Chapter 10

Editing Documents

To be productive with Windows, you need to know how to work with documents. In this chapter, you learn what documents are, as well as how to create, save, open, edit, and print documents.

Understanding Documents

Create a Document

Save a Document

Open a Document

Edit Document Text

Change the Text Font

Find Text

Replace Text

Insert Special Symbols

Make a Copy of a Document

Print a Document

Understanding Documents

Documents are files that you create or edit yourself. The four examples shown here are the basic document types that you can create by using the programs that come with Windows.

Create a Document

When you are ready to create something using Windows, in most cases you begin by launching a program and then using that program to create a new document to hold your work. Many Windows programs (such as WordPad and Paint) create a new document for you automatically when you begin the program. However, you can also use these programs to create another new document after you have started the program.

Create a Document

Click File.

Click New

A If the program supports more than one type of file, the program asks which type you want to create.

Note: Some programs display a dialog box with a list of document types.

Click the document type you want.

The program creates the new document.

Note: In most programs, you can also press + to create a new document.

Save a Document

After you create a document and make any changes to it, you can save the document to preserve your work. When you work on a document, Windows stores the changes in your computer's memory. However, Windows erases the contents of your PC's memory each time you shut down or restart the computer. This means that the changes you have made to your document are lost when you turn off or restart your PC. Saving the document preserves your changes on your computer's hard drive.

Save a Document

Click File.

Click Save.

Note: In most programs, you can also press + or click Save ().

Note: If you saved the document previously, your changes are now preserved. You do not need to follow the rest of the steps in this section.

If this is a new document that you have never saved before, the Save As dialog box appears.

Click Documents.

Note: In most programs, the Documents library is selected automatically when you save a document.

A Windows opens the Documents library.

Click in the File name text box and type the name you want to use for the document.

Note: The name you type can be up to 255 characters long, but it cannot include the following characters: < >, ?: “ *.

Click Save.

B The filename you typed appears in the program's title bar.

Open a Document

To work with a document that you have saved in the past, you typically need to open the document in the program that you used to create it. When you save a document, you save its contents to your PC's hard drive, and those contents are stored in a separate file. When you open the document using the same application that you used to save it, Windows loads the file's contents into memory and displays the document in the application. You can then view or edit the document as needed.

Open a Document

Start the program you want to work with.

File

A If you see the document you want in a list of the most recently used documents on the File menu, click the name to open it. You can then skip the rest of the steps in this section.

Click Open.

Note: In most programs, you can also press + or click Open ().

The Open dialog box appears.

Click Documents.

Note: In most programs, the Documents library is selected automatically when you open a document.

B If you want to open the document from some other folder, click here, click your username, and then double-click the folder.

C The document appears in the program window.

Windows opens the Documents library.

Click Open.

D The document appears in the program window.

Edit Document Text

When you work with a character-based file, such as a text or word processing document or an e-mail message, you need to know the basic techniques for editing, selecting, copying, and moving text. Text you enter into a document is rarely perfect the first time through. The text likely contains errors that require correcting, or words, sentences, or paragraphs that appear in the wrong place. To get your document text the way you want it, you need to know how to edit text, including deleting characters, selecting the text you want to work with, and copying and moving text.

Edit Document Text

Delete Characters

Click immediately to the left of the first character you want to delete.

A The cursor appears before the character.

Press until you have deleted all the characters you want.

Note: An alternative method is to click immediately to the right of the last character you want to delete and then press until you have deleted all the characters you want.

Note: If you make a mistake, immediately press + or click Undo (). Alternatively, click Edit and then click Undo.

Select Text for Editing

Click and drag across the text you want to select.

Release the mouse button.

B The program highlights the selected text.

Edit Document Text (continued)

After you select some text, you can then copy or move the text to another location in your document. Copying text is often a useful way to save work instead of typing it from scratch. Likewise, if you need a similar passage in another part of the document, you can copy the original and then edit the copy as needed. If you enter a passage of text in the wrong position within the document, you can fix that by moving the text to the correct location.

Edit Document Text (continued)

Copy Text

Select the text you want to copy.

Click Copy ()

A In WordPad, you display the Clipboard options by clicking the Home tab.

Note: In most programs, you can also press + or click the Edit menu and then click Copy.

Click inside the document at the position where you want the copy of the text to appear.

The cursor appears in the position you click.

Click Paste ().

Note: In most programs, you can also press + or click the Edit menu and then click Paste.

B The program inserts a copy of the selected text at the cursor position.

Move Text

Select the text you want to move.

Click Cut ()

C In WordPad, you display the Clipboard options by clicking the Home tab.

Note: In most programs, you can also press + or click the Edit menu and then click Cut.

The program removes the text from the document.

Click inside the document at the position where you want to move the text.

The cursor appears at the position you clicked.

Click Paste ().

Note: In most programs, you can also press +, or click the Edit menu and then click Paste.

D The program inserts the text at the cursor position.

Change the Text Font

When you work in a word processing document, you can add visual appeal by changing the font formatting. The font formatting includes attributes such as the typeface, style, size, or special effects. A typeface — also called a font — is a distinctive character design that you can apply to the selected text in a document. The type style refers to formatting applied to text, such as bold or italics. The type size refers to the height of each character, which is measured in points; 72 points equal one inch. Special effects are styles that change the appearance of the text. The most common examples are underline and strikethrough.

Change the Text Font

Select the text you want to format.

Display the font options.

A In WordPad, you display the font options by clicking the Home tab.

Note: In many other programs, you display the font options by clicking Format in the menu bar and then clicking the Font command.

In the Font list, click and then click the typeface you want.

In the Size list, click the type size you want.

For bold text, click Bold ().

For italics, click Italic ().

For underlining, click Underline ().

For color, click the Font color and then click a color.

B The program applies the font formatting to the selected text.

Note: Here are some shortcuts that work in most programs: For bold, press +; for italics, press +; for underline, press +.

Find Text

In large documents, when you need to find specific text, you can save a lot of time by using the program's Find feature. In short documents that contain only a few dozen or even a few hundred words, finding a specific word or phrase is usually not difficult. However, many documents contain hundreds or even thousands of words, so finding a word or phrase becomes much more difficult and time consuming. You can work around this problem by using the Find feature, which searches the entire document in the blink of an eye.

Find Text

Click Find ().

A In WordPad, you display the Editing options by clicking the Home tab.

Note: In many programs, you run the Find command by clicking Edit in the menu bar and then clicking the Find command, or by pressing +.

The Find dialog box appears.

Click in the Find what text box and type the text you want to find.

Click Find Next.

B The program selects the next instance of the search text.

Note: If the search text does not exist in the document, the program displays a dialog box to let you know.

If the selected instance is not the one you want, click Find Next until the program finds the correct instance.

Click Close () to close the Find dialog box.

C The program leaves the found text selected.

Replace Text

You can make it easier to replace multiple instances of one word with another by taking advantage of the program's Replace feature. Do you need to replace a word or part of a word with some other text? If you have several instances to replace, you can save time and do a more accurate job if you let the program's Replace feature replace the word for you. Most programs that work with text — including the Windows WordPad and Notepad programs — have the Replace feature.

Replace Text

Click Replace

A In WordPad, you display the Editing options by clicking the Home tab.

Note: In many programs, you run the Replace command by clicking Edit in the menu bar and then clicking the Replace command, or by pressing +.

The Replace dialog box appears.

Click in the Find what text box, and type the text you want to find.

Click in the Replace with text box, and type the text you want to use as the replacement.

Click Find Next.

B The program selects the next instance of the search text.

Note: If the search text does not exist in the document, the program displays a dialog box to let you know.

If the selected instance is not the one you want, click Find Next until the program finds the correct instance.

Click Replace.

C The program replaces the selected text with the replacement text.

D The program selects the next instance of the search text.

Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you have replaced all the instances you want to replace.

Click Close () to close the Replace dialog box.

Insert Special Symbols

You can make your documents more readable and more useful by inserting special symbols that are not available via your keyboard. The keyboard is home to a large number of letters, numbers, and symbols. However, the keyboard is missing some useful characters. For example, it is missing the foreign characters in words such as café and Köln. Similarly, your writing might require mathematical symbols such as ÷ and ½, financial symbols such as ¢ and ¥, or commercial symbols such as © and ®. These and many more symbols are available in Windows via the Character Map program.

Insert Special Symbols

On the Start screen, type char.

Click Character Map.

The Character Map window appears.

Click the symbol you want.

Click Select

A Character Map adds the symbol to the Characters to Copy text box.

Click Copy

Click Close () to shut down Character Map after you choose all the characters you want.

In your document, position the cursor where you want to insert the symbol.

B In WordPad, you can display the Clipboard options by clicking the Home tab.

Click Paste ().

C The program inserts the symbol.

Make a Copy of a Document

When you need to create a document that is nearly identical to an existing document, instead of creating the new document from scratch, you can save time by making a copy of the existing document and then modifying the copy as needed. For example, you might have a résumé cover letter that you want to modify for a different job application. Similarly, this year's conference agenda is likely to be similar to last year's conference. Instead of creating these new documents from scratch, it is much faster to copy the original document and then edit the copy as needed.

Make a Copy of a Document

Start the program you want to work with and open the original document.

Click File.

Click Save as.

The Save As dialog box appears.

Click Documents.

Note: In most programs, the Documents library is selected automatically when you run the Save As command.

A Windows opens the Documents library.

Click in the File name text box and type the name you want to use for the copy.

Note: The name you type can be up to 255 characters long, but it cannot include the following characters: < > , ? : “ *.

Click Save.

The program closes the original document and opens the copy you just created.

B The filename you typed appears in the program's title bar.

Print a Document

When you need a hard copy of your document to file or to distribute to someone else, you can obtain it by sending the document to your printer. Most applications that deal with documents also come with a Print command. When you run this command, the Print dialog box appears. You use the Print dialog box to choose the printer you want to use as well as to specify how many copies you want to print. Many Print dialog boxes also enable you to see a preview of your document before printing it.

Print a Document

Turn on your printer.

Open the document you want to print.

Click File.

Click Print.

Note: In many programs, you can select the Print command by pressing + or by clicking Print ().

The Print dialog box appears.

Note: The layout of the Print dialog box varies from program to program. The WordPad version shown here is a typical example.

If you have more than one printer, click the printer you want to use.

Use the Number of copies spin button () to specify the number of copies to print.

Click Print.

A Windows prints the document. The print icon () appears in the taskbar's notification area while the document prints.