Getting Down To Work - Microsoft Word

The File tab is at the far left of the Word® toolbar (also called a ribbon).  When you click on it, it opens a little differently with a column displaying on the left rather than across the top. In later versions of Word® your document is replaced with a screen that provides you with a number of options to check your document in preparation for saving or sending. 

To save your document, choose Save in the left column if you are saving an updated version of a document you have saved before.  If this is the first time you have saved the document or if you want to keep the older document as well as this updated version, choose Save As and you will be given options of what to name your document and where to save it.

If you wish to open a document you created earlier, choose Open in the File tab and you will see a list of the documents stored on this computer.  There is also an option to open files that are stored in SkyDrive (a Windows®  cloud service).  Cloud services are discussed later in this course.

In older versions of Word® (Word 97-2003) there are sometimes problems with compatibility with newer version of the program.  There are compatibility packs available for free online for anyone still using these versions.  In most cases this is now only a problem if someone wants to change the formatting.  Viewing the documents and making text edits to documents created in newer versions of Word® is not a problem.  Word 2013®, Word 2010® and Office Word 2007 all use a file extension .docx whereas older versions of Word use .doc