Working with Menus


Working with Menus

The menu bar at the top of the Word window contains nine pull-down menusFile, Edit, View, and so on. You can issue all of the commands in Word via these menus. Chances are that you'll use toolbar buttons or keyboard shortcuts for many commands, but you can always fall back on the menus if you forget the alternate methods .

Menu Basics

To display a menu, click its name in the menu bar. For example, to display the Format menu, click Format in the menu bar, as shown in Figure 1.7. Then click a command in the menu to instruct Word to carry it out. If you want to close a menu without issuing a command, click anywhere outside the menu in the text area. (If your Format menu looks different from what you see in Figure 1.7, you may be using full menus , not personalized menus . See "Using Personalized Menus" later in this hour for more information.)

Figure 1.7. Click a menu name to display the menu.

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Some menu commands, such as the ones shown in the Format menu in Figure 1.7, are followed by three dots (). These commands lead to dialog boxes, which you use to give Word more information before it carries out a command. If a menu command is not followed by three dots, Word performs the command as soon as you click it.

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Commands that are followed by three dots are safe to click when you're exploring Word on your own, because you can always back out of the resulting dialog box by clicking the Cancel button. And just looking over the options in a dialog box can give you a sense of what the command does. If you have an important document onscreen, it's a good idea to refrain from clicking a command that is not followed by three dots, unless you know what it does. (You can undo many actions, as you'll learn in Hour 2, "Entering Text and Moving Around," but a few actions cannot be undone.)


If a menu command has a small triangle at its right, it leads to a submenu. To display the submenu, just point to the command. In Figure 1.8, the Insert, Picture submenu is displayed.

Figure 1.8. Menu commands with triangles lead to submenus.

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When a menu command is light gray, it is not currently available. In Figure 1.9, the first three commands in the Edit menu are grayed out.

Figure 1.9. Light gray commands are not currently available.

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Many menu commands list keyboard shortcuts to their right. For example, in Figure 1.9, the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+A is listed to the right of the Select All command. You can use these keyboard shortcuts as an alternative to clicking the commands in the menus. See "Using Keyboard Shortcuts" later in this hour for more information. Furthermore, menu commands that have equivalent toolbar buttons show the toolbar buttons to the left of the command in the menu. In Figure 1.9, all of the commands but Select All have toolbar equivalents.

Using the Keyboard to Issue Menu Commands

You can use the keyboard instead of the mouse to display menus and issue commands in them. To display a menu, press the Alt key, and then press the underlined letter in the menu name. For example, to display the Format menu, you press Alt+O. After the menu is displayed, press the underlined letter in the command that you want to issue. For example, to issue the Paragraph command in the Format menu, press P. When a menu is displayed, you can press the right or left arrow keys to display the other menus in the menu bar. To close a menu without issuing any command, press the Alt key again.

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You can also use the keyboard to interact with dialog boxes. See "Working with Dialog Boxes" later in this hour for more information.


Using Personalized Menus

Word offers two choices for controlling how your menus behave: personalized menus and full menus . When the personalized menu feature is enabled, clicking a menu name displays a short menu that contains only the commands you use frequently. This reduces clutter in your menus and makes it easier to find the commands you use all the time. If you want to use a command that is not visible in the short menu, use one of these methods to expand the menu and display all of its commands:

  • Double-click the menu name.

  • Point to (or click) the down arrow at the bottom of the menu.

  • Hover your mouse pointer over the menu name for a few seconds.

Figure 1.10 shows the full Format menu (contrast it with the short menu shown previously in Figure 1.9).

Figure 1.10. When personalized menus are turned on, you can still display the full menus.

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If you display the full menu and click one of the commands that was hidden in the short menu, Word adds it to the short menu. By the same token, if you don't use a command in the short menu for a period of time, Word may remove it from the short menu.

If you want to restore the default set of commands in your short menus, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Tools, Customize .

  2. Click the Options tab.

  3. Click the Reset Menu and Toolbar Usage Data button.

  4. Click Yes in the message box that appears, and click Close .

Turning Off Personalized Menus

For some of you, personalized menus may be the best thing since sliced bread. For others, they may be an irksome distraction.

If you want to turn off personalized menus and always see the full menus instead, follow these steps:

  1. Choose Tools, Customize to display the Customize dialog box.

  2. Click the Options tab.

  3. Mark the Always Show Full Menus check box.

  4. Click the Close button.

Now you will see the full menus all of the time. (If you need any help with these steps, see "Working with Dialog Boxes" later in this hour.) If you want to turn personalized menus back on at some point, follow these same steps, but clear the check box in step 3 instead of marking it.

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To keep things simple, the remainder of this book assumes that personalized menus are turned off. If you prefer to keep this feature turned on, remember that some of the commands referred to in this book may not be included in your short menus; you might have to display the full menus to see them.


Displaying Context Menus

In addition to using the pull-down menus at the top of the Word window, you can also use context menus (sometimes called shortcut menus ). These are menus that you display by clicking the right mouse button. The commands in a context menu vary depending on where you right-click. For example, if you right-click text, you get commands for editing and formatting text (see Figure 1.11), and if you right-click a toolbar, you get a list of available toolbars (see Figure 1.12).

Figure 1.11. Right-clicking text displays a context menu with commands for working with text.

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Figure 1.12. Right-clicking a toolbar displays a context menu that lists available toolbars.

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To choose a command in a context menu, use a left-click. To close a context menu without choosing a command, click anywhere outside it (or press the Esc key).



Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Word 2003 in 24 Hours
Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Office Word 2003 in 24 Hours
ISBN: 067232556X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 315
Authors: Heidi Steele

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