file.
   
   

4. Click the Save button.
   
   

When you make additional changes to a document, you must save those changes. Fortunately, after you've saved a file once, you don't need to go through the whole Save As routine again. To "fast save" an existing file, all you have to do is click the Save button on Word's Standard toolbar or pull down the File menu and select Save.