Introduction

Microsoft Office Word 2003 is a powerful word-processing program that enables you to easily compose and edit documents for print or online use. Word 2003 contains many new tools specifically designed to improve the way you interact with the program, and the way you collaborate with one another in preparing documents.

This chapter introduces you to the terminology and the basic Word skills you can use in the program. In Word, files are called documents . Each new document is similar to a blank page. As you type and add additional text and other objects, you document gets longer. Unlike looking at a piece of paper, Word provides many views, such as the Reading Layout view, that help you see the document in the best possible way for the task at hand.

You can navigate through various tasks with a click of the mouse, or by using shortcut keys on your keyboard. Word is set up with a variety of menus and dialog boxes that assist you in getting the job done right. Toolbars help you when you need to quickly perform a task, such as formatting text. When working with your documents, you can view more than one document, or resize the window to compare data. Moving around in your document is made easy by the browsing function in Word. With a click of a button, you are on your way to browsing your document in various ways ”by footnote, graphic, or comments, to name a few.

The Office Assistant, along with Word's extensive on-line Help, can point you in the right direction. When you finish the design of your document you can save it in various formats, a Web page for example, to use in another office program. Microsoft also offers the Office Online Web site, a resource to check for updates and information on Word.