Toolbars of Every Kind . . .

Now that you are feeling comfortable with your new word processor, let's take a quick tour of the various toolbars, icons, and menus in Writer.

The icon bar directly below the menu bar is called the Standard bar, and it contains icons for opening and creating documents, cutting and pasting, printing, and other functions. The Standard bar is common to all the OpenOffice.org applications (Writer, Calc, Impress, etc.).

Below the Standard bar is the Formatting bar. It provides common editing options, such as font selection, bolding, italics, and centering. Select words or phrases in your document with the mouse (hold, click, and drag across the desired text), and then click B for bold or I for italics. This bar will change from application to application, depending on what type of formatting is most needed.

At the bottom of the editing screen is the Status bar. What you'll see there is the current page number, current template, zoom percentage, insert (or overwrite) mode, selection mode, hyperlink mode, and the current save status of the document. (If the document has been modified and not saved, an asterisk will appear.)

In all cases, pausing over each of the icons with your mouse cursor will make a tooltip appear describing the functions of the individual icons.