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Forms, such as contracts and applications, are standard text documents with form fields inserted throughout where you fill in the blanks. You can create forms that will be used on screen, or printed and filled out on paper. Typically, you save the ... form as a template. Saving the form as a template offers two main advantages: it can be reused without changing the original and it's easier for the user to fill it in. Follow the steps below to create a form: Launch MS Word if it isn't already open. Start a new, blank document. Type in the standard headings and text that will appear in each ... (view more)

By default, the toolbars for Microsoft Graph appear on a single row. Click More Buttons to display additional buttons you can use to build and format your chart. You must change the sample chart and data to reflect your own figures. Each change you ... make in the datasheet will immediately appear on the sample chart. Click the datasheet and type your text and numbers. Press Tab or arrow keys to navigate from cell to cell. Add more rows or columns by typing them. Eliminate data by selecting and pressing Delete. Alternatively, you can keep the data in the datasheet but not include it in the chart ... (view more)

The buttons on the Drawing toolbar have useful tools for -- what else? -- drawing objects, such as shapes and lines. Not only can you make simple squares, circles, ovals, and lines, but MS Word provides AutoShapes, a gallery of typical shapes such ... as stars, pentagons, block arrows, etc. A special type of AutoShape, a callout, combines a text box and indicator line and is used to attach explanatory text to a specific part of the document, much as a speech balloon in a comic strip attaches to a character, or a label points to part of a cell or organism in a biology diagram. Other buttons on the ... (view more)

When inserted, a picture is part of the flow of text, an inline object. Because you have already learned how to format alignment and spacing of regular text, you will now learn how to convert a picture to a floating object. Click the picture to ... select it. Click the Text Wrapping button on the Picture toolbar. This opens the menu. Click one of the wrapping styles. You can also use the selections on the Layout tab of the Format Picture dialog box. The view changes to Print Layout view, and the picture is now a floating object. When you place the mouse pointer over it, the pointer turns into a ... (view more)

When you want to make two or more changes to font characteristics at the same time, or to change a bit of text or a character in some specialized way, the Font dialog box in MS PowerPoint is the best place to go. The dialog box not only gives you ... most control over the formatting process but you also have access to commands, such as Subscript or Emboss, that are not available on the toolbar. Clearly, it's also more efficient to change several attributes at one time. To access the Font format dialog box in PowerPoint, follow the steps below: Select the text or slide that you want to format. ... (view more)

Even though most of you know how to format text in a Word document, MS Word allows you to handle text in tables in two neat ways. First, within the cell of a table, you can specify not only whether you want text left aligned, centered, right ... aligned, or justified. You can also have text centered vertically within the cell or rest on the bottom edge of the cell. You can even rotate the text in a cell to vertical, like a title on the spine of a book! You will want to use the alignment feature often with your tables. For example, when the content of one cell is short and the adjacent cell is ... (view more)

Once you've begun a table, you can easily change its structure. You can change the width of the columns to fit the text, and you can also insert, delete and rearrange the rows and columns any way you like. Even though you established the overall ... table structure when you first created it, you may find that more or fewer columns or rows are needed after you start entering text. It would be a real pain if you had to delete the table and start all over again just because you needed to rearrange or restructure. Luckily, Word gives you great flexibility in modifying the table structure. Change ... (view more)

You know how to use Tabs in MS Word, but more often you will use tables to align text horizontally. Tables are used whenever you must keep items side by side. You do this by laying out a grid. The best thing about tables is that in the grid you can ... align any amount of text -- sentences, paragraphs or even pictures -- side by side. When you want to keep text side by side in a document, create a table. This grid-like structure can contain short text, such as a number, long text, a sentence, paragraph, or several paragraphs. A table keeps the items properly aligned in columns and rows, so you ... (view more)

Creating a document is as easy as starting Word and typing text. If you choose, you can work with Word's default settings. However, many documents require different layouts. It's important to know how to change the settings so that you can change ... the way the text looks on the page. If you haven't changed the settings in your Normal template, you'll find the defaults (in the U.S. version of Word) to include top and bottom margins set to 1 inch, left and right margins at 1.25 inches, header and footer margins at .5 inches, gutter position left, paper size is 8.5X11 inches, portrait page ... (view more)

Most section-level formatting is controlled by the Page Layout dialog box found on the File menu of MS Word. The dialog box is made up of four tabs, each controlling a separate category of section formatting: Margins, Paper Size, Paper Source, and ... Layout. Margins Since margins are section-level formatting, when you change any margin at any point in a section, you change that margin for the entire section. If your document is just one section, then changing any margin at any point in the document changes that margin for the entire document. To change one or more margins: Click File | Page ... (view more)